Why blog?

So, why blog? Note this is not, why do I blog? (Answer; I like to write, I like to believe people care.) But rather why should other people blog? For your everyday folk like me there are a few very good reasons, it hones your skills of written communication, it gives you a public forum for airing your desires and frustrations and it lets your friends and relatives, whom you sometimes get in touch with far too little (Hi Trace!) know what you’re about.

There are some people however who can benefit more than others from setting up a simple blog. There are also people, often the same group, whose blogs could be an inspiration to others. This was brought to my attention by my hetero-life-mate Jon on a recent visit to the woods and led, amongst other things, to me starting this modest work. The reason I started was firstly to benefit my upcoming degree, by giving me a medium in which to formulate coherently the things I do and do not understand. As well as to benefit anybody else taking the course, who may understand the subject matter if given a slightly different viewpoint on the topic.

The select groups of people me and Jon were discussing however, were lecturers, researchers and PhD students (yes, I know, PhD students are researchers) such as himself. Although I’m afraid I still don’t see his blog popping up yet? Still got ‘presentation issues’? Poor chap. So why would these people benefit from blogging, and who else could find their simple musings life enhancing?

Lack of interest in a subject, usually around the second year of a degree, is a killer to motivation. You forget why you started the subject and it seems as if you have years until the end of it. Often youbegin to hate your chosen field of study because you are so caught up in the tedium of ‘work’ you forget the glory of the broader picture. If you could read about what the very people who are teaching you are researching, wouldn’t this inspire you, at least a little?

As you progress through university you find yourself more and more in contact with lecturers as people instead of as authority figures. People, moreover, with an unrivalled passion for the subject studying incredibly interesting avenues of research. It is then that you remember your own passion and strive to do the best you can within your field.

For lecturers, a simple blog, to let your students know who you are and why you love your field of study, could work motivational wonders amongst a large proportion of the student body. I would like it if, when I attend university, all my lecturers and department staff could blog, even if it’s only a fwe sentences every now and then, to give students a feel for the subject and where you are taking it personally. Given the huge cost of education it is already becoming harder to encourage graduates onto further study, any extra motivation should be welcomed.

On a more ’selfish’ basis blogging your research may give a useful, informal way to get any problems and hang ups you are suffering out to your peers. A sort of ‘open-source’ style copyright approach, similar to the method of software licensing, could lead to progress in your own studies as well as others studies suggesting avenues of research worth tackling. Of course this may prove to be a tool for plagiarism but I like to give others the benefit of the doubt. Also being of a liberal bent I feel that science, while it needs to pay your bills, should ultimatly be available to all. Not locked away in a patents office. It may be that through the internet you can exchange formulative ideas with somebody else studying a similar topic, whom you may have had no other way of meeting.

So, would a blog benefit you, or could someone else benefit from yours? If the answer to either of these questions is yes then get on it! It’s free after all! May I be the first to recommend wordpress? It works for me!

(Edit: a quick google search revealed this page on research blogs. Unsurprisingly most people using the medium so far seem to be computer science types, though with a few notable exceptions.)