The Interview: Jess Kim, MIT’s admissions blogger

Interview by Elsa Kim: “Easily distractible with a Google search bar for a brain, Elsa is truly a child of the Internet generation. However, when it comes to cultural reportage, research on Internet and social dynamics, and multi-media projects, her focus becomes laser-sharp, leaving readers and clients assured that her work is the product of a vibrant mind.”

Jess Kim has been an admissions blogger for MIT since she started school there in the fall of 2006. She has kept a personal blog since 2002, when she was a sophomore in high school. Last month, the New York Times featured Jess in a cover story about the MIT admissions blogs. We asked her to sound off about blogs, new media, and the role that admissions blogs have played in her life.

Full disclosure: Jess Kim is the interviewer’s sister.

Q: Tell me how you started blogging.

A: Ever since I was little, I found web design really interesting, and I was always compelled to write. Blogging was also a way to experiment new ideas. If I had an idea for a story or a website that I was designing and wanted to see how people responded to it; it was a very easy medium for that. It was also very intuitive and very free form. You just put your thoughts down, and in that way you can relate to other people.

Q: So how social was blogging when you began? Did all your friends have blogs, or were you the only one?

A: Pretty much been the only blogger in the world since 1992. It’s a lonely path but someone has to be there to make snarky comments on the Internet. And who’s gonna meme Kanye if I’m not there? Someone has to be there to argue on the Internet with no evidence to back up their points. And that’s really the service I provide.

Q: But seriously.

A: All of my friends have blogs. We use them to talk to each other more than we talk to each other in daily life. So that when we see each other, it’s like, “hey what’s up?” “Oh, I hung out with D. last night.” “Oh, I read about it on your blog.” And then we have nothing else to talk about.

Q: How does blogging now differ from when you started blogging in high school? When did you start?

A: I was a sophomore in high school, I just came back from summer camp and I had all these residual feelings – about boys and puberty and those sorts of heart wrenching things… Now I try to write a lot more about more broad issues. I write an MIT admissions blog and a personal blog. The MIT blog is for the prospective students and the application, so that blog has to be specifically geared toward that.

Q: So how do you orient yourself toward this audience?

A: It’s not particularly difficult because it’s for people who are just like I was a couple of years ago, so I can relate to them very easily. I know what they’re going through. I try the best I can to humanize the process and put a face to admissions

and show that MIT is a place with people who breathe, and work, and buy food from Anna’s Taqueria and get gastrointestinal diseases, and spend all afternoon trying to get rid of that Anna’s burrito.

At the same time, I tend to put a lot more effort into those posts because I want those to be much more substantial and thought-provoking, and I want them to be funny – usually it takes me three or four hours to create a good post.

Q: What is the main reason why you write for the admissions blog?

A: When I was a high school senior applying to college, the whole college admissions process terrified me. It seemed like I would never in a million years be able to conquer it. It was very daunting to me.

My friend sent me a link to these admissions blogs. I started reading them and I really felt like these were people I could go to school with, and it made me feel like MIT was a place, not just a scary letterhead at the top of my college applications. And so when the chance came to apply to be an MIT admissions blogger, I pretty much jumped at it, because this is something I wanted to pass on to college seniors for years to come.

Q: Did you ever feel like the MIT admissions blogs were part of a marketing tool? Part of the college’s way to advertise themselves?

A: No, I never felt like that. Especially because once I became a blogger I found out that there was no editing process, so we pretty much just write whatever we want to and it gets posted – and if we’re writing about something that’s a little controversial, we might email the other bloggers and admissions officers and ask if it feels too informal or controversial.

As a high school senior I never felt that they were particularly false because they just seemed very genuine, they seemed like one of my friend’s blogs. Even in reading the admissions officers’ blogs I felt very strongly connected to these people. Especially Ben Jones, who wrote an entry called “It’s more than a job.” It talked about the pressures of being an admissions officer… It was very heartfelt and very emotional, and you could tell that he was truly fighting for people in the admissions room. That was something that really set MIT apart for me when I was applying.

In fact there was a card that they send you at the end when you’re accepting your offer, and they ask what was your determining factor. My first answer was the admissions blogs.

Q: How is blogging different from any other form of communication?

All the content is very driven by the readers. If I experience something that is a uniquely MIT experience, that’s something I definitely want to cover. I guess in structuring the rest of the post, for me it usually just kind of falls into place. Sometimes if a lot of things have been happening I try to relate them to each other. Or I try to segue into a lesson about MIT or about being a good person, because I try to advise people in such matters, as I am an expert in being a good person.

Q: Do you feel like an expert? Are you sharing your expertise about MIT?

You can never really be an expert in MIT. Everyone has such different experiences. But at the core of it, we’re all kind of struggling with this duality between being intelligent people and the sort of nerd stereotype…. There’s this shared experience of all MIT students where everyone is kind of a nerd at heart.

But no one is really an expert. That’s why we have so many bloggers with different majors and experiences that come from different backgrounds to paint the different pictures.

Q: So in blogs, honesty trumps expertise?

You can read all the shiny pamphlets and the special captions written by Susan Hockfield that describes what the MIT experience is, but you can’t really know what it is until you live it for yourself, and blogging gives a close approximation of that.

Q: Is blogging the closest we can come to entering each other’s lives?

There’s all these funky new media things – maybe if we wore cameras all day we could experience each other’s lives more visually, but it’s different from hearing stories told through someone else’s perspective.

Q: Do you consider yourself a storyteller through new media?

Mm hmm.

Q: Do you want to make blogging into a career? Do you think that’s viable? And do you think your friends see it as a viable career option?

I think it would be great if I could make it into a career. It’s something I’ve been doing it for a while, so I feel like I’m capable. There’s still this prevailing idea that it’s not real journalism, because you don’t have to check your sources and report to an editor all the time. But I think it’s certainly still valuable, so it would be interesting if I could make that a career option.

No one wants to be a “blogger” when they grow up… I think mainly it’s sort of an unconventional career path and it’s not really something that people often set out intending to make a career from. It’s not something that you can say I have to do this, this, and this to get there. There is a very pre-professional mindset at colleges like MIT, and so lots of people would rather go to grad school.

Q: Do you think blogging is going to become a profession in the next ten years?

I think it already has, it’s just not as prevalent as your consultants and your investment bankers. Like I said, it’s not something you can really plan for. You have to work at it and want to update your blog every day and have new things to say. There’s all sorts of things to say in the world, and people are sayin’ them. So in 10 years, there may be nothing left to say.