I have an extremely common name, Jessica Carson, so when I first “Googled” myself I came up with a bunch of hits of people with a stronger online presence than myself. One such example is the Jessica Carson who is a life coach who seems to be peddling some sort of reverse enlightenment by harnessing the darkness in order to grow. Another hit showed an obituary for a Jessica Carson who passed away in April 2020. Only by narrowing my focus by adding designations to my name was I able to find myself. For example: ‘“Jessica Carson” + Fairfax + Air Force’ came up with my LinkedIn page. My FaceBook page didn’t come up when I googled it, which I expect is due to my privacy settings. The results of my Google search only showing LinkedIn is how I would like to be perceived while I’m doing school part-time and working in the Air Force full time. It’s important that I keep a professional LinkedIn page for that, however, as I transition out of the Air Force and into George Mason University full time (next semester) I would like to create and maintain a different online presence. Having now read the articles assigned I can see the benefit in creating and maintaining an online presence that is beyond just a litany of my past and current work experience. In order to distinguish my name from the other Jessica Carson’s, I decided to add my middle name to my domain name and shorten my first name to: jleecarson.com. I’m hoping the use of tags for history-related content will aid in the discovery of my website.
My goal is to get a Bachelor of Arts in History and I can see where having an online curated presence would be helpful for future employment. Not only would it allow my ideas to be discoverable, but also it would help me keep a log of my scholarship so that I can see how it’s evolved over time. I am hoping that this WordPress website will help me be more consistent in creating meaningful content. I’m also excited to learn the ends and outs of using Reclaim Hosting because I have never been the administrator of a website before, I have only ever had Social Media like Facebook. I am looking forward to putting time into this blog so that I can carve out a space for myself amongst other digital historians and help add to the tapestry of the past.
