KATHY MILLAR
Living Assistant
The words of devoted writer and avid artist Cassandra Nehf provide powerful insight into the art of blogging as well as its importance in students’ lives.
“Writing is about the condition of humanity, taking a slice of humanity, illuminating it until it looms large in the mind and brings out shadowy truths,” Nehf wrote on her LiveJournal blog April 23, 2005, a few months after she began seriously blogging.
Blogs, the shortened term for Web logs, have become an increasingly vital marketplace of ideas — useful for self-promotion, networking, self-publishing, religious connections, photo sharing and even for finding potential significant others.
Pepperdine is currently listed as an interest on 145 blogs at www.LiveJournal.com, and www.xanga.com contains a plethora of Blogrings about Pepperdine, including “Pepperdine Bound,” “Pepperdine Waves” and “Pepperdine MBA.” Pepperdine students use blogs to chronicle their college career and to compare their experiences with others.
Kala Eubanks, a sophomore theater major at Pepperdine, has been blogging for three-and-a-half years. She currently writes on LiveJournal, because she said she likes the site’s format and the fact that she can be connected to Pepperdine students as well as friends from home through it. In her blogs, Eubanks writes with a stream-of-consciousness style. Her entries tend to reflect on events in her life that have provoked much emotion and introspection.
“I don’t have to feel like somebody is going to judge me by what I write,” Eubanks said.
Eubanks also doesn’t edit her blogs after she has written them.
“If this is what you felt at the time you were writing it, then just let that be,” Eubanks added.
Her blogs include vivid imagery and free-verse poetry. Eubanks said she makes a point of not capitalizing anything in her informal writing, except for the words God and Christ, to show how insignificant she feels in comparison to how great God is.
Although Eubanks said she prefers to have only a small group of friends to subscribe to her blog, she is connected to groups through her LiveJournal page.
She often reads blog groups that have incoming students asking questions about Pepperdine.
“I came to Pepperdine not knowing anyone here, and not having any idea of what I was getting into,” Eubanks said. “I think it’s a nice resource to have, a connection where students can ask open questions about Pepperdine, that you probably wouldn’t get from a Web site, from the administration, or even from a tour guide.”
In the multitude of Pepperdine blog spots, it takes a little something extra for a blog to stand out. A good blog generally conveys a distinctive and conversational personality, while focusing on a specific area of interest.
Eubanks said she avoids reading blogs that seem too factual or shallow.
“I like blogs that share insights,” she said, “And I try to do that with my blog sometimes. I think that the best advice that I can give is to write what you want to write, and put that out there.”
Nehf, a creative writing major, simultaneously maintains a LiveJournal blog, a Xanga blog and publishes her artwork on Deviantart.com. Nehf said she posts her blogs for people who might randomly come across them.
Nehf said she has been blogging for almost a year, and subscribes to 15 to 20 Xanga blogrings. Some of these groups have connected Nehf to other Church of Christ members who she later met in person.
“This winter I went to a gospel retreat, similar to the ones here, and meeting all these people face-to-face … was really neat,” Nehf said.
While she maintains the Xanga blog in order to keep in touch with Church of Christ members across the country, she uses her LiveJournal blog more for internal musings, including often raw and real insights about topics such as faith and marriage.
Some students, like Eubanks and Nehf, opt to write their blogs under the guise of nicknames, while others use their real names and attach photos of themselves, such as Pepperdine junior Joel Nagatoshi.
An accounting major, Nagatoshi frequently writes about his academic progress, his goals and his day-to-day routines on his Xanga blog. In his entries, Nagatoshi describes how he succeeds in his classes while maintaining a balanced life, and he comments about the mounting tensions he experiences as a student.
“While it’s not a substitute for keeping in touch with people, it’s a quick way for people to get an idea of anything major, but not too personal, that’s going on in my life,” said Nagatoshi, who also posts photos of himself, his friends and his family on his Xanga page.
Nagatoshi also touched on the fact that, like in most social situations, etiquette applies to the art of blogging too.
“I generally just try not to put anything offensive up,” Nagatoshi said.
Students must decide whether to make their blogs open to the public, or to activate privacy settings that allow only the readership of their friends. According to www.about.com, blog etiquette calls for bloggers to hot link guidelines on blog sites, credit and provide links to sources, check the validity of information and correct mistakes. Bloggers are also advised to be straightforward about any potential biases and to maintain good relationships online by responding to viewers’ commentary.
Though blogging etiquette and the First Amendment can provide some guidelines for bloggers, laws pertaining to Internet blogs are far from concrete. On the Web site, www.chillingeffects.org, common questions about the legality of Internet activities, such as copyright and defamation concerns, are addressed. The site is collaborative project between the Electronic Frontier Foundation and eight universities: Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, the University of San Francisco, the University of Maine, George Washington School of Law and Santa Clara University School of Law.
The concept of Blogs is constantly expanding, as new programs are continuously being developed to facilitate innovative ways for bloggers to communicate. Blogs communicate ordinary people’s interests and ideas to others around the world faster than any other medium. College students can read about the most current topics interests viewing Web sites that use sophisticated software to track blogs.
Some blog sites, like www.blogdex.com, collect the links that are posted in blogs every time the blogs are updated, and proceeds to list the links of the fastest spreading ideas. Students can also read popular blogs with wide readerships, and search blogs for specific subjects, on www.bloglines.com.
More than ever, in this booming era of blogging, college students are seizing new opportunities for self-directed publication, searching through the dissemination of information, and creating new forms of social interaction at Pepperdine and in the public arena.
02-09-2006
