Once Upon a Time: True Stories of an Aspiring Writer

28: Blogging, Duck Hunting, and Other Unusual Extracurriculars

LIFE WAS RAPIDLY CHANGING in my family.

For one thing, my mom had recently gone back to teaching preschool. In my senior year of college, she had gotten a job as the director of my own preschool, was was super exciting.  Meanwhile, Kelly was starting college herself in Delaware. And Emily was in high school now---a thought that frightened us all! 

And then there was me, with college life in full swing. I had to keep busy, too.

Alas, I have very few impressive stories from college aside from general anecdotes sprinkled into other chapters and the rest of my writing in this section. My experience can be described as more general moments, like the ones below. Here is a general picture of what college looked like.

#1: STARTED A BLOG, USING SEO-BASED WORST PRACTICES

Danielle had a Xanga blog in high school, so I joined her with my own personal blog. I followed some pretty great blogs too, like Danielle's and the blog of a grandmother who had a nice, formal writing style. It was lots of fun to talk about my personal life, but soon after I started college, Xanga became defunct. So I moved over to Blogger. The question was...what to write about?

College, obviously. Seventeen magazine had a crew of girls at the time called the Freshman 15. Their job was to blog about their college experiences, and they contributed to magazine articles as well. I loved looking through them in high school, and they made me excited for my own new experiences. So I talked about celebrating the holidays in college, going to football games, roommates...anything. Of course, the blog ended after only two years. I only started it in my junior year. 

I couldn't really decide on one topic, though. So I also got a book blog called Elle's Bookshelf. It was my first experience book blogging, with some movie reviews thrown in. Blogging became a great way to spend weekends, which I did alongside rejoining the Bikini Bottom forums that year (see The SquarePants Socialization).

Eventually, this led to me getting a WordPress book blog after college. Called Fictionistas Unite, it was a great way to share the thoughts about books that I had but wasn't sure how to get out there. It went on for quite a while until I lost traffic and couldn't figure out how to get it back. But without those days, I might no be sharing books on Instagram today, which is a wonderful community in itself.

#2: PARTICIPATED IN AGE-APPROPRIATE COMMUNITY SERVICE ACTIVITIES (AKA "TRICK OR TREAT")

I love Halloween. Particularly the candy and costumes. So I was highly disappointed to see that nobody did very much for it on campus. 

Some people did go to costume parties, or actually went trick-or-treating in the nearby neighborhood. But I wasn't one of them. I did wear my Minnie outfit to a night class (yes, I spent Halloween in night class one year), but I felt awkward about it the whole time. 

One thing we did do, though, was hand out candy to little kids who came to the campus and went around the halls. We dressed up in costumes and opened our doors, handing out candy to all the little kids. There were so many of them that I ran out of candy in the first half hour in my first year. The following year, I bought six bags and still ran out in 75 minutes of the two-hour event. I loved seeing all the costumes, and this tradition was what introduced me to the popularity of the gumball machine outfit. Frozen costumes were also popular, as the movie was a recent release. I'd go see it with a friend just a few weeks later. 

Some of them liked our costumes, too. On one particularly eventful Halloween (see The Ben Reconnection), I dressed up as a colorful "pop neon" witch, and one little boy took his picture with me. Alas, when I lived in a house my senior year, we didn't take part in this tradition. No Halloween for me that year. I guess everyone outgrows it eventually.