Hello reader! My name is Christina. I am a 19 year old college student from Pennsylvania. I live at college, but when I am not at college I go home to visit my mom, dad and brother (and of course my dog, Cocoa). I am very close with my family along with my friends and my boyfriend. My hobbies include singing, acting, and art. I have been in musicals since I was 9 years old and I’ve been in plays since I was 15. I have been taking art lessons since 4th grade as well. One super fun fact about me is that I love Disney movies more than anything. My favorite Disney movie is Beauty and the Beast. Now onto why I became a teacher. Its very funny, because I always in the back of my mind knew I wanted to be a teacher. In my elementary school, starting in kindergarten, they gave us a booklet where we wrote information about ourselves. One of the questions they would ask was what we wanted to be when we grew up. Over the years my answer changed quite a few times (for a while I wanted to be a ballerina!), but every so often teacher would come back up. The very first time that they gave us the packet in kindergarten I had written that I wanted to be a teacher. Along with that, I always forced my younger brother to play school with me. He would be my student and I would teach him all kinds of things. My parents bought me teacher sets of all kinds, charts, posters, worksheets, etc. I even had my own pointer. Even at that young I loved to help others to learn. Now the actual moment when I realized I was meant to be a teacher was a bit different. I had been volunteering at my church for a while helping out with Vacation Bible school because my high school required 10 service hours every semester. While I was helping with that, an old musical director that I have known for many years approached me. She told me that my church was in need of a new Sunday School teacher and that she thought I would be a good fit. Now if I am being honest with you, I mainly signed up so I could receive an award at my high school for having 50 service hours or more. But this experience ended up changing my life. The first set of kids I had was just two, a brother and a sister. I was given a book with lesson plans, and all I had to do was read the story and get craft supplies and help them do a small craft and give the kids a snack. And it was so much fun. Within time my class grew to 6 children. I also had the absolute best mentor in the whole world. She was the main teacher of the classroom. She had taught for many years and was retired, but came back to help the church. She was so kind and encouraging and always told me what an amazing teacher I was going to be. She helped me to change up the lessons, get the kids interested and set my base knowledge of teaching. Without her help, I would not be where I am today. When I told her that I was attending college for elementary education, she was so happy. She was really the best role model I could’ve asked for. In short that is what inspired me to become an educator! Thank you so much for reading my first post and I can’t wait to post more!

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.