The social media struggle

I just started my last semester of graduate school. (yay..kind of)

My first class of the semester is a graduate-level social media research class. I like research, and I’m fascinated by how social media affects people. (Notice I didn’t say I ‘like’ social media…See previous post). But now I am torn.

I had previously been operating two personal twitter accounts. Being a mass comm major, a lot of professors thought they would “challenge” the class by having us tweet throughout the semester. Knowing that the account would be monitored by people controlling my grade made me extremely uncomfortable so I created a “professional” twitter account. On this account I would tweet PR and classroom related things…then, subsequently, would go on my “personal” twitter account and complain about how stupid the assignment is.

Now being in grad school, I care much less about the perception of my tweets from my peers but the thought of a professor reading all of my stupid twenty-something, related tweets still makes me uncomfortable. Even though my personal twitter shows my true personality…do I want professionals to see that? In a way I do, because this is who I am. Another part of me is like “Sarah grow up. If you don’t want professionals seeing those tweets than maybe you shouldn’t tweet them?” but then again I think..well..it is MY account and I’m free to say whatever i want, right!?

This is my social media struggle. HELP!

UPDATE: This article “5 Questions to Ask Before Posting to Social Media” is great! 

What defines you?

This woman is totally inspiring. Like puts everyone to shame how inspiring.
2 things. 1.I love a good public speaker. She was funny, heartwarming, interacted with the audience and was confident as hell doing it. 2.I love people who rationalize negative situations and turn them into positive things for themself. Lizzie could have spiraled into a pit of depression and self loathing after being mocked on the internet. Instead she turned it in to a career for herself.
And aside from overcoming her syndrome, she put herself out there, in the public eye, on purpose, which is not an easy thing to do. This is awesome. Definitely worth watching.

She kept saying, figure out what defines you. I have no idea what defines me. Good for her for figuring it out. AND she’s twenty-five. If she can figure out, we all can.

“…but then you print some sh*t that makes me wanna scream”

I recently distanced myself from social media. Mostly Twitter. I’ve come to hate most social media sites in the past year or so, with the exception of a few niche sites like Pinterest and LinkedIn.

I decided to get off of Twitter because I realized that I really don’t care about what any of my followers have to say. That mostly speaks to the quality of the people that I follow. Everyone on social media has an opinion, which duh, that’s what social media is for. Giving people the opportunity to express themselves and yes, everyone is entitled to say and think whatever they want.

Lately, every time I log on to Twitter it’s all the same stuff. Complaining when you’re bored, complaining when you’re busy, men slut shaming, women slut shaming, everyone calling everyone out for the way they live their lives all while boasting these meaningless quotes and prophecies about what you need to do to be successful or how to be a better person. No one really lets anyone live their life without having some conflicting opinion about what’s cool and what’s not.

I live by the philosophy that if someone is doing something that makes them happy, and they’re not hurting themselves or anyone else, then just let them do the damn thing. Who cares? People care so much about how other people live their lives and spend so much time telling others how to live via social media. Twitter and Facebook especially have made people think that just because they have an opinion on a subject then that makes them an expert, and they can pass off their knowledge as some kind of supreme law.

I know that me telling people to shut up on Twitter is hypocritical and doing exactly what I said I hate, which is telling people what to do, so that’s why I just logged off. The only downside is that now I feel so out of the loop. I mean I didn’t even know about Beyonce’s new album until like 12 hours later (a long time in the world of social media).

I think in the near future I will be doing a cleanse of my followers and only keeping the ones who’s posts I enjoy reading. For now it’s actually been nice not knowing what people are saying or doing. It’s also been nice not being glued to my phone which is a habit that I hated myself for acquiring.

Sorry this is a bit of a rant but I just had to get it off  my chest.

Dress code: There is none.

I’ve never had a job that required a strict dress code. I’ve worked at in an IT department and in a gym, and while both were professional environments, it was a pretty casual setting. Starting my first full-time job, we have the same kind of dress code I was used to. “Business casual”..but….not really.

A lot of people would be stoked to not have to dress up for work everyday, but I’m somewhat indifferent. Being the youngest person in the office it becomes a struggle between dressing for the culture of the job versus dressing to be taken seriously. It would be impractical for me to go into work wearing a power suit, yet I don’t want to be the girl who wears hoodies everyday.

Anyways, I’ve come up with some creative ways to keep it super casual, yet professional, that seem to work for my work environment. I don’t consider myself a fashionista by ANY MEANS, but here are a few of my go-to outfits for a typical day at work.

Side note: I practically live in leggings and the majority of my wardrobe is black, but I’m trying to mix it up!

 

Revitalization Project: Little Bits of Inspiration

I’m starting a sort of “revitalization project”. It started off with just my apartment but I am putting it into effect for other aspects of my life. I want to be a positive person which starts by surrounding myself with positive things and getting rid of the negative. I don’t spend a lot of time at home. I’m usually at work, the gym or the library, but when I am home I want it to be a place that makes me happy. I’ve been slowly decorating different areas of my apartment and am pretty pleased with how it’s turned out. It’s funny because 90% of my clothes are black but everything in my apartment is a different color. It’s all about balance I guess. Here are a few bits of inspiration I’ve placed here and there to keep me sane and positive.

Just keep running…

This Saturday I participated in the Ukrops Monument Ave 10k for the first time! It is something that I had been telling myself I wanted to do for a while and I finally plucked up the courage to just sign up for it. So after about 3 months of “training” I was so excited that the day had finally arrived. Collectively, I probably ended up running about 4.5 miles and jogging/walking the rest of the time, and finished in roughly 90 minutes. Keep in mind that I, in no way, consider myself a runner, so the fact that I finished the race without stopping..or dying..is probably one of my greatest accomplishments.

Since this was my first year participating in this historic Richmond event, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Needless to say I was overly impressed by the entire event, from start to finish. I always forget about the sense of community that the city of Richmond builds around events such as this. For the entire 6.2 miles, there was not a single block without spectators with signs of encouraging words or community partners cheering us on. It was truly motivating and was probably what kept me going throughout the entire race. I was also very impressed to see the amount of people who had traveled from out of town to participate. It is definitely something I plan on doing again in the future.

Side note: I was writing this post when I heard about the horrific explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. My thoughts go out to everyone who was affected by this tragedy. It scares me that this incident was purposeful and all of runners who had put forth so much effort preparing for what should have been an amazing accomplishment were unable to finish the race, or worse suffered distress or injury. Events such as these are supposed to create pride, happiness and sense of community, not fear.

[very little] Sleep till Brooklyn

So this weekend, the VCU Mens Basketball team headed to Brooklyn, New York to play in A10 conference tournament. After 2 days of relentless play, the Rams secured a spot in the conference championship game.
After an interesting turn of events, myself alongside 55 other dedicated Ram fans, got the rare opportunity to take a bus to Brooklyn and support our Rams in the championship game versus St. Louis. At 4am we began the journey and 6 hours later we arrived at the Barclay’s Center (although with the amount of black and gold you saw around the city, one may have mistaken it for the Stu).

As we waited in line outside the center, the New York City ‘HAVOC’ bus made its rounds around the block multiple times as fans stopped to take pictures, and passersby wondered who this school was that had it’s own obnoxiously decorated bus circling the city.

 

Needless to say VCU’s marketing team has been busy.
The Rams will take on 12 seed Akron this Thursday in the round of 64 of the NCAA Tournament. If we make to Texas and/or Atlanta, you bet I’ll be there!

The Madness continues…

This week our Rams head to Brooklyn to compete in the A10 conference tournament. With no guarenteed bid into the NCAA tournament this Sunday, the Rams need to win it all this weekend for a definite spot in the bid dance. It makes me so proud to be a VCU student (soon to be Alum) and see HAVOC take over the world…and by the world I mean New York City.

Our Pep Band, The ‘Peppas’ were seen on the Today Show this morning and even Al Roker was jamming.

I think back to four years ago, telling people I chose to go to VCU, and getting the generic “Oh”. Needless to say, people are a little more enthused about my choice of school. It’s amazing how athletics can make so much of an impact on a university. I was always proud to be a Ram but it is refreshing to see us finally getting the national recognition we deserve as a university.

The Rams take on Saint Joseph’s tonight at 6:30pm est in the tournament Quarterfinals. The winner will compete in the Semifinals on Saturday at 4:oopm.

I have been blogging…in my mind.

I’m sorry. I have been so caught up in other things and also trying to draft the perfect topics to blog about.

I came across this article which talked about horrible blogging advice. Just to name a few:

“Stick to a rigid publishing schedule.”

“Bloggers need to be edgy.”

“Images aren’t important.”

“All it takes to succeed is quality content.”

“Cultivate reciprocal links.”

“It’s all about subscribers.”

These tips stuck out to me the most because I could definitely relate to each of them. At first I thought that to blog meant to have a strict blogging schedule and set rules and guidelines for blogging. I realized that blogging is just a way to engage in conversation with people who are interested in what I have to say.

I will try to be more conversational with my blogging and blog about relevant topics that I come across.

MORE TO COME!

You don’t wanna go to war with the RAMS!

Okay, I can’t say that I’ve experienced sports at another school, but VCU has the best fans and school spirit in the country. In my totally unbiased opinion 😉