Extraordinary Observations

Nisha Chittal's blogging reflection is deservedly award-winning; and I want to draw attention to an interesting point she makes about college bloggers:

It’s no longer a simple matter of writing a blog and hoping someone reads: it overflows into every other area of my life. Now, I want to have more conversations and put out my opinion on everything. I want to seek out new people and new perspectives and constantly learn from everyone around me. I want to explore new ideas, challenge them, and be challenged. I want to do something worth doing, instead of just what everyone else is doing. And sadly, though perhaps not surprisingly, most people aren’t willing to do that. But blogger are.

The mockers matter less and less, because, really, I’d rather drop them from my life now. When one of my favorite writers, who is far, far more successful than me, emailed me out of the blue and told me she loved a piece I wrote, the game changed a little. When my work started to get noticed by some others, the game changed a little. I no longer care to be just one of millions of college kids that are exactly the same. Who wants to blend in?

I've spent more than a little time questioning why people say that college is the best time of their lives. My belief is that it hinges on the college environment: densely populated campuses, 24/7 access to friends, fun things to do and interesting places to go, etc. What underlies all of this, of course, is the ability to fit in with the environment and to blend in with those around you. What Nisha suggests is that blogging is an activity that few students (at least undergrads) appreciate, and even fewer participate in. To be a blogger, thus, you have to be willing to be someone that few others are willing to be; you have to be willing to leave everyone else behind.

Today I tweeted about how few early-twenty somethings seem to be part of the Twitter community. In October, my buddy, Bubba, gave a presentation about Twitter to one of his undergraduate marketing classes and later tweeted about some anti-twitter comments that people who saw his presentation were making. Why does this sentiment exist so strongly among young people? For the generation that will never know life without Facebook, we sure are slow to embracing deeper, more personal, and much more public forms of social media.

Nisha is right, and at the end of the day, these individuals matter less and less; they will probably come around to embrace the activity someday. In a way, it is a shame that talented college bloggers need to be put into a position to ask whether they would rather fit in with their peers or take a chance on a community that exists almost exclusively on the internet. It is disappointing to walk around campus and look at the football players and the cheerleaders and wonder how what they do is any more valuable than what bloggers do. Make no mistake, blogging can be lonely at times, even to the point where you want to just quit, but in the back of your mind you understand the value of what you're doing; even if the thousands of people around you apparently fail to comprehend any of it.