Saturday, 4 April 2009

Entering the world of blogging is a scarier moment than I was anticipating. When I first decided to start a blog I searched the web looking for inspiration and stumbled across something which grabbed my attention enough to endure the long wait ahead whilst the page loaded. He was a student, beginning a gap year and was writing the first post of his new blog for The Guardian....starting to sound familiar?? I read the post and thought it was typical of how people my age communicate online. I then started to read comments of the post and was amazed at the attention it had received. In my view the writing wasn't that bad (maybe a few parts were a bit ropey....I live on a hill??), but go on any facebook/myspace/bebo... account and you'll see far more dodgy adjectives, humour and god knows what other flourishes people decide to add. I think people were using the controversial issue of nepotism to really cover the fact they don't like the style of a different generation.

As a student of English language and linguistics I often wonder if my generation is becoming lost to a world who are unable to adapt to drastically changing times. Some children learn Latin these days, while others can't use the language we've been given in a standard way. I once heard of a child writing an academic essay in "text language" and the teacher was forced to give a pass mark as the content was sufficient. Rules governing writing remain strong whereas speech is a free for all in terms of rule breaking and non- standardness. The world of blogging and tweeting may be the cure to this problem as it combines all generations with the new adaptations us young'uns have somehow created.

The point of my blog is not specific, I'm not here to lecture on the state of politics or bitch about PROs and journalists depending on whose corner I intend on defending at any particular moment. I decided to start this blog for very different reasons. I wanted to learn how to express myself like this, after all it's not often I write down my deepest thoughts and then post for the entire world to read. I think the blog will be a chance for me to write about the life of a graduate, the highs and lows of looking for work, and also the fun times it encompasses aswell! I hope to continue this blog when I travel to SE Asia and New Zealand in order to provide an interesting and factual info about what I see and do.

So... this post will hopefully be fun and insightful, not boring and bitchy. Some blogs I stumble across seem to be more of a bitching site and this is not my intention...although I am sure I will have a moan or two along the way!