One thing never changes about going back to school: the first day is all about getting to know your classes and seeing your friends again. (Of course, in college, it's a lot easier to do the latter earlier than the former.)
Of course, classes in college are different than in high school. The only time my class schedule has been the same from one semester to the next was when I was a freshman, and that's only because the freshmen don't have many options when it comes time to register. This semester is the most imbalanced schedule I've had so far; most semesters, I've had one or two classes on one day and two or three on another. This semester, I have three classes (plus choir) on Monday, no class on Tuesday, four classes on Wednesday, choir on Thursday, and two classes on Friday. Needless to say, Wednesdays are not going to be fun. (I've had good Wednesdays before, but the prospect of those happening this semester are rapidly decreasing).
I'm really excited about the semester, though. I'm doing courses in Shakespeare (commence epic fangirling), Greek Historiography (we're reading Xenophon), Uses of the Bible in Literature (which, as an English course, has more emphasis on the literature and less on the Bible part of it) and Basic News Writing (this is the one that's happening on Wednesdays only. It may be the reason that Wednesdays are terrible, but I don't know yet). I'm also doing choir, which is a lot of fun.
Also, here's an update on THINGS WILD CARD IS READING RIGHT NOW.
As some of you may know, there's a very popular YouTube series called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which follows the story of Pride and Prejudice in the form of video blog posts on YouTube. Well, now it's come full circle, and The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, the companion novel to the series, is the book I'm currently reading. It's written diary-style; while you could probably understand the book with some decency if you know the basic plot of Pride and Prejudice, it's definitely a lot easier to take out a few hours to watch the series before you read the book. (I realize that this may be the only time I advise someone to watch before reading, but the vlogs came before the book.) You should all go check it out on Amazon. I may do a proper review of it later.
But, for now, it's time to prepare for a lot of academia.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Monday, September 1, 2014
Monday, May 5, 2014
On Modes of Storytelling
As the semester draws to a close, my attention, like many other peoples', is turning to summer plans. I'll be honest: I don't really have many. The biggest claim on my time is going to be summer school - a total of eight hours a week for six weeks, not counting study time. That's not a lot of hours. What else am I going to do? I'll have plenty of time for studying, but I'll need to do things that aren't studying and knitting, for fear of losing my mind. (not that it isn't already gone, or anything).
Soooooo that leads me to the next point. I'm an English major. By definition, words are kind of my thing. I'm thinking that at least one other thing that could occupy my time is BLOGGING! Before you get excited about MORE POSTS FROM ME (I dearly hope that you were getting excited), the type of blogging that I was thinking about is a weird one that might not work. For those of you familiar with the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a popular YouTube series, the project I have in mind would be in a similar vein, but the main character would be a blogger, not a vlogger. The only issue with it is that I have a tendency to write fantasy; as a rule, fantasy worlds tend to not agree with tech-based worlds. That would be the biggest obstacle.
I'm sure other people have done this, but I don't know who. This is an idea that I am positing to my readers (all two of you. Hi, mom and dad!). What do you think?
Soooooo that leads me to the next point. I'm an English major. By definition, words are kind of my thing. I'm thinking that at least one other thing that could occupy my time is BLOGGING! Before you get excited about MORE POSTS FROM ME (I dearly hope that you were getting excited), the type of blogging that I was thinking about is a weird one that might not work. For those of you familiar with the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a popular YouTube series, the project I have in mind would be in a similar vein, but the main character would be a blogger, not a vlogger. The only issue with it is that I have a tendency to write fantasy; as a rule, fantasy worlds tend to not agree with tech-based worlds. That would be the biggest obstacle.
I'm sure other people have done this, but I don't know who. This is an idea that I am positing to my readers (all two of you. Hi, mom and dad!). What do you think?
Monday, March 24, 2014
Formulaic Posts: Checking out Checklists
So... here I am... on the couch... trying to think of something to post about... um... TO GOOGLE!
When one puts 'Blog Post Checklist' into Google, there are an astounding amount of hits (well, of course there are, it is Google). Still, there are a lot of people who insist that there are 10-12 points that bloggers MUST hit upon before hitting 'post,' and, as expected, there isn't a whole lot of variance.
1. TITLE
Make it catchy? I think I did... did I?
2. WRITE SOME STUFF. (A cool intro is cool.)
Blah. BlahBlahblahblah. Blargh. Tada! Cool intro done.
3. BREAK UP YOUR PARAGRAPHS.
So I'm assuming that means to not write up mammoth paragraphs that only the most dedicated readers (aka my mother... HI MOM!) would actually pay attention to. I don't think I'm doing this - at least, not in this post. Not yet, anyway. This sub-section might be getting up there. ON TO THE NEXT ONE!
4. INCLUDE A PHOTO
Here is a photo of my shoes from a few years ago. I need to figure out how to format that thing. Leaving that there for now.
5. INCLUDE KEYWORDS.
So.... include words that are easily searchable? Should I add this to the Checklist pileup in Google right now? How do I do that? Google says: "Let's give out diagrams that make it probably more complex than it really is." Can I skip this step? Getting a lot of page views is not my main concern (though more page views would be nice, it's not exactly what I'm trying to do with this... right now).
6. TAG A LOT.
I will do that upon completion of the post. So... 'checklist,' 'list,' 'random ideas from the internet,' 'things other people tell me are important,' 'rant,' 'joke,' 'humor...' am I missing anything?
7. EDIT.
But I'm not done yet! What if I make a major typographical error in writing step 9 that I completely overlook because I only edited steps 1 - 7? THEN what?
8. HIT PUBLISH!
But I'm not done yet!
9. STORM ALL THE SOCIAL MEDIA!
But I don't have any social media for this blog. I'm skipping this step.
10. GO HAVE SOME COFFEE.
Why not? You deserve some caffeine from all that hard writing, titling, paragraph-breaking, photo-posting, keyword-including, tagging, editing, publishing, and social media storming that you had to do in the last nine steps. If you don't like coffee, have some other beverage of your choice.
BONUS TIPS:
- Brand yourself
Ha. Ha. Ha. Haven't done this at all.
- Use a Call to Action.
Yes. My Challenge to You: GO ON THE HERO'S JOURNEY. NOW. (not really; this is supposed to ask a question or ask for responses or whatever).
- Be Cool
But that's easy, surely.
Right, I can't do any other shenanigans that are part of a cool, legit website, because I'm not a web designer. I don't have huge plans for this blog to go viral or anything like that. Though I do like posting things that I write on the Internet, and I've considered using AdSense on the blog, I don't think it would work very well.
There are two major reasons for this: firstly, because I don't think I get enough hits to actually make anything; secondly, because I dislike ads as much as the next person - if I wanted to run a monetized blog, I would probably create a new blog and follow all the steps and try to make it all fancy like all the sites suggest. That, however, is not this blog. That might change, but I don't know.
Call to action for all you hooligans: what do you think about the content of the post? It's not intended to be a set of Legitimate, Follow-Wild-Card's-Steps-Perfectly sort of thing, but did you like it?
When one puts 'Blog Post Checklist' into Google, there are an astounding amount of hits (well, of course there are, it is Google). Still, there are a lot of people who insist that there are 10-12 points that bloggers MUST hit upon before hitting 'post,' and, as expected, there isn't a whole lot of variance.
1. TITLE
Make it catchy? I think I did... did I?
2. WRITE SOME STUFF. (A cool intro is cool.)
Blah. BlahBlahblahblah. Blargh. Tada! Cool intro done.
3. BREAK UP YOUR PARAGRAPHS.
So I'm assuming that means to not write up mammoth paragraphs that only the most dedicated readers (aka my mother... HI MOM!) would actually pay attention to. I don't think I'm doing this - at least, not in this post. Not yet, anyway. This sub-section might be getting up there. ON TO THE NEXT ONE!
4. INCLUDE A PHOTO
Here is a photo of my shoes from a few years ago. I need to figure out how to format that thing. Leaving that there for now.5. INCLUDE KEYWORDS.
So.... include words that are easily searchable? Should I add this to the Checklist pileup in Google right now? How do I do that? Google says: "Let's give out diagrams that make it probably more complex than it really is." Can I skip this step? Getting a lot of page views is not my main concern (though more page views would be nice, it's not exactly what I'm trying to do with this... right now).
6. TAG A LOT.
I will do that upon completion of the post. So... 'checklist,' 'list,' 'random ideas from the internet,' 'things other people tell me are important,' 'rant,' 'joke,' 'humor...' am I missing anything?
7. EDIT.
But I'm not done yet! What if I make a major typographical error in writing step 9 that I completely overlook because I only edited steps 1 - 7? THEN what?
8. HIT PUBLISH!
But I'm not done yet!
9. STORM ALL THE SOCIAL MEDIA!
But I don't have any social media for this blog. I'm skipping this step.
10. GO HAVE SOME COFFEE.
Why not? You deserve some caffeine from all that hard writing, titling, paragraph-breaking, photo-posting, keyword-including, tagging, editing, publishing, and social media storming that you had to do in the last nine steps. If you don't like coffee, have some other beverage of your choice.
BONUS TIPS:
- Brand yourself
Ha. Ha. Ha. Haven't done this at all.
- Use a Call to Action.
Yes. My Challenge to You: GO ON THE HERO'S JOURNEY. NOW. (not really; this is supposed to ask a question or ask for responses or whatever).
- Be Cool
But that's easy, surely.
Right, I can't do any other shenanigans that are part of a cool, legit website, because I'm not a web designer. I don't have huge plans for this blog to go viral or anything like that. Though I do like posting things that I write on the Internet, and I've considered using AdSense on the blog, I don't think it would work very well.
There are two major reasons for this: firstly, because I don't think I get enough hits to actually make anything; secondly, because I dislike ads as much as the next person - if I wanted to run a monetized blog, I would probably create a new blog and follow all the steps and try to make it all fancy like all the sites suggest. That, however, is not this blog. That might change, but I don't know.
Call to action for all you hooligans: what do you think about the content of the post? It's not intended to be a set of Legitimate, Follow-Wild-Card's-Steps-Perfectly sort of thing, but did you like it?
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