Around four years ago, I first started blogging when I thought I wanted to study Journalism at university. Now in my final year of studying Publishing at Oxford Brookes and writing this blog for a module, I have come full circle and have started to reconsider that journalism is perhaps something I could see myself doing.

To provide some context, for my final year dissertation, I am writing on how the freedom to publish continues to be restricted in China and how its early examples of book burning, feed into this fear of the power of literature. Part of my research included interviewing some members of the publishing industry that have knowledge on this subject, as well as the remarkable Angela Gui, ‘accidental activist’ and daughter of Gui Minhai, the detained bookseller and publisher. Pushing myself outside of my incredibly small comfort box, I had to become a little bit pushy to get things done, had to skype with a stranger, ask people questions I didn’t know if I should be asking and do something that’s bigger than my personal existence.

I’m not going to lie, hearing myself on the interview recordings was possibly one of the most cringiest and visible shaking-of-head experiences I have had to face. A lot of my questions could have been phrased better and there are a lot of questions I should have asked but I’m not going to hold it against myself… this time. However they were some of the most exhilarating moments of my academic career and I came out of each of my interviews, feeling rather pleased with myself, which cannot be said about the feeling I had when I was transcribing the same interviews. But there is something special about gathering research that you have supplied, rather than quoting from a book or other secondary material and no one can say you stole it or copied it. Because I must admit, TurnItin’s plagiarism checker truly frightens me, despite referencing more and creating a bigger bibliography than I need to.

So this brings us back to blogging, something I haven’t touched since I started uni. So many people I know have their own blogs, and only a small percentage of people are successful with them. But I think if you go into blogging with the intent of becoming a social media star then it’s not really going to work for you. For me, the purpose of this blog is to hopefully get a good grade to end my final semester of my final year and make time for writing again, which is something I have always loved to do but lost touch with during this thing called life. Through this blog I hope to rediscover how to make time for things that matter and try and find this imperfect balance.

Header Credits: Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash