Meet Ebonye Smith: second-year electrical engineering major, golfer of 10 years, orange juice and dystopian novel addict and lifestyle blogger. And she’s only just getting started.
Self-described as witty, sassy and genuine, Smith has been blogging since the summer after her senior year of high school. She was initially inspired by the people around her making YouTube channels, the influencers she followed on Instagram — including “Cup of Jo” and “With Love, Kayla” — and her own adventurous summer.
“I just liked how witty you were allowed to be and how free you were allowed to be because you had your own space to express yourself,” Smith said.
Among the topics that Smith explores on her blog are travel and fashion.
“But my main topic that I like to talk about is relationships, and not specifically relationships with other people,” Smith said. “It could be relationships with yourself or friendships or romantic relationships."
One post that Smith has written that she thinks is particularly significant is titled “Why Your Past Relationships Haven’t Worked.” Rather than criticize the reader, Smith’s article encourages people to be their authentic selves in order to find people who value them below their surface-level qualities.
Smith said that much of her writing and her life philosophy are motivated by Michelle Obama’s motto, “When they go low, we go high.”
“If I find myself keeping an eye on myself and worrying about what I have to do, and I don’t find myself worrying about what others have going on, life is just so much easier, so much happier,” Smith said.
In addition to blogging, Smith finds joy in pursuing electrical engineering. While she appreciates the freedom and openness of writing, Smith also loves the structure that math and science provide.
“It was something that I was able to solve and get an answer,” Smith said. “It’s not a whole lot of guessing when it comes to math and science, and that was one thing that I really liked about engineering.”
When Smith needs to disconnect from social media and her academics, she turns to golf. Smith said she has been playing golf since she was nine. Although studying prevents her from playing as much as she’d like to during the school year, she said that she plays every single day during the summer with her dad.
Smith said that her mother is also a strong source of support in her life, especially in regards to her blog.
“She was mainly the first one that was pushing me to start a blog,” Smith said. “I remember before I even got my own domain, and I was still on the Wix site, my mom was my first subscriber, my first biggest fan. She was reading all my posts and sharing them on Facebook to her friends.”
Smith’s own advice to anyone interested in blogging and content creation is to get out of their heads and “just start it.” Moreover, she emphasized the importance of being genuine and doing things out of personal enjoyment rather than fame or external acknowledgment.
As for Smith, she ultimately aspires to a career in engineering, but she said that blogging is not something she sees herself stopping in the future.
In fact, Smith is currently in the process of rebranding her blog. Right now, her blog is named after herself — “Ebonye LaSha’” — and is solely text-based, but she is considering adopting a signature unique to the topics she writes about and exploring the podcast route.
“My blog has allowed me to be able to be free with myself,” Smith said, reflecting on her writing experiences over the past couple of years.
Ivy Marie Clarke ‘22 is an English literature and creative writing double major, double minoring in art and women’s and gender studies. She has served as editor of the Arts & Culture section of The Cluster for the last two years. She also interns with Macon Magazine and Mercer University Press and edits for The Dulcimer. She also enjoys drinking coffee and writing poetry.
