Tag Archives: meta-blogging

FEATURED
Are You Wesleying? Come Find Out!

we’re more welcoming than we look, we promise.

Last Sunday, I’m sure you went to the student groups fair absolutely yearning to join Wesleying, a “campus” “life” “blog.” Maybe you were put off by the experimental wind/brass (does it count as brass when it’s a multicolored plastic trumpet?) duo sharing the Fayerweather stairwell alcove with us. Maybe you got there after I’d decided I’ve been at Wesleyan long enough to warrant giving up on certain kinds of experimentation and had moved upstairs to a corner of a table that was meant for Planned Parenthood. (They’d left already.) Maybe you were still going to talk to us but were discouraged by our earbud-wearing and frowning over homework, or you saw Maya‘s book about hating positive thinking. Maybe you saw me inelegantly eating a chickpea sandwich from downstairs Usdan and are reconsidering this whole joining-a-blog-run-by-weirdos thing.

Don’t reconsider! I’m here to apologize for the shit job we did at mid-year recruitment–it’s February, everything sucks right now–and say that there’s another chance! (There are actually infinite chances–we take new people throughout the school year.)

If you’d like to become a part of this, my personal favorite “weird, irreverent, and colorful media space,” come to our next meeting, this Sunday, February 14 at 2PM in 41 Wyllys [insert booger joke here] room 112. We’ll probably bitch about commercialized holidays and also ~love~. Maybe I’ll get inspired and bring y’all pretzels.

If you can’t make it to this meeting but would like to be involved in some way, email staff[at]wesleying[dot]org with the subject line “Recruitment” and tell us about yourself. Check after the jump for some more info about Wesleying from old recruitment posts.

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FEATURED
The Fall 2013 Study Abrog Collection

Super awkward misunderstandings, beautiful sunsets, getting lost, delicious food, weird food, really weird food, astounding historical sites, new friends, new language, cathedrals/temples/churches/mosques, legally drinking (and then sadly returning home to realize you’re still 20….), self exploration, art, culture, life outside the Wes bubble.

Dear Wesleyan friends, it’s time now to take a break from your midterms and spend some time musing over the blogged adventures of your peers studying abroad. There’s currently a couple hundred juniors scattered across the globe covering all continents except, well do people study abroad to Antarctica? If so let me know, that’s awesome.

While it’s now easier than ever to stay in touch with Facebook, e-mail, sexy Viber messages, and even snap chat, these students have decided to share their experiences with you by way of blog. And I must say, of the very long history of Wesleying collecting abrogs (abloags?), this fall 2013 collection is particularly nice. From poetry to breathtaking photos, life changing moments and really silly stories, I’m sure you will not be disappointed. So read on for a little vicarious living from your friends, acquaintances, that kid you had class with once, or maybe just a random person you’ve never met at all. Besides, maybe you’ll find a cute junior to crush on, stalk their blog all semester and then actually meet them once they return in January. There’s no pick up line creepier and more fantastic than “I loved what you wrote about cultural differences on your blog, I totally agree. Wanna make out?”

Also! if you too are abroad this semester and have a blog to share, or perhaps have a friend with an abrog, by all means send us an email to staff(at)wesleying(dot)org with the link and a subject line reading “Study Abroad Blog”. Then we will add it to this post and you too will receive Wesleying abrog fame and glory…

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EVENT
ARE YOU WESLEYING?

Do you like to take pictures of half-naked Wes students . . . and paste Michael Roth’s face on top?

Do you like to procrastinate . . . by helping other students procrastinate?

Do you carry a camera with you at all times . . . without entirely knowing why?

Do you dig through ancient Argus archives . . . so you can make fun of people who totally graduated, like, twelve years ago (but somehow still manage to comment on the post)?

Do you think the atmosphere is a way less exciting place than . . . the blogosphere?

Do you think blogging about blogging is, like . . . totally meta and shit?

Do you think that mocking the nauseating Wesleyan Admissions site is still funny ten months later?

ARE YOU WESLEYING???? Important info on Wesleying recruitment after the jump.

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You Have to Admit It’s Getting Better*…

Dearest Readers,

I would like to call your attention to 2 important new features of this site that should make your Wesleying experience a little better. The first is the Featured Posts section of the sidebar. Here you’ll find the 5 latest non-event posts without having to scroll through a page of event posts to get to them. We have also added 2 filters, which you can find at the top of the sidebar. As you can see for yourself, you now have the option to view either only event posts or non-event posts instead of them all mixed together as in the default setting. These two changes are part of our efforts to make Wesleying just as much about student voices as it is student events. Hopefully, these changes and the ones to come will make it easier for you all to access the content you want to see, while also encouraging our writers to write more original content and our readers to join in on ensuing discussion.

We understand some of the frustration with how slow progress is in revamping the site, but please understand that we are students like you. We have all sorts of things to keep us busy and finding time for cosmetic changes and such is difficult. Still, we feel the same way as you all about how much there is to improve and I promise that all the things you find ugly/annoying/user-unfriendly are just as irritating to us. We’re working on it!

As for this no-longer-funny joke of a header, it is soon gone. I am deathly afraid of commitment but I’m gonna commit to this: there will be a new header by the end of next week. I’ve been looking at that thing for way too long and the time has come for change– change we can believe in!

Love,

Whatshername/Wesleying

PS- Because we all tend to focus on what needs to be improved and negativity isn’t always so helpful, I’d like to know:

What do you like about Wesleying? What do you want to see more of or hope stays the same?

*If no smartass commenter responds to this post with “it can’t get no worse,” I’ll be really disappointed.

WESLEYING RECRUITMENT MEETING

A reminder – come to Usdan 110 tonight (Monday 2/8) at 7:30 pm if you’re interested in this blog. Read this.

Date: Monday, 2/8
Time: 7:30 pm
Place: Usdan 110

EVENT
WESLEYING: A retrospective/recruitment

As I grow increasingly aware of the few short months that lie between now and graduation, I look down at my navel and think about my time at Wesleying.

In my first semester at Wes, Wesleying was a fresh experiment, an increasingly poorly kept secret that the girl down the hall consulted to corral our motley crew of Butts freshmen to weekend destinations – Wine and Cheese at WestCo, Psi U parties, shows at Eclectic.

Now, four years later, Wes is minus one Mocon and plus one Usdan, without Presidents Bennett or Bush but with Roth and Obama, and has weathered too many other changes to reduce to a few trite clauses. Wesleying has moved from one blogging platform to another, developed an audience larger than anyone could have hoped back in 2006, and grown into a significant enough part of the Wesleyan media (such as it is) that often enough, the Argus gets tips from us.

I still feel a surge of pride when people sitting ahead of me in class refresh Wesleying on their Macbooks, flattered that their minds wander here during lectures instead of FailBlog or LATFH. I think how strange it is that so many Wes administrators keep tabs on this site, when Wesleying was far enough under the radar back in the day that nobody got crap from the SJB about people holding beer cans in photos here. And it feels even stranger that so many administrative departments now have their own blogs, whereas four years ago I was still getting over my high-school Xanga/Livejournal (like many in my generational cohort), and a “Bennett Blogs” would have been highly improbable to see linked on the University homepage.

So while I and the other seniors on board brush our shoulders off and look ahead to THE FUTURE, it’s time to refresh.

Without a whole lot of people on the team, Wesleying would be just a few hypercaffeinated individuals with deteriorating posture and creeping Carpal tunnel syndrome, writing successively more solipsistic rants and rarely posting your events on time.

Luckily, enough people express their love of Wesleyan through blogging that we’re somehow consistent enough to keep you all coming back. But this is the last semester for a bunch of us, and as bittersweet as it is, we will not be blogging here once we graduate. In fact, some of us are trying to focus more right now on figuring out life after Wes than we are on blogging. The site must go on, so we’re looking for new contributors to help keep this thing going stronger than ever this semester, and next year.

If you want to express your Wesleyan love through the Internet, click on for details.

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A Wesleying Holiday Toast

In the holiday spirit of thanking people and making toasts, here’s a toast to our very own Sheek! Recently named WesCeleb, Sheek has been holding down the fort and keeping Wesleying interesting for two years now, and hey, it’s only fitting that he get some recognition.

So thanks, Sheek, for keeping us on our toes, posting great content and making Wesleying more of a family. If you haven’t checked it out yet, here’s the interview in the Argus.

Wesleying Is On Twitter!

If you haven’t been satisfied with our blog posts and Facebook updates alone, never fear! Wesleying is now on Twitter!

(But don’t expect a ton of updates, because we’re really just trying to get a mention from @THE_REAL_SHAQ.)

Wesleying’s Next Top Header Design

Because we want your help in making Wesleying a better place, we’re having an open call for header submissions.

Both our most recent one and the Wesfest-hippie-bus one before that were meant to be temporary (and the current one most definitely is), but, well, life happens and we don’t have much time to improve on them. So we’re crowdsourcing!

If you’ve got any knack for graphic design/Photoshop/MS Paint/whatever and think you can do better than what’s up now, send us a design and it just might become our new masthead. If you check Wesleying often enough to care and have some time on your hands, this could be your chance to get your work seen by ~3,000 people per day.

Be as creative as you want to – add personality, make it conceptual, showcase whatever style you want to see at the top of this site. Or keep it neat and minimal. All we require is that:

the name “Wesleying” is featured prominently in some form
image is high quality, size is at least 900 by 150 pixels, no larger than 925 by 200
file type is PNG or JPEG
if you want, you can include the motto “Real student life at Wesleyan University”. But that’s optional.

No set deadline, but try to get whatever you come up with to us by the end of Fall Break (October 28th). Feel free to send as many as you’d like, and email all submissions to staff(at)wesleying(dot)org.

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EVENT
Middletown mayoral debate at Wesleyan

On Tuesday, October 6, the Wesleyan Students Assembly is hosting a student-moderated on-campus debate between the candidates in Middletown’s mayoral election: two-term Republican incumbent Sebastian Giuliano, and Democratic challenger Dan Drew.

The debate will be held in the Memorial Chapel and is targeted towards the Wesleyan community, but anyone from Middletown is encouraged to attend and participate.

sebastian giuliano Wesleyan is a significant part of the Middletown community, and there’s a good chance that enough Wes votes might swing the election towards either candidate. Which means that, if you plan to vote in November, you would do well to learn about what’s at stake for this town before making a decision.

Middletown elects mayors to two-year terms, so underclassmen should especially take note – your vote will help decide what the local environment is like for a lot of your time here.

For some background, read the Argus coverage of the election so far and interviews of Sebastian Giuliano and Dan Drew.

Drew is likely to be the favorite of Wes voters: a fresh-faced Democrat who has the Internet thing down, with both a Facebook page and his own website, against a more experienced Republican. Sound familiar?

Of course, national politics is very different from local politics, and it’s important to understand what Middletown needs and what each of these guys is about instead of blindly supporting the one we’re conditioned to.

So stop by the debate on Tuesday for some civic education. Check out the Facebook event here.

Date: Tuesday, October 6
Time: 8-10 pm
Place: Memorial Chapel

Thanks to the WSA for organizing this event. Wesleying is sponsoring the debate along with the Center for Community Partnerships, Psi U, the Argus, The Middletown Eye, and The Safe and Friendly Neighborhood, so if you have any questions or issues you want either of the candidates to address, comment on this post soon and they might be raised at the debate.


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