Welcome to Student of Society,

Why a blog?

​

Creating a podcast was too predictable of a move.

​

Seriously though, short-form essays on a blog seem the perfect method of achieving what I think many of us are always doing: "learning to write; writing to learn." This is to say that to write something down is to better understand and (hopefully) remember it. As you'll see in my responses below, there is a whole lot of life, and of being a student, that I don't want to ignore or forget.

​

​

Why an 'academic' or student-oriented blog?

​

This has a few answers. Part of the answer starts with a guy named Cal Newport (full blog on his work to come soon). Newport is career academic, author, and long-time blogger.

 

To read more on his story, click here: https://calnewport.com/blog/. 

​

In short, as a sophomore in college, Newport began a student advice column where he reflected on the habits and tools that helped him fix his below-average GPA. Since then, the blog has greatly evolved and expanded to fit the stories, research, and events that now shape his life as a computer scientist, non-fiction writer, and faculty at Georgetown University. 

​

To my point, Newport is a great embodiment of the spirit of this project. I want this space to serve as a similar type of archive that shows the progression of ideas and passions that a carry a person through a path in post-secondary.

 

Also, I admire that as a now-tenured professor, Newport has a website full of his writing that shows his care for his work and the field of study he pursued.

​

I've had plenty of professors who I know to have such deep care and love for Sociology. I only wish I could've read some of their stories and experiences as undergraduates, masters, or doctoral students as they came to live a life embedded in this discipline.

​

If I'm lucky enough to live up to their examples (as well as Newport's) then I'll be glad to have this archive to chronicle how it happened. 

​​

​

Why you? Why start now?

​

Blogging and digitally archiving my interests and academics is something I wish I'd started at the beginning of my undergraduate degree. This is not because I believe myself to be so self-important to the extent that an internet forum is "in need" of my ideas or stories. Although, much blogging necessitates a degree of narcissism, and I'm happy to concede that.

​

Instead, the urgency I feel to start this project comes from a place of gratitude.

 

I, like many others who have (almost or fully) completed a university degree, have watched 4 years of education soar past. Soon forgotten are the hard-hitting pieces of advice from professors, the conversations with peers that change your mind on a topic, or the walks home after class that are encased in a feeling of "awe" when a lecture or moment really reached your heart.

 

I can understand that not everyone has such magical thinking about the experience of education; many have their experiences clouded within stressful circumstances to do with family, finances, or health.

 

However, it is not an exaggeration to say that many students in Western 'core nations' are deeply in need of more gratitude for - and reflection on - their "status quo" college experiences. The writing in this space is my attempt at doing just that.

​

​All this to say, this blog is not a shrine to my perspective, but a celebration of the privilege to create and the joy of the opportunity to learn (especially in a post-secondary institution). ​​