Having a blog in graduate school saved my sanity (and wallet).

For my most loyal blog readers, the originals, you know that I’ve been maintaining this blog for about three years now. I bought this website on Squarespace in the middle of the pandemic, then a year later, in 2021, I started this blog as a way to journal and market myself as a writer.

When I began to hit the big traffic, that’s when I began to realize I needed to monetize this website. So I did. I’ve written extensively on this subject, especially in the past few months, so head onto the main section of my blog for more on that.

Anyways, I began graduate school around the same time I started taking this blog more seriously, and while being a full-time graduate student wasn’t enough, I ended up working and doing the blogging at the same time.

In the beginning I was barely making anything through this blog, but when I started scraping together extra cash through all of these pennies, it kept my going.

Blogging is also really fun for me, as I get to write about the things I’m really passionate about, and it was a nice distraction from all of the academic-facing humanities work I was doing in school.

Here are some lessons I’ve learned from someone who has spent way too much time not only in school, but on this blog as well.

It kept me doing the things I loved.

As I wrote in the previous section, I mentioned that the blog has been something that kept me doing the things I loved. To elaborate on that statement, I stopped the blog when I was in my first semester of graduate school, as I was really worried about the adjustment period from taking a gap year and how it could impact me academically.

And during that time, I kind of forgot about my hobbies that I ended up doing for fun before I was in school. I was solely focusing on school and work, which left me in this kind of void that made me feel hollow inside. I wasn’t depressed or sad—I think grad students need access to mental health resources that are low-cost, but that’s a different story—but I just kind of felt empty.

So I started the blog. back up again in my second semester, and it put me back into reading and watching movies. These were the things I was neglecting before, despite knowing that they brought me so much joy in my life.

I can’t believe I was neglecting them in this way, so when I started watching/consuming again and writing about it, it was a reprieve from the scholarly work I was reading constantly when on campus and in my academic settings.

I relearned joy and the reason why I liked this content in the first place, making me a more mindful consumer.

Blogging forced me to dabble in public intellectualism and accessibility in academia.

A common theme already throughout this post is about how the things I loved typically weren’t geared towards an academic market, which made me more conscious about the divide of information and the gatekeeping of the ivory tower.

While I am able to have access to these kinds of books and articles for free through my school, and can request materials from other places whenever I want.

Through Inter-Library Loan, I really began to become sad thinking about how most people can’t afford a $40 book on Korean women’s literature from the early colonial period, and this kind of information is often locked behind classism and elitism.

Most people typically can’t afford to get a master’s degree or PhD in the humanities.

Anyways, I want to dedicate blogging and my writing to disseminate this kind of information on an accessible level. I write about the academic books I read, too, but in more plain language than what the authors themselves might be using.

Weeding through theory can be a hell of time, and most people, without the right training on how to read it, will give up when trying to plough through those kinds of texts. It needs to be more accessible, and so this blog has become another way of translating and bridging these gaps in academia.

It became another source of an income.

Granted, this is the more obvious entry on this list, but the blog has been such a pleasant surprise of income for me. When I first started graduate school I had not monetized the blog, but when I started my second year, it had made some income.

While this certainly is not enough to live off of, and I think it will take years before it ever could be something equivalent to an income that I make at a part-time job, this is such nice pocket change.

I packed my lunches for school every single day because I was scrounging for money my first semester. I was struggling to pay tuition completely out of pocket, and when I ended up getting a graduate assistantship, it was a nice relief for me to alleviate the burden of half of my tuition.

So instead of waking up early and packing a lunch when I already am exhausted, I go to school sometimes knowing not to worry because the blog can pay for my meals.

It might not make more than that right now, but I’m happy being able to buy a boba or two once a month knowing this website paid for it.

The other day, when writing this, I had forgotten to pack enough food since I left the house in a rush, and I was able to buy the expensive food on-campus ($15 for a rice bowl is insane y’all).

As someone who was peak broke before all of this, I think that it has been such a blessing to have this padding.

It taught me the value of working hard when everything else seemed to crumble.

Graduate school has its ups and downs. I don’t know anyone else in my program who hasn’t had a mental breakdown or started crying because of all the hats they’re juggling in their daily lives.

I know I’ve had my moments where I’ve doubted everything I’ve done so far and thought that this was really going to be the end.

But I truly do think this blog has helped solidified my purpose and meanings in life. I know I want to go into something now that touches people, and that there are ways to continue writing even if it isn’t within a content mill or system.

I can continue to synthesize my research in ways that help people out, not limit them further. I can also build community online—this is something I’ve gradually discovered throughout the course of this journey. Whether it’s people messaging me on Instagram saying they love my work and what I’ve done, or asking for advice, I truly am grateful for all of you reading out there.

A lot of what I focus on—international movies and books—are neglected in mainstream American conversations, and I’m so happy to see so many people out there are reading.

It’s truly heart warming to have this community.

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