This week I was assigned to review someone else’s blog that is similar to mine. After some research to find a blog dedicated to helping first-gen students, I could only find bloggers who had just written one post about being a first-gen. The one I liked the best was from Rachel Hicks. On October 15, 2019 she made a blog post about how college has changed her and what she wish she would’ve known as a first-gen student.

What I like the most about her post was that she made sure to include a section on not being the only one who doesn’t know what the heck is going on. It’s really easy to feel lost and isolated as an incoming first-gen student because you think everyone around you has it figured out, even when that’s far from the truth. Trying to remember that it’s not you against the world or against your fellow classmates is so hard. You feel like since no one in your family went to college, that you’re somehow inferior to your classmates that have parents and family members who did. Knowing that everyone else is learning with you and everyone is in it together is easy to forget.

What inspires me the most about this blog post is that she lays out all the facts and gets to the point. I want readers to see my posts, how I saw Rachel’s (by googling “best first-gen bloggers”), and immediately feel some type of relief. Whether that be just from seeing that someone out there understands the struggles of being first-gen, or from reading my content out of pure hope of some direction on what their next steps in college should be. Rachel’s post is well written and the visuals on her page are aesthetically pleasing so it makes reading a text-heavy blog posts easier to read. I loved the different sections separated by large headings regarding different things she wished she had known as a first-gen student, as well as how much she was hyperlinking in her text to make it easier for the reader. Overall great blog post and blogger!