Kelly and I talk regularly about her “new media” plan. After her “hard” degree in math and statistics, she wants to go on to a graduate degree in something that engages in the public discourse. She has investigated things like summer internships at National Review and the World Journalism Institute, but she needs some more formal writing experience to be able to get into a program like that. She investigates opportunities to get that experience as she has time and will discuss that on her blog as she begins to participate in them. In the meantime, she wants to practice. There are two ways she plans to get that practice.
First, she wants to continue with Betty Blonde. It was difficult to just quit cold turkey after two years of daily strips, but she needed to do that to concentrate on a full load of college classes. She did a good job last semester as a full time student, but with a light load. This semester she is doing even better with a sixteen hours that include four credit classes in Statistics and her second semester of Calculus. She has a good system for both test and daily class preparation so that we have many fewer “hair on fire” days this semester than last even though her work load is significantly heavier. Kelly feels like she has time now to write one or two daily Betty Blonde strips per week. She also feels, and I agree, that her comic strip is a core element of her preparation for life after her bachelor degree.
There are several things we have to prepare before she can restart the strip. My part of this will include a rewrite of the BleAx program so that it is easier to use and does not require my participation. I also need to work with Kelly (with input from Christian) to design a new Betty Blonde site. We are not sure whether we want to do this from scratch or use WordPress again. We will be able to get by with the old BleAx program for awhile, but we cannot even start until the new web site is up and running. Do not fear, all the old strips will be included in the new site.
Second, Kelly plans to start a new blog just for writing and a few photos. She has not chosen a name yet and she is still thinking about topics. The purpose of the blog is to practice and try out new stuff that has to do with where she plans to go with her studies and career. I do not want to steal any of her thunder on that, but will report on this a little more as we move forward. When we get the two new web sites up and going, I will prevail on Kelly to write introductory posts here to introduce her new stuff. We are probably a month or two away from these new beginnings.