Day One, first blog- About Blogging

Before I stepped into class today, I did not know what to expect. I have walked into another UWP101 class before that took place in a computer lab. When I read in an email that this class would be virtually paperless, I thought to myself "Is Storer 1342 a computer lab?". Right at 10AM Monday morning, I arrived in the classroom and took a seat. My questions were answered and more arose. Blogging sounds like plenty of fun. I have a blog at Xanga I write in on occasion. Sometimes I would make an entry a few times a week, sometimes once every few months depending on my mood or whether or not there is something I'm willing to share even to the public. I consider my blog now semi-active, however I still check my friends' blogs every so often to see what they're up to. Most of them are either inactive on Xanga, or write something totally random. As an example, in two of my friends' posts today, one wrote" I want some....I want some cheese cake, garlic noodles, and crabs "and another wrote " whoa oh... i dyed my hair purple =x" and that is all there is to their posts. They're both around my age, over 20. I myself could also make an entry that tells everybody what my summer schedule is and that I'm not sure if I should keep my job or focus solely on my summer classes, or that my UWP class is using blogs, or that I have heartburn right now. However, that leads me to one question, "why blog?"
Personally, I think my friends that wrote their real short and random posts only do so because 1) they are bored, and 2) they want comments. I feel like the real value of blogging is to write something meaningful, relevant, memorable, insightful and something that generates comments, debate, or controversy. Unfortunately, whenever I write something that's like an epiphany to me, I rarely get comments. Sometimes, or most often time actually, my blogs become rants and a post about 'mememe' and people may read them, others done. Some don't even bother to read them because they're so long and others don't know how to respond, or probably just don't want to. Those posts tend to be left uncommented, whereas other posts where I link an amusing video/link to youtube or a funny picture tend to get more comments. Those comments, also aren't 'quality' comments are typical ones include 'LOL' or 'haha' or 'I love that vid'. I myself am guilty of leaving such comments as well.
A few years ago, when I took English 1 as a Freshman at UC Davis, there was an article in my book arguing that 1) there is way too little 'quality' writing on the internet other than official websites such as news and that is because 2) anybody can become a writer online and 3) therefore the internet is still in its infancy stage because of so much non-quality writing. (I will try to find the article/book later to properly cite this). I agree with the main points of that post although the article was from the 90s. Things are still that way, people posting whatever they want on the internet simply because they can and it generates attention. That leads me to back to my original question that I still can't seem to find a clear answer for "why blog?"
As for this class, I am both excited and wary at the same time. I'm happy the class is structured in such a way that is unstructured, promoting free speech so to speak, and allowing students to write what they really think/feel. I'm worried however, that this lack of structure could be a double-edged sword for me, as without structure I could easily produce 'non quality' posts or I could revert to the 'blogging mindset' of lazy writing, or commenting with 'lol', or end up just sitting down at my keyboard, and composing something 200 words and submit it without proofreading it. I generally do not proofread my Xanga entries, I leave them as rough draft as I feel it shouldn't be for an English class so proofreading isn't necessary, and I'm too lazy to do it. However, this is for an Advanced Composition class so I understand I have to proceed with extreme caution and perhaps change my mindset towards blogging. I am looking forward to this class because this change is something I feel worth risking in a 6 week course. Although I'm worried that I won't know what is expected of me in my blog entries, as for now this class sounds like a lot of fun and I'm in an adventurous mood.