dear world wide web,
Today in class we were talking about how it is easier to pretend to care about things than to actually care about things. Now, I do actually care about things, however, I don't act upon it as much as I used to. This difference happened when I went from high school to college.
In high school, I was an extremely active student. I was in a ton of clubs, I played three sports, and I was constantly doing community service. I worked four days a week and loved every second of it. I was a complete overachiever and enjoyed every second of it. I want to be involved in everything and I really wanted to make a difference.
I achieved a lot in high school, I went on leadership conferences, model united nation conferences, I worked to pass a proposal for my school to shut all the lights off for a full day to conserve energy and spread awareness about sustainable development.
I even started a student organization called S.U.P.E.R. (Student for Understanding, Peace, and Establishing Reform)and it was successful. We raised over $1000 for both the crisis in Darfur and Doctors Without Borders.
In any case, I did stuff. I cared, and it was well known that I cared.
Then I came to college. What happened?
Now, I volunteer for Big Brothers Big Sisters, I volunteer for organizations when I go home, and I am in a sorority. I work two jobs and am currently taking 19 credits.
It's not that I don't care anymore; because I truly personally do not believe that it is easier to pretend to care. I think the reason that I am not as involved anymore is because I have a lot less time and a lot more responsibility.
I see posters on campus and I talk to people in my classes who are in clubs. A lot of people claim they have a hard time getting people to show up for meetings regularly. It got me thinking that everyone's busy. This lead me to think about Hamlet's Blackberry.
Although some people are busy with important things, I am sure there are people who make themselves busy. I think the people who think that it is easier to pretend to care than to actually care and act upon it are the people who make themselves busy.
There are some people who's daily routine is to go to class or work, go on facebook, watch movies, sleep all day, and then go out get drunk, wake up hungover, and repeat the cycle. These are the people who we have to worry about.
Thee good thing is that I have hope! This class, although at first it scared the hell out of me, has taught me that there is hope. So once again, I am going to set a goal. This goal is more of a long-term goal because like I said, I am very busy.
My goal is to eventually be able to write and motivate people through my writing to stop pretending to care and instead to care enough that they want to and actually do act upon it.
I have faith.
Kiersten
Thursday, December 9, 2010
in other news....
dear world wide web,
At some point in the semester, my Press in America class talked about today's society and the fact that nothing is relevant to anything else. Everything we do is segmented; nothing is continuous. I began to think about this and realize that it is not just the media that does this. The media has affected my brain so much that I have trouble continuing a thought process as I leave one classroom and go to another.
I find myself thinking about all of these wonderful things in class; and I really get it and for the time being, I am thinking really deeply. I am making connections and thoroughly enjoy what I am hearing and thinking about. This is when I started to write down what I was thinking while I was in class.
Because as soon as the class is over, the thought process comes to a halt. I leave the classroom and it is like the hour and fifteen minutes I spent contemplating my life and role in society, the direction society is moving in general, never happened.
I will make a list of things to do. The list may include e-mailing a professor about an assignment, or asking what time a club I want to join meets. And so I sit down at the computer to do it because at that moment, my thought process consists of my to do list and only my to do list.
When I walk away from the computer, I forget what I literally typed five minutes ago. I may get a reply the same day, and I will sit down and read it. After I read it, I don't act upon what I just read because I am so used to segmenting everything. I am reading a reply. But then I'll walk away from the computer and not act upon what I just read.
This really and truly is crazy and probably the most unproductive thing ever. I am lucky that I took a class that revealed this to me because if it happens to me, it most likely is happening to other people to. However, I am aware of it now, so I can take the time to concentrate on what I am doing and get my brain to function the way it is supposed to. But what happens to everyone else?
Kiersten
At some point in the semester, my Press in America class talked about today's society and the fact that nothing is relevant to anything else. Everything we do is segmented; nothing is continuous. I began to think about this and realize that it is not just the media that does this. The media has affected my brain so much that I have trouble continuing a thought process as I leave one classroom and go to another.
I find myself thinking about all of these wonderful things in class; and I really get it and for the time being, I am thinking really deeply. I am making connections and thoroughly enjoy what I am hearing and thinking about. This is when I started to write down what I was thinking while I was in class.
Because as soon as the class is over, the thought process comes to a halt. I leave the classroom and it is like the hour and fifteen minutes I spent contemplating my life and role in society, the direction society is moving in general, never happened.
I will make a list of things to do. The list may include e-mailing a professor about an assignment, or asking what time a club I want to join meets. And so I sit down at the computer to do it because at that moment, my thought process consists of my to do list and only my to do list.
When I walk away from the computer, I forget what I literally typed five minutes ago. I may get a reply the same day, and I will sit down and read it. After I read it, I don't act upon what I just read because I am so used to segmenting everything. I am reading a reply. But then I'll walk away from the computer and not act upon what I just read.
This really and truly is crazy and probably the most unproductive thing ever. I am lucky that I took a class that revealed this to me because if it happens to me, it most likely is happening to other people to. However, I am aware of it now, so I can take the time to concentrate on what I am doing and get my brain to function the way it is supposed to. But what happens to everyone else?
Kiersten
a conversation with myself
dear world wide web,
I want to start this entry by saying that when I first started this blog, I decided to call it dear world wide web sort of as a joke. What I came to realize today is that this blog sort of is like a diary real or journal. More so, is my Press in America notebook. I was looking through my notebook at the beginning of class today. Functions of media, social responsibility theory, libertarian theory, attention economy, positive and negative freedom. All of these terms are laid out neatly in my notebook. Yet this notebook is not like my notebooks for other classes.
If a random person went through my notebook, they would think I was nuts. I have random comments, phrases, and even paragraphs that I have written down while we were having discussions. I am not very good at organizing my thoughts for speech. When I begin to speak in front of people, it comes out in a stream of nothingness. However, I can write clearly and in some kind of order.
My notebook is proof of this. In a sense, it is like a conversation with myself. This is something that does not happen in other classes and I think it is because I have a lot to think about in this class. So, even though the semester is over, I think I am going to post some blogs about some of the conversations I sort of had with myself in my notebook. A lot of them are from out most recent discussions.
I know that Professor Good is probably the only person who reads this, and most likely only for another week, if that, but I think that I have learned a lot about myself from this class and from the discussions and I want to post them because I think that it is sort of a way for me to continue thinking about the issues we raised in class.
So thank you, and I'm sorry if there are a lot of random blogs in the next few hours/days.
Kiersten
I want to start this entry by saying that when I first started this blog, I decided to call it dear world wide web sort of as a joke. What I came to realize today is that this blog sort of is like a diary real or journal. More so, is my Press in America notebook. I was looking through my notebook at the beginning of class today. Functions of media, social responsibility theory, libertarian theory, attention economy, positive and negative freedom. All of these terms are laid out neatly in my notebook. Yet this notebook is not like my notebooks for other classes.
If a random person went through my notebook, they would think I was nuts. I have random comments, phrases, and even paragraphs that I have written down while we were having discussions. I am not very good at organizing my thoughts for speech. When I begin to speak in front of people, it comes out in a stream of nothingness. However, I can write clearly and in some kind of order.
My notebook is proof of this. In a sense, it is like a conversation with myself. This is something that does not happen in other classes and I think it is because I have a lot to think about in this class. So, even though the semester is over, I think I am going to post some blogs about some of the conversations I sort of had with myself in my notebook. A lot of them are from out most recent discussions.
I know that Professor Good is probably the only person who reads this, and most likely only for another week, if that, but I think that I have learned a lot about myself from this class and from the discussions and I want to post them because I think that it is sort of a way for me to continue thinking about the issues we raised in class.
So thank you, and I'm sorry if there are a lot of random blogs in the next few hours/days.
Kiersten
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
call the police
dear world wide web,
In our last class, we were talking about how people become worried, scared, and pissed off when you don't answer a phone call or text message right away. It had me thinking of a day that I had last year. It was two days after my 20th birthday and I was in a terrible mood for many different reasons. I decided I was going to shut my phone off and just watch movies all day with my two best friends so that I wasn't worrying about everything else going on in my world (or in my phone I guess you could say. I had been fighting with two of my friends from home (through text message, obviously) and just wanted it to end. I wanted a break, a huge gap, between myself and the conflict occuring with my friends via my phone.
I ended up sleeping over my friend's apartment that night because we ended up watching Back to the Future 1, 2, and 3. When I got back to me room in the morning I turned on my computer. I had over 20 IMs from my mother. These messages included: where are you? why arent you answering the phone? i havent heard from you in days (which wasn't true), why dont i have any of your friends phone numbers? if i dont hear from you by 1 p.m. im calling the police!
I quickly looked at the time at the bottom of the screen; it was 2:15. I frantically plugged in my phone to call my mom. She answered the phone in a fit of rage. I don't even remember the words she was saying because I think I blacked out from the screaming. Two minutes later, the resident director of my dorm at the time came to my door. She told me that the entire resident directory and residence life had been looking for me for over an hour and that I had to call my mom.
My mom had called the school, university police, new paltz police, and then in turn were going to have state troopers look for me.
All because I didn't answer a phone. This specific incident is the one that makes me so crazy about having my phone on me at all times. I get really anxious when I do not have a phone because I am afraid that a family member is trying to get in touch with me and I don't want them to be worried because I am not picking up a phone.
But WHY are they getting worried? When my mom was growing up she didn't have a cell phone. She was on the streets of Brooklyn, wandering around on subways and buses at a crazy young age and her mom never called the police because she couldn't get in touch with her.
I tried to explain this to my mom. Last weekend I went home for my cousin's bridal shower and a similiar incident happenned between my mom and my younger sister. I then explained to my mom, in Powers' words, hoping it would stick with her because it was a professional saying it, not me. I told her that sometimes we all, including my sisters and I, need a break from the phone. If we are hanging out with friends, we should be able to leave our phones alone in order to experience, and I mean REALLY experience, the time we have with our friends.
She seemed to agree a little bit, yet as I got in my car to drive back to New Paltz she yelled to me "Kiersten (in a staten island accent..Keeysten) don't forget to call ya motha once in a while." At least, we're making progress.
Kiersten
In our last class, we were talking about how people become worried, scared, and pissed off when you don't answer a phone call or text message right away. It had me thinking of a day that I had last year. It was two days after my 20th birthday and I was in a terrible mood for many different reasons. I decided I was going to shut my phone off and just watch movies all day with my two best friends so that I wasn't worrying about everything else going on in my world (or in my phone I guess you could say. I had been fighting with two of my friends from home (through text message, obviously) and just wanted it to end. I wanted a break, a huge gap, between myself and the conflict occuring with my friends via my phone.
I ended up sleeping over my friend's apartment that night because we ended up watching Back to the Future 1, 2, and 3. When I got back to me room in the morning I turned on my computer. I had over 20 IMs from my mother. These messages included: where are you? why arent you answering the phone? i havent heard from you in days (which wasn't true), why dont i have any of your friends phone numbers? if i dont hear from you by 1 p.m. im calling the police!
I quickly looked at the time at the bottom of the screen; it was 2:15. I frantically plugged in my phone to call my mom. She answered the phone in a fit of rage. I don't even remember the words she was saying because I think I blacked out from the screaming. Two minutes later, the resident director of my dorm at the time came to my door. She told me that the entire resident directory and residence life had been looking for me for over an hour and that I had to call my mom.
My mom had called the school, university police, new paltz police, and then in turn were going to have state troopers look for me.
All because I didn't answer a phone. This specific incident is the one that makes me so crazy about having my phone on me at all times. I get really anxious when I do not have a phone because I am afraid that a family member is trying to get in touch with me and I don't want them to be worried because I am not picking up a phone.
But WHY are they getting worried? When my mom was growing up she didn't have a cell phone. She was on the streets of Brooklyn, wandering around on subways and buses at a crazy young age and her mom never called the police because she couldn't get in touch with her.
I tried to explain this to my mom. Last weekend I went home for my cousin's bridal shower and a similiar incident happenned between my mom and my younger sister. I then explained to my mom, in Powers' words, hoping it would stick with her because it was a professional saying it, not me. I told her that sometimes we all, including my sisters and I, need a break from the phone. If we are hanging out with friends, we should be able to leave our phones alone in order to experience, and I mean REALLY experience, the time we have with our friends.
She seemed to agree a little bit, yet as I got in my car to drive back to New Paltz she yelled to me "Kiersten (in a staten island accent..Keeysten) don't forget to call ya motha once in a while." At least, we're making progress.
Kiersten
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