Inception

Incendium

So it's 3:00 a.m. after my last day of finals, and I'm going to do something crazy. I'm going to finally, FINALLY start this blog, an idea that has been spinning constantly in my brain since June.

So the first thing you're probably wondering is, What in the world does that funky title mean? Well, that funky title happens to be Latin, and it means literally "desirous of new things." Idiomatically, it's the Roman term for a revolutionary. (I've been taking Latin for my past three semesters of college, and I just finished a class where we read a lot of Sallust and Cicero about the Catalinarian Conspiracy in Rome, where this guy named Cataline formulated a conspiracy with a bunch of people in both high and low places to overthrow the Roman Republic. The term novarum rerum cupidis came up a lot.)

So now that you know what the title means, what does it have to do with this blog? Well, I took a class Fall 2010 called Digital Civilization that changed the way I think about learning; it made me desirous of new things. It made me want to take control of my own education and make my education and my life what I want it to be, utilizing digital media in a principled manner to optimize my learning. I am no longer content to do things the way I did before. But unlike Cataline, I'm seeking revolution in a positive way.

The basic premise of this blog is that knowledge in process has value and power. I can't tell you what exactly this blog will turn out to be and where I will end up with it, because I don't know that myself. I'm discovering, and I'm narrating the process along the way. So posts may be short or long, frequent some weeks and nonexistent in others. They may have spelling and grammatical errors, even though I'm an English major and editing minor. They may be well thought-out or hurriedly tossed off. They may be deep and serious or funny and lighthearted. They may be narratives of personal events or recordings of academic musings. I hope this blog will be a reflection of me and all that I am--growing, changing, evolving, and becoming. I'm breaking free of the restraints I have put on myself and taking the plunge. I'm going to cast aside my fear that my ideas aren't valuable, and I'm going to say what I want to say. I'm going to reach out and connect to the world and the people around me. I want to be a positive force for change.

Look out world, because here I come.


An aside to my Latin professor--I'm afraid I really have become a revolutionary after joking about it all this time. Perhaps I am more like Cataline than I thought. ;)

Photo credit: matthewvenn on Flickr