The social media struggle

I just started my last semester of graduate school. (yay..kind of)

My first class of the semester is a graduate-level social media research class. I like research, and I’m fascinated by how social media affects people. (Notice I didn’t say I ‘like’ social media…See previous post). But now I am torn.

I had previously been operating two personal twitter accounts. Being a mass comm major, a lot of professors thought they would “challenge” the class by having us tweet throughout the semester. Knowing that the account would be monitored by people controlling my grade made me extremely uncomfortable so I created a “professional” twitter account. On this account I would tweet PR and classroom related things…then, subsequently, would go on my “personal” twitter account and complain about how stupid the assignment is.

Now being in grad school, I care much less about the perception of my tweets from my peers but the thought of a professor reading all of my stupid twenty-something, related tweets still makes me uncomfortable. Even though my personal twitter shows my true personality…do I want professionals to see that? In a way I do, because this is who I am. Another part of me is like “Sarah grow up. If you don’t want professionals seeing those tweets than maybe you shouldn’t tweet them?” but then again I think..well..it is MY account and I’m free to say whatever i want, right!?

This is my social media struggle. HELP!

UPDATE: This article “5 Questions to Ask Before Posting to Social Media” is great!