I didn't know what to expect from this blog when I started writing a few months back. Or maybe the more truthful statement is, I didn't know what to expect of myself. After my first post, I wasn't sure if I would write again. I wrote a couple more times as an experiment and after hitting "publish", I sat silently and wondered how I felt.
Ridiculous, by the way.
I asked who the hell would read this? Was this blog just supposed to be a diary for myself? Maybe a personal place to chronicle my journey into medicine? I had the blog for three months and no one even knew it existed. But although I was the only person who visited, I continued to write new posts. I always wrote to an imaginary audience of prospective Caribbean med students. I would publish a new post and check back every couple days to see if anyone visited. When no one had, I felt slight disappointment, but also relief.
I'm not confident in my writing. It's usually a jumbled mess, chaotic, a semi-stream of consciousness where I can't quite determine if I ever accurately convey what I'm trying to share. My sentence structure isn't fluid and my own personal word-bank is "average" as the SATs would have you know. And grammar? Atrocious. I've got issues with the proper use of a comma. I felt exposed attaching my identity to my posts with such writing. I felt vulnerable to the judgments of my imagined anonymous readers and so I stopped.
It wasn't until the beginning of November when I remembered my own blog. I logged on, checked my stats and was instantly confused. Within the last month, I had 500 page views. FIVE HUNDRED and I hadn't written anything in almost two months. I couldn't believe it. I came to realize that 500 pageviews did not mean 500 people, but that hardly mattered. Compared to my traffic before, my blog now seemed wildly popular. I felt happy people were visiting and even happier with a side of relief after receiving my first couple comments. They were kind, curious and absolutely the perfect push for me to continue writing. Since then, I've made a concerted effort to post regularly and I think I've been doing a pretty good job, but lately I've been struggling to find new material to write about. You can imagine the difficulty of writing about Caribbean med school when you haven't even set foot on the island yet. Suffering from this mini writer's block has left me with some time to contemplate on what I want to accomplish with this blog and its general direction.
I've read a lot of different medical school blogs the last year and follow a few regularly now and I find the ones I enjoy most are the blogs that are honest, intimate, and thoughtful. It's amazing to read a complete stranger's blog and feel a connection to them and actually care to see how they're doing. In the beginning, I thought to use this blog as a resource for prospective Caribbean students, and while I'm sure I'll have many more posts that are informative and useful to this type of audience, I don't want this to be my only objective. I want to give people a reason to come back here that isn't purely for information. I guess what I'm saying is I want people to come back for lil' ol' me... for my feelings, thoughts, bad comma usage, experiences and in order to achieve all this, I know I'm going to have to make you people care! Or at least pique you're interest (Please Log on for my LIVE Webcast StripTease 10 o'clock on Satur--.... haha just kidding. Sorry John. Bad joke).
For the people I'm leaving behind in Rhode Island and Boston, I hope you check back every so often because this is for you too! I love you guys and I'm going to miss all of you. You better be skyping me every so often. Yes, I'm talking to you Albi, Meg, JZ, Pengal, Chris, Rachel, Jaimie, and Zoe.
As for you John, I love you and I know you're gonna know what's happening with me everyday :)
I'm going to miss you most of all.
Ridiculous, by the way.
I asked who the hell would read this? Was this blog just supposed to be a diary for myself? Maybe a personal place to chronicle my journey into medicine? I had the blog for three months and no one even knew it existed. But although I was the only person who visited, I continued to write new posts. I always wrote to an imaginary audience of prospective Caribbean med students. I would publish a new post and check back every couple days to see if anyone visited. When no one had, I felt slight disappointment, but also relief.
I'm not confident in my writing. It's usually a jumbled mess, chaotic, a semi-stream of consciousness where I can't quite determine if I ever accurately convey what I'm trying to share. My sentence structure isn't fluid and my own personal word-bank is "average" as the SATs would have you know. And grammar? Atrocious. I've got issues with the proper use of a comma. I felt exposed attaching my identity to my posts with such writing. I felt vulnerable to the judgments of my imagined anonymous readers and so I stopped.
It wasn't until the beginning of November when I remembered my own blog. I logged on, checked my stats and was instantly confused. Within the last month, I had 500 page views. FIVE HUNDRED and I hadn't written anything in almost two months. I couldn't believe it. I came to realize that 500 pageviews did not mean 500 people, but that hardly mattered. Compared to my traffic before, my blog now seemed wildly popular. I felt happy people were visiting and even happier with a side of relief after receiving my first couple comments. They were kind, curious and absolutely the perfect push for me to continue writing. Since then, I've made a concerted effort to post regularly and I think I've been doing a pretty good job, but lately I've been struggling to find new material to write about. You can imagine the difficulty of writing about Caribbean med school when you haven't even set foot on the island yet. Suffering from this mini writer's block has left me with some time to contemplate on what I want to accomplish with this blog and its general direction.
I've read a lot of different medical school blogs the last year and follow a few regularly now and I find the ones I enjoy most are the blogs that are honest, intimate, and thoughtful. It's amazing to read a complete stranger's blog and feel a connection to them and actually care to see how they're doing. In the beginning, I thought to use this blog as a resource for prospective Caribbean students, and while I'm sure I'll have many more posts that are informative and useful to this type of audience, I don't want this to be my only objective. I want to give people a reason to come back here that isn't purely for information. I guess what I'm saying is I want people to come back for lil' ol' me... for my feelings, thoughts, bad comma usage, experiences and in order to achieve all this, I know I'm going to have to make you people care! Or at least pique you're interest (Please Log on for my LIVE Webcast StripTease 10 o'clock on Satur--.... haha just kidding. Sorry John. Bad joke).
For the people I'm leaving behind in Rhode Island and Boston, I hope you check back every so often because this is for you too! I love you guys and I'm going to miss all of you. You better be skyping me every so often. Yes, I'm talking to you Albi, Meg, JZ, Pengal, Chris, Rachel, Jaimie, and Zoe.
As for you John, I love you and I know you're gonna know what's happening with me everyday :)
I'm going to miss you most of all.
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