“Branch out!”
“Make friends!”
“Leave your comfort zone!”
As a freshman, I’ve heard these cliches alarmingly frequently over the past weeks. Through all of the orientations and meetings, these ideas were stressed the most. Essentially, if something scares you, do it.
After receiving this advice for the millionth time, I chuckled at the irony of “The Flight from Conversation.” Chapter 2 describes the havoc technology is wreaking on our social skills, encumbering how “connectedness” has changed our idea of civic duty.
I connected Chapter 2 with my life in the elevator. Only in an elevator is it acceptable to ignore the stranger next to you because...you’re locked in a metal box and could plunge to your deaths together. So, why not ask their name?
No, instead, I’m texting my mom about the care package she’s sending me tomorrow.
I stopped using my phone in the elevator after an incident in which, after a silent descent, a guy said “Have a good day,” out of the blue. I never saw his face, too absorbed in my mother’s concerned and garbled texts, and didn’t say “You too,” because I was shocked that someone spoke to me in the elevator.
Chapter 2 interested me because of how it presented the paradox of technological connectedness and related it back to civic behavior. Instead of describing teenagers as lemmings, it simply addressed our natural instinct to be social, the fear of rejection that inhibits intermingling, and how technology satisfies these conflicting inclinations.
Since this reading, I’ve become painfully aware of how inexperienced I am at chitchatting. Before The Flight from Conversation, I was scared of the “moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent” (RCL, page 17). I thought that people thought I was simple when social awkwardness reared its ugly head, but this chapter made me realize how integral it is to making friends. I realized that our civic duty was once ‘putting ourselves out there,’ and that taking a risk for the sake of standing up for oneself, or even just making small talk, is worth it. I learned that everyone feels clumsy in new social situations and that this mutual discomfort builds trust between potential friends. Or it doesn’t, and you ride the elevator in silence afterward, but you tried.
I couldn’t have read this chapter at a more pertinent time. I never felt strongly on this topic before being encouraged to connect in the big pond of Penn State, but this analysis has encouraged me to participate in my community. Considering “community” a flexible term, I now consider it ‘civic’ to try and connect in mundane conversation because I don’t like being censored by cell phone vibrations and chimes.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Travel Blog: A Nomadic Cliché
Choosing a passion blog topic was difficult.
Don't get me wrong, I like many things. BUT, every time I would think of a blog theme, I couldn't imagine having enough to say to keep it alive for this entire semester.
After much thought, the only idea that interested me was travelling. I love the idea of a travel blog and, what a coincidence, I love to travel. I consider traveling to be one of my interests and a topic on which I could articulate thoughts and opinions worth expressing on the internet. That being said, I will stick to this theme and explain two potential ways of presenting it in my passion blog.
1.) The travel idea first struck me as an experience blog, in which I would describe the events of trips I've taken in the past. This blog would rehash the thoughts, experiences, highlights, and low-lights of the trips to Europe, South and Central America that I've taken in the recent past. My clumsy, sarcastic, and absent minded self has made for some rather amusing stories as I've traveled abroad, and could make for an interesting and long winded story that encumbers a passion of mine.
2) I also found that I could make a travel blog about the future. This blog would be more along the lines of a "bucket list," in which, in each entry, I write about a new place (varying in specificity; country, city, event, etc.) to which I would like to travel when I'm rich and famous. I am definitely favoring this mode of presentation because it would allow me to be more creative in my blog posts and also be the excuse I need to research and record the places I want to see before I kick it (the bucket, that is.)
Don't get me wrong, I like many things. BUT, every time I would think of a blog theme, I couldn't imagine having enough to say to keep it alive for this entire semester.
After much thought, the only idea that interested me was travelling. I love the idea of a travel blog and, what a coincidence, I love to travel. I consider traveling to be one of my interests and a topic on which I could articulate thoughts and opinions worth expressing on the internet. That being said, I will stick to this theme and explain two potential ways of presenting it in my passion blog.
1.) The travel idea first struck me as an experience blog, in which I would describe the events of trips I've taken in the past. This blog would rehash the thoughts, experiences, highlights, and low-lights of the trips to Europe, South and Central America that I've taken in the recent past. My clumsy, sarcastic, and absent minded self has made for some rather amusing stories as I've traveled abroad, and could make for an interesting and long winded story that encumbers a passion of mine.
2) I also found that I could make a travel blog about the future. This blog would be more along the lines of a "bucket list," in which, in each entry, I write about a new place (varying in specificity; country, city, event, etc.) to which I would like to travel when I'm rich and famous. I am definitely favoring this mode of presentation because it would allow me to be more creative in my blog posts and also be the excuse I need to research and record the places I want to see before I kick it (the bucket, that is.)
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