BY NAHAL TOOSI
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MILWAUKEE - (KRT) - Lucas Carlson was interested in what other people were thinking. Specifically, what other students at Reed College were thinking.
So last fall, he hung posters on the small Oregon school's campus, inviting Reed students to start a Weblog - an online journal - through a site he'd set up: www.reediejournals.com.
Word spread quickly. Now, more than 140 "Reedies" keep Web diaries on Carlson's site. That's more than 10 percent of Reed's 1,340 students.
Blogging is a relatively small but quickly growing phenomenon in the world of Internet users, and, like other online technologies, it is slowly invading college life. Professors are using blogs to teach and publish. College administrators use the diaries to recruit. Students use them to learn, to opine (and whine), and to network.
In the Reed case, blogging has led to a student community beyond the borders of the campus, a community that Reed administrators can't control but can peek at.
Some Reedies blog about world issues and everyday angst.
"After studying Barth for 8 hours ... The flesh is weak," wrote Michael in December. "Wretched man that I am! Who shall save me from this body of death?"
Others post pictures. Some write poetry. One dedicates her blog to her dog, Dingus, because, she insists, "my dog is cooler than you are."
"There are some people that are angry and some that are very happy and some that are lonely," said Carlson, 21, a junior. "It's really just like what you would expect out of the diversity of human emotions."
Perseus Development Corp. recently conducted a limited survey of blogging through eight major blog-hosting services and estimates at least 4.12 million such diaries exist, though many are rarely updated.
Blogs are dominated by the young, the study found. More than 92 percent are created by people younger than 30, with 51.5 percent by those ages 13 to 19. Women are slightly more likely to blog than men.
Phil Ejercito, a University of Wisconsin-Madison senior, runs a blog called the Consortium for Undermining Conservative Thought. He'd hoped to turn it into a mini-Drudge Report for the Madison, Wis., area, but it became more about the drama in his life, such as the day he was almost mistaken for a murder suspect.
Ejercito is retooling www.cfuct.org to make it a nexus for progressive groups in town, though he continues to blog as well. He said being in college gives him freedom to write what he wants. Once he gets a job, he'll have to be more careful so as not to offend or embarrass his employer, he said.
"I know for sure I have a pretty dedicated core audience on campus," said Ejercito, 22. "I don't keep track of my stats too tightly. But I do get comments from random people."
Marquette University junior Elizabeth Hadley said she's stopped blogging because she found it too time-consuming, but she follows the lives of friends elsewhere through their blogs.
Hadley finds it's a faster method of getting updated on a friend's life than a regular conversation, though obviously less personal, she said. No doubt some parents appreciate their children keeping blogs, as well.
At the University of Waterloo in Canada and Saint Michael's College in Vermont, a handful of students keep blogs that are promoted on the universities' Web sites and available to the public, especially to prospective students.
The student bloggers don't limit their online entries to school cheerleading. One learns, for instance, that Anne of the University of Waterloo is afraid of animals and small children and how Craig of Saint Michael's felt about visiting El Salvador.
On LiveJournal.com, a blog-hosting service, there's a community blog for students of Wisconsin's Beloit College. The school doesn't control it. The blog has evolved into a forum for current and prospective students who discuss the college's vices and virtues and post information about upcoming events.
Bryan Alexander, co-director of the Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury College in Vermont, taught a class on the history of the British novel using blogs. One tactic he'd use was to tell students to read a particular novel, post a few paragraphs on their blogs about some aspect of it, then check out classmates' blogs and post responses to their views.
"One thing we do know is that shy people or people who don't feel comfortable leaping into conversation do take advantage of technology to post later," Alexander said.
Stanford Law School's Lawrence Lessig is among the most well-known professors to blog. At www.lessig.org/blog, a visitor can find out which major newspaper recently quoted the copyright expert, read some of his articles, or simply learn Lessig's latest thoughts on the race for president. Readers can post feedback.
For many students, though, the academic applications of blogging are not the most appealing aspect. What leads many to blog is the chance to reveal emotions and thoughts, and perhaps some wisdom, during a time when life is all about transitions.
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