Tag: blog

What’s Your Sentence?

Something that I have found to be an integral part of the college experience is self-discovery, figuring out who I really am. Sophomore year was a great year for self-discernment. I learned a lot more about what makes me happy, stressed, how I best interact with people, and the greatest achievement was learning more about what I wanted to do with my career, which led to me switching to a journalism major from business. Technology plays a role in how I, along with the rest of the world, define myself. Tech and media can be positive influences in our personal development, connecting us to more information about topics and ideas we already love as well as introducing new things we may latch onto ourselves. Google “motivational videos” and you will find thousands of people encouraging you to be the best person you can possibly be. Head to Reddit and find a community of people that share a similar niche interest as you. Media can bring us together in new ways, but you can also tear yourself apart with it. The most common example of this would be on social media, particularly Instagram (more for people my age) and Facebook (for more adults). There I can find countless people who seem to be having a better time and living a better life than me. This can make us feel worthless, or that our lives should be much better. We can easily forget that first, it has always been counterproductive to envy others’ lives, even long before any digital technology existed, and second, that these people put up the best snippets of their lives on social media. A beautiful, skinny Instagram model posting a picture in Hawaii could be struggling with an eating disorder. During this period of my life where I am deciding who I will become, it is important to remember that I must set my own expectations, not let others online do it for me.

Daniel Pink introduces an awesome tool for developing an identity and “personal brand.” The idea of using a single sentence to describe oneself is a really cool way to capture how I would explain myself. In order to create this sentence, I must think about what is important in my life and what do I enjoy and do best. Something that I determined several years ago to be the biggest aspect of my life is how I socialize. While I enjoy my personal time, I am wholeheartedly an extrovert, and there really is nothing more important to me than the people in my life. People and socializing is always under consideration when I try to balance my life. Am I spending enough time with the people I care about? Are these interactions meaningful and enjoyable? Another question I need to ask more is: Am I leaving enough time to accomplish other important things, or do I shelf homework and responsibilities for friends too often? What I consider to be the second of two main pillars of my identity (there are of course other factors, but let’s focus on the biggest ones) would be my desire to always be learning and improving. I thoroughly enjoy being a student, and I try to also make time for learning outside of the classroom. Especially now, I am in a period of trying to figure out how I want to spend my working years. Figuring out what I want my place to be in the world is at the forefront of my learning. I am a big proponent of the quote: “The day we stop learning is the day we die” The quote is from Irish author, not incompetent office manager, Michael Scott.

Having examined some of the things most important to me, I would say this has to be my sentence:

I am a college student, but I am a lifelong learner with a passion for the people I care about, and the drive to better myself and those around me.

I wonder how this sentence will change throughout my life!

Photo by Jan Zhukov (@sauvageisland) on unsplash.com. Url: https://unsplash.com/photos/sbbKyhxgU_A

How do you use Social Media??

A good place to start in my Social Media class is to break the subject down, and examine social media at its core before I can understand it at a deeper level. While I have never formally studied it, I am a regular user of social media. I use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and LinkedIn somewhat regularly, all for different purposes. Facebook is best for keeping up with family members and adult friends, along with a mess of food and travel videos my friends share. My Twitter feed consists of mostly news accounts, memes and angry political discourse (I often find people tweeting about President Trump are actually more annoying than his own tweets). I enjoy Instagram because it provides visually and aesthetically appealing photos and videos, which resonate with a visual learner such as myself. Reddit is likely my favorite platform. Because of its customizable nature and thousands of communities, I can fill my feed with content I don’t get elsewhere, such as unique art, gaming and music news.

I really go back and forth with social media. What I enjoy most about it is the immediate and convenient nature that I am able to receive information and communicate with others. I may not be in front of a tv, (and I certainly don’t have cable) but I can whip out my phone and reach CNN’s page, and access news stories in seconds. It’s easy as pressing “@” on my keyboard or pushing a message icon to send a friend or colleague something I think they will enjoy for one reason or another. For everything I enjoy about social media, there is also plenty for me to criticize, mainly its increasingly polarized tone and propensity to captivate its audience TOO much. It seems that social media does its job too well. It is far too easy to zone into my phone and just scroll on social media for copious amounts of time. To think of the interactions and experiences I let pass me by with my face buried in my phone. I’ve also found that social media, Twitter especially, has become increasingly polarized and aggressive. I believe the presidential election and the American political climate in general have contributed to this. I summed it up well to a friend when I said, “Twitter is full of unqualified people telling me what I should think.” Twitter is no haven for proper debate, and its increasing politicization and plain rudeness by its users has been slowly driving me away.

Over the years, my social media interaction has increased and matured as I have. What began as a fun new plaything as a middle schooler to an increasingly influential part of my life, I believe this transition has happened not just to me but to society as social media has aged and expanded. Personally, I would say I now use most forms of social media frequently throughout my day. While I enjoy being on social media, I acknowledge that I waste far too much time on it. From this class I hope to learn to use social media more effectively and efficiently. I want to spend less time on social media, and the time that I am logged on to be more positive and productive. I’ll admit, upon enrolling in this class, I didn’t quite see the value of learning about something I had been engaged in for years. After the first class, I left realizing that there was an abundance of skills I could take away from the course about both social media and the greater world of journalism and media. My goal is to learn as much from this class as I possibly can, and take what I learn far beyond the classroom.

 

Image: “Social Media Class” courtesy of mkhmarketing on Flickr Creative Commons.
Photo can be found at https://bit.ly/2P1NWMq. Author requested sharing this link – startbloggingonline.com