I’ve been a bad blogger.

What’s more, this is a new blog for me, so I don’t have volumes of content to back me up through the rough times. I know that I should be posting more often than bi-monthly. I know that the only way to get readers to come back is to update frequently with informative, engaging content that inspires conversation.

So why haven’t I been blogging? I know that blogging takes time, one thing I can’t spare right now. In fact, I shouldn’t even be writing this.

My Honors College thesis is due in just a few days. The end is near. I can see the sun setting on this project, yet when I awake each morning, I feel nothing but fear and anxiety. There is so much still to do and so little time. Even when I finish, I know that the end product won’t properly showcase the time and effort I’ve put into this project during the last 8 months. Wow. I should probably keep that to myself and instead boast that I accomplished it all in 3 to evade any jeers. Do authors, novelists, and researchers feel this way, that despite whatever praise the final product receives, it’s an inadequate representation of the hours, months, or years that they’ve devoted to it?

Perhaps I’m selling myself short. I hope so.

Whatever the outcome, I’ll be glad when it’s over. And I’ll have lots of juicy blog topics, such as final thoughts after five years in a university journalism program (and why, for me, it was a better option than 4), new favorites among social media tools, and expectations and impressions of my first real agency internship, all delivered fresh on a less self-serving plate than described.

Stay tuned for June.

The anticipation (and anxiety) is mounting.

The conference I’ve been planning for the past six months is less than two days away. It’s time to pack, break my bank account by filling up the car, and prepare my mind and materials.

So what should students do to prepare for a Regional Activity, full of agency tours, mock interviews, and career fairs?

Read my post here on the conference blog.

The blogging journey (re)begins. It’s been almost one year since I last posted to Blogger. I’ve changed a lot since then, and with wisdom comes a new perspective and new blog. To explain this transformation from skeptic to fanatic, I present my first blog post ever, written way back in (eek!) 2006:

The older I get, the more I begrudgingly accept the mundane but necessary tasks in life. Things like filing your tax return, doing laundry, or scheduling an appointment for your next root canal.

Blogging is also one of those things.

I’ve resented blogging ever since I first heard the term. To me, bloggers were faceless faux-journalists and narcissistic, comic-collecting teenagers (you know, the ones who program Tetris into thier graphing calculators). They were not trained writers, nor did they understand the concept that diaries are usually private not because they contain dark secrets, but because no one else cares to read them.

I vowed never to become a blogger, maintaining this holier-than-thou mantra by upholding the lost art of penmanship and toting a leather-bound journal at all times. I did not need url links or widgets or rss feeds; my pen and my journal were enough. By sticking to these discarded practices, I thought I was “sticking it” to an incessantly advancing technology and the pitiful bloggers caught in the whirlwind.

Four years later and 200 credits into my degree, I am rethinking blogs.

A few months ago, I became a blogger – against my will. As a member of Allen Hall Public Relations, the student-run public relations agency at the University of Oregon, I was asked to create blog posts for a local client. When I heard this idea, my spine shuddered. To make matters worse, the subject of the blog was not a forte of mine: parenting. Writing for a medium I didn’t understand about a subject I didn’t understand seemed like trying to solve a monochromatic jigsaw puzzle.

After years of deliberate ignorance, I finally began reading blogs, subscribing to some of the better ones, and attempting to recreate the blogging tone, style and structure in my own writing (the first few were awful; now I’d like to think they’ve improved to semi-awful).

A few weeks after I began writing posts, my professor  gave a presentation on “social media,” e.g. online social networks and – you guessed it – blogs. Two weeks ago, my AHPR team pitched the piles of blog posts to our client, underlining their importance and the reasons for linking to others (it’s a two-way street). That same day, I listened intently as an executive at a powerful Portland agency emphasized the need for young, digital-media-savvy minds in the field. Apparently agencies are hungry for twenty-somethings who actively participate on MySpace and Facebook, upload YouTube videos and most importantly, blog.

Now, I am creating my own blog as an assignment in my Advanced PR Writing class. An assignment like this isn’t unconventional for the generally progressive journalism school, but there is one unusual thing about it: I’m looking forward to it.

As much as I’ve avoided blogs in the past, I can’t anymore. They’re no longer a burgeoning tool; they’re ubiquitous. They’re no longer just for geeky teenagers or fraudulent reporters; they’re for everyone. And most importantly, they’re essential for public relations students. If I continue to despise them like a trip to the dentist, it will be at my own peril.

Here I go…