Blogging has been an influential part of English 112 for me. I have always known people that blog, but I have never done so myself. Thankfully this class has given me the opportunity to pursue that and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Blogs range anywhere from personal to factual. As a reader I enjoy the personal things more than the factual because it allows me to really get to know the writer. My research has been about many different types of blogging and how it all started.

Blogging all started in 1994 when Justin Hall created Links.net. Hall wrote the first ever know blog. When Justin wrote the blog, it was then referred to as a Personal Homepage. In 1997, the title Personal Homepage was change to “weblog” by Jorn Barger. This was the first move towards the true blog’s that we know today. When weblogs were being identified the first one to be published was in 1998 by Jonathan Dube. Dube’s first weblog was about Hurricane Bonnie and it was written for the Charlotte Observer. One year later in 1999 Peter Merholz decided to shorten the word weblog to blog. The early years of blogging hit off quickly and the first and most recognizable site at the time was LiveJournal. In 1999 according to Jesse James Garrett there were twenty-three known blogs on the internet. Moving all the way to 2006 there were 50 million blogs on the internet. Out of those 50 million Gawker was the first major gossip blog to launch. Clearly this blog has gotten a lot of attention because people caught the trend of the gossip and love to read it daily.

One of the more common started blog pages is WordPress. WordPress was fully developed in 2003 but the start of the development dates back to 2001. This timing was good for WordPress because they took off quickly since blogging had really reached the mainstream in the mid 2000s. WordPress has been a hit ever since. Some insight on the world of WordPress “WordPress is an online, open source website creation tool written in PHP. But in non-geek speak, it’s probably the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today” (iThemes Media 2019). WordPress as said before is written in PHP which stands for Personal Home Page. This site is very versatile it accommodates any type of writer and is used in many different social classes. You can build many different types of websites on WordPress, so you don’t have to have a blog only. Some of the sites you can have are of course blogs, but you can also have news and music. These are just a few of the more popular types of sites. The opportunities with WordPress are endless and one of the best things about WordPress are that it is free so literally anyone can use it and share their blogging and writing abilities with the world.

In the blogging world there are many different ways that you can blog and many different types of bogs you can create. The number one type of blog right now in the United States is fashion blogging. With the weather and season change every girl and guy wants to know what the next new thing is going to be to wear for the cold weather and the holidays. Fashion bloggers have the opportunity to become really famous and go to major events and receive special honors, merchandise and exclusive deals for a certain brand. These particular bloggers can also share a code for others on their behalf to allow friends and family to receive a certain percentage off.   The second most popular type of blogging is food blogging. Food is a popular subject pretty much anywhere you go and there are so many different types of food that it can be hard to choose just one thing. When food bloggers post new recipes and pictures of new restaurant it allows you as a cooker, baker and food enthusiast to try those new recipes and trick right from your own kitchen. I know with me personally I love to watch food blogs especially during the holidays because it gives me a new a fresh recipe to take to a family gathering to surprise my family members. Many of the blogs also give you a picture and show you the way that the food should look before during and after it has been cooked. Blogs are the most unique when they include pictures.

The third most common type of blog is a Travel Blog. Travel blogs are made for many different things, insights on certain places, cheap airfare, and just plain fun. Traveling is the worlds, most popular thing right now. Everyone wants to see the new and improved side of everything. I personally have traveled to two different states by plane and drove to many more. Traveling is fun and the blogs show the good, the bad and the ugly. Bloggers who travel give out coupon codes for places to stay and they also represent certain brands while they go to different places. Many bloggers who travel frequently have to post so many times a week or write so many words so that they can keep representing the brand or company.

Blogging pays well if you are devoted to it. The most popular blog as of 2019 is the Huffington Post. The Huffington Post has a variety of different blogs all in one. They accommodate to the travelers the cooks and even the fashionistas. The site is so well laid out that when you open it you can be overwhelmed but as soon as you take a closer look you see the detail and boldness of each piece. Working through a corporate company allows you to spread your wings and try things you weren’t able to when you were blogging on your own. If you find the right place for you it will allow you to grow in your blogs and you work will end up being better and more creative than ever before.

Throughout this class I have been able to see how blogs allow people to speak out and be open even though they know others will see it. Blogs allow you to either be fully open or they allow you to show the other side no one knows about. It gives you the freedom to be open with the world about what truly changes you and what greatly affects you as a person of this world. I am thankful for the opportunity to be able to blog in this course and see how it has given me a new insight on the world and ho it has changed since I was a child.

Works Cited

Chapman, Cameron. “A Brief History of Blogging.” Webdesigner Depot, 7 Feb. 2018,

https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/03/a-brief-history-of-blogging/.

This site gives a great insight to how many changes that blogs have endured through the years. I believe that this article gives more than enough information on how a blog was and can be started. It also gives links to every major topic or site so that you as a reader can access the information and see it yourself. This allows you to have a better understanding of what you are reading.

“What Is WordPress?” IThemes https://ithemes.com/tutorials/what-is-wordpress/.

On the ithemes website you will see that there are many different pieces of information that all equal up to the same importance. The website itself offers a lot of information about WordPress which we have used in this class. Most of the information is giving you a rundown of the way the site was built and how it works. The tutorials that have been provided are amazing and offer a great deal of assistance in any type of confusion you may have as a WordPress operator.

Balkhi, Syed. “Revealed: Which Are the Most Popular Types of Blogs?” WPBeginner, 14 Feb.

2019, https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/which-are-the-most-popular-types    of-blogs/.

This website gives a good and common list of blogging types. When telling each type of blogging it also gives examples of things that would be included in the blog post. WordPress Beginner also gives you a new way of looking into blogging and make it a way of life.

“Our Analysis of 10 Top Paid Bloggers 2019.” Target Internet,

https://www.targetinternet.com/our-analysis-of-10-top-paid-bloggers-2019/.

Blogging pays well when you are in the right industry. If you find the place you are meant to be or the group, you are meant to collaborate with it makes the money easier and more abundant. Huffington Post as of late is the highest earning of 41.6 million per month in this year alone. If you go to their website you will see why, they have so much information and so many different things to read and watch.

Educated is an all-consuming memoir. Tara Westover allows the reader to take a seat and read but even more so feel how she felt while becoming a woman of strength and dignity. Every person grows up differently and every person respect things and others differently. Some accidents in life happen to hopefully show how grateful and thankful you are for those in your life.

Moments before utter chaos there was a calm about the Westover family. They were all peaceful just riding down the road. Even though they were fussing at home over something so meaningless they still began their journey in a peaceful and silent way. This peace the family felt was one like no one would ever feel in the memoir until now, it was so peaceful Tara fell asleep as they drove farther and farther from home. All of a sudden Tara “awoke when the car hit the first utility pole” (36). The sudden clash made Tara feel and hear something like never before. Everyday people hear and feel the same terror that Tara felt. The pain that Tara felt was not just from the crash but from the fear of losing her family. Westover did not realize how much she valued her family until this crash, of course no one really would want to deal with the stress of a father that is overbearing or overprotective but it is all for what Mr. Westover believes to be her best interest. The crash put things into perspective for Tara and her family as they all were crying out for one another to be sure no one had died.

Audrey called each sibling and parents name so that she could be sure she had not lost anyone. Tara’s sister was afraid of losing the most important people in her life as anyone would be. Audrey felt that pain and terror that many feel on a daily basis and it put the life she had in perspective. Mr. Westover is one that never shows much emotion if any and he was worried. He allowed what little bit of emotion he wanted his family to believe was not there to show. He cried out for his kids and wife to respond. He cried out for his wife “Are you okay?” (37) with no answer. He called out again and after too many times of asking his beloved bride responded. Mr. Westover truly had felt nothing like this before. The thought of losing his precious bride tore him to pieces. No man, woman, or child ever wants to go through this deep hurt, but Tara allowed it to make her stronger and more observant. The feelings she had allowed her to see it in others and she used that to make a difference in her family.

Tara could tell when they got home how her brother blamed himself for the accident and for the pain, he put his mother in. But Tyler could not figure out how to make up for it. The pain was too much to bear and “Tyler’s guilt was all-consuming” (39). Any mention of the accident took Tyler back to square one. He felt terribly and would wish he could take it make and make it all go away. The guilt Tyler felt was not only of the accident but of the way he refused to listen to his mother when she suggested that the trip was a bad idea. His mother even suggested that they wait until morning so no one would be as tired. Tyler and his father demanded to go on and the accident was a result.

While reading this book so far there has been a lot of things a reader would notice but one of the biggest things that seems to stand out is how much guilt every Westover family member carries. The guilt that they hold within themselves is full of doubt and it keeps them from soaring and being the best, they can be. As a reader it is valuable to see how the writer expresses herself to such a broad audience. There are not a lot of people in the world that are comfortable with letting anyone and everyone know their hardships, but Westover wants you to know her hardships because she wasn’t you as a reader to take them and keep them from bringing you down. This memoir is more about helping someone out of their chaos than telling her life story.

Works Cited

Westover, Tara. Educated. Random, 2018

Throughout my last two years of high school I wrote five essays and I even had to write a paper about the research and work I completed during my senior project. While I was involved in the required work for my senior project, I was able to learn a extreme amount of new information. The topic of my project was “The causes and effects of Ovarian Cysts on a Woman’s Body”. To complete that project, I read many articles written for “other patient care providers, clinic and hospital administrators and staff, insurance companies, and patients or clients” (Bullock etal. 318). Throughout many of these readings I noticed a very high amount of nursing professionals giving their educated opinions and also their true diagnosis. I even had the opportunity to partake in a real-life part of my research and shadow a nurse who was able to provide me access to watch a doctor perform a hysterectomy. During this process I was able to hold the uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries. This has been by far my favorite research topic.

When I started my college journey I knew it would not be easy, but I also knew it was going to be the best years of my life, growing academically and even more as a person. I am a nursing girl. So of course, when I was given the chance to write a research paper about anything in my English 131 at Lenoir-Rhyne I chose how nursing affects your body and mind. Surprisingly it was really easy for me to get the information I needed to write an informative paper. Many people do not realize how much nurses have to do and deal with on a daily basis. The workload is heavy but the emotional load can be even heavier. As a CAN I have seen more already than most people see in a lifetime the struggle and heartache is real. When I completed my research for that paper and presented it to my class some of them were in tears. Many of them did not realize the weight a nurse carries around on a daily basis.

While reading The Norton Field Guide I have learned I love this way of writing in Nursing and health fields. This book has given me a new insight on how I like to research and write. Thankfully I enjoy it because I would be in a real tough spot when it comes to my career and the rest of my time in school. Writing has always been enjoyable for me and I hope that it keeps getting more interesting the more I am able to research.

Works Cited

Bullock, Richard, et al. Chapter 26: “Writing in Academic Fields of Study.” The

            Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 5^th ed.

            Norton, 2019. pp.305-320. PDF.

Country music and Christian music are two of my favorite genres to listen to on the radio. They always seem to put me in a good mood because there will always be a cool catch phrase or an uplifting moment in each song I listen to. Two of my favorite artists are Luke Combs and Lauren Daigle. One of my favorite songs by Luke Combs is “Refrigerator Door” it describes my family perfectly and makes me feel right t home every time I hear it. Lauren Daigle sings a song called “Rescue” and it has really helped me through a tough time in my life that has recently hovered over me as heavily as it did the day I got the call. My grandfather passed a year ago on September 11th. Lauren’s song makes me know that I may feel hopeless but God is always right there with me to help me through.

Discography:

Lauren Daigle. “Rescue.” Look Up Child. Essential Music Publishing. 2019, Apple Music

Lauren Daigle. “Look Up Child.” look Up Child. Essential Music Publishing. 2018, Apple Music

Luke Combs. “Even Though I’m Leaving.” The Prequel. Warner Chappell Music. 2019, Apple Music

Luke Combs. “Moon Over Mexico.” The Prequel. Warner Chappell Music. 2019, Apple Music

Luke Combs. “Refrigerator Door.” The Prequel. Warner Chappell Music. 2019, Apple Music

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.