Remember the Blogs

Bluemem#10- My blogging world

            Well I spent a whole semester blogging about memories that I have had that started off as good memories but ending up leaving a sour taste in my mouth. Memories in blue symbolized memories that were beautiful to me at first glance. Below the blue rose displayed that in reality nothing is ever perfect and almost always sticks you with a thorn or two. I enjoyed writing about my memories.                                        

            When I first started this blog, I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it actually turned out to be to connect my memories with readings we had done in class. The first blog, I must admit was my most difficult connection. The big idea in our first reading was society and the public sphere and  I really struggled with trying to make a  connection with some event in my life. Once I got over the hurdle of the first blog however, the others seemed to flow a little better into each of my memories as I was writing. 

      I would like to use this blog entry to reminisce on what I readings I enjoyed the most in class. Okay so Putnam, I enjoyed her reading because I felt like there was a lot of truth to the things that she suggested. I personally agree with her claim about how successful one is in life is often based off of who they have as connections.  I also enjoyed both of Turkle’s readings. “The Nostalgia of the Young” and “Growing up Tethered”  both opened up my eyes to ideas I had never considered about my connection to social networks such as Facebook.  Sherry Turkle was definitely my favorite theorist this semester. Overall my blogging experience for the semester was a good one. 

Saving Me

Bluemem#9-The burden of "Paying it forward"

                 So in my english class we watched a video clip from the movie Paying it Forward. In this movie, “paying it forward” means helping any three people in the world without accepting any kind of reward for your good deed. When someone helps three people, those three people helped are each suppose to “pay it forward” to three other people and so forth. This movie suggests that if everyone did their part and “payed it forward” then the world as a whole would be a better place. When I first heard of this concept I  absolutely agreed with it, but then I thought back to a music video of my of my favorite music groups Nickleback.   

                When the music group Nickleback came out with their song “saving me,” I remember how in love I was with both the song and the video. This video starts off with a man being so distracted by his phone as he crosses the street, that he doesn’t realize an approaching car is about to hit him. Right before the car hits him a stranger comes and drags him out of the way. Right when the stranger drags the man out of the street, the man then starts to see numbers above the head of every person he sees.These numbers are approaching zero and they symbolize how much time a person has to live. So essentially anyone who has the power to see the numbers above someone’s head can try and prevent another person from dyeing if they see an opportunity to do so (this is not always possible like the elderly women entering into the ambulance in the video). BUT then the power to see the numbers above someone’s head is then transferred to  next person who is saved.   

                When I first seen this video, I knew that seeing the numbers is not something I would ever want to live with. It would just depress me to constantly see the numbers over the heads of family and friends get closer and closer to 0. I also know that if I was in this video I would try and save someone’s life if I had the opportunity to do so, but then I would feel bad about the burden I placed on them. (The burden of seeing everyone’s expiration date). I guess this is one example where paying it forward doesn’t always have to leave that satisfying feeling. 

Out of this world

Bluemem #8-There’s no I in team

                As a result of growing up in New York City, it is very easy and almost unavoidable to develop a very “stick to your self” kind of attitude. Everyone always view the people of new york city as mean, grumpy, and selfish, but I look at the people in my city as very busy people who work a lot more than they should and are always fighting through crowds of people to get to work. I mean who wouldn’t get grumpy every once in a while with those kind of conditions. But back to my point about sticking to yourself, in American society, people tend to have an individualistic attitude about work ethic and success. If you work hard and avoid having to depend on people for help, then you will be very successful in life. I must admit that this mentality was my way of life up until I went to High school.

               In high school, one of the clubs that I was really involved in called buildOn, encouraged students to play active roles in their community by engaging in community service and helping out those less fortunate than us whenever possible. They also encouraged us to do a lot of fundraising because the money from our fundraising would go towards building a school in a developing country. Well, during my junior year in High school I was one of eleven students chosen to travel to a developing country in West Africa to build a school. When we arrived and starting building the school, it was clear that trying to do any task on the school site would not be an easy task to do alone. The natives to the village where we stayed however new this and always stopped what they were doing to come and help out someone who needed it. For the two weeks that I spent in in Mali, West Africa, proved to me that society functions a lot better when everyone is willing to do their part. 

                       In my English course, we discussed the ideas of Robert D. Putnam in his piece Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival American Community. In this piece Putnam suggests that in the past societies ran because of civic virtue. People use to believe  that it was their duty and social obligation to keep society going so they we active members of society. People did things not because they wanted money, but because they wanted to impact the greater community. Well my time spent in Africa definitely illustrates civic virtue at its finest. Even though the people in the small village where I stayed did not have many of the luxuries that I am guaranteed as an American citizen, such as free education, their society was able to run much more efficiently and the people seemed a lot more happy than many of the people that I run into at home. I believe that the reason for this is because everyone within their society did their part. As a result of everyone choosing to do their fair share more things are accomplished and the greater society can reap the benefits of everyone’s hard work.  

Living Life in the Fast Lane

Bluemem#7-Living on the Internet?

The college application process. It’s not a memory that I particularly enjoy looking back on. I applied to 29, yes 29 schools. I think its safe to say that my senior year in high school was one of if not the most stressful year of my life. The only good thing about the whole process was going home to acceptance letters everyday. So why am I choosing to write about college? Well I watched the Social Network for the second time in my english class a few weeks ago and the setting of that movie made me reminisce on my first year in college. 

            During my first year in college I remember how excited and I was to finally be on my own and way from my overprotective family. I also remember how addicted I was to sharing everything that was happening in my life on the internet more specifically Facebook. Whenever I was in class, on my way to work, on my way to a friends dorm or writing an essay, I always had to take 1 to two minutes of my time to document what I was going to do on Facebook. It did not matter what the situation was, if I had a lot of work to do or if I was falling behind on homework in classes, I always felt the need to tell all my “friends” on Facebook what was going on instead of just sitting down and getting my work done.   

During the movie the Social Network the character Sean Parker made the comment that “We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're going to live on the internet.” After reading this comment and looking back on  my freshman year I realized how true this statement really is. It seems to me that Facebook overtook my life during my freshman year and I really did live on the internet. If someone wanted to reach me or ask me question all they needed to do was sign onto to Facebook and nine times out of ten I would be on ready to talk. It was also the same situation for a lot of my other friends. I could easily walk over to their dorms to talk about how stressed I am or discuss a confusing homework assignment, but we would always just talk over the internet instead. If I wanted an update on someone’s life, instead of just calling them, I would just go on their Facebook page. Yeah Facebook pretty much over took my life freshman year, but thankfully I learned to control my addiction by sophomore year (or at least I think I do).  

The Surreal Life

Bluemem#6-The Blurred line between what is real and what is unreal

So since it is close to Christmas time, I thought that I would reminisce on my experiences with Santa Clause.  Well, I never really had enough time to believe in Santa Clause(my sisters let me know early on in my childhood that Santa was fake. I mean talk about completely ruining a little girls reality. I remember that day like it was yesterday. It was Christmas eve in the year 1999. I was seven years old and even though I didn’t have a fire place, I just assumed that Santa came into my house through the kitchen window(the kitchen window was in the back of my house). I kept on bothering my older sisters and told them that I was going to get a lot of gifts and that they would receive coal because they had been mischievous a lot for that year. Now since I am the youngest in my immediate family, I always felt obligated to provoke and annoy my sisters all day every day (smiling devilishly). Well that day, my sisters had enough of me and decided to let me in on a little secret. They told me SANTA WAS NOT REAL! 

When my sisters first said this to me, I didn’t believe them at first. I figured that that they were just trying to be mean, but then it got worse. They told me that Santa died a long time ago and that my mother was the one that always bought my gifts, wrapped them up, and placed them under the tree every Christmas eve. Santa was dead? My mom was the one that wrapped my gifts? What about the sleigh, the reindeer? I mean christmas songs didn’t just fall out of the sky, who could really make all of this Santa stuff up. I continued to tell my sister that she was wrong and that she was just mad because she was getting coal for Christmas, but then she took in my mothers room and we snuck into the closet where they couldn’t see us. As my mother and aunt removed toys, gift wrap, and boxes out of several bags, my heart dropped. Maybe my sister was right and Santa was in fact dead. I couldn’t or just plain and simply did not want to believe it. Then a thought ran across my mind. What if my mother was secretly one of Santa’s helpers and Santa just dropped off the gifts to my mom because he did not have a chimney to climb down to my apartment. After me and my sister snuck back out of the room and into the hallway, I told her my thoughts. I guess she had had enough of me for the day because she rolled her eyes walk away and screamed one last time “Santa is not real” before she sat in front of the television. But who cares what she thought, at that point in my life, Santa was Real! 

  The fine line between real and surreal is a topic that my english class covered several times during class meetings. During one of our class meetings, we watched the movie The Matrix and in that movie the character Morpheus states that “If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” I believe that real however extends far beyond what someone can feel, smell, taste and see though. Reality can’t be limited to the five senses because imagination is what creates the next level of reality. Just think about planes, at some point in the past nobody ever though that it would possible to create a way in which people can travel across vast distances in a relatively short amount of time through some flying device. That was something that was imagined, created on paper, and then became a reality years later. Reality is simply all in the head. 

Empty Halls

BlueMem #5 That overwhelming feeling of disappointment when the light at the end of the tunnel is only a room full of fire

               Okay, so one of the most anticipated occurrences in my life would have to be my transition from junior high into high school. My older sister was three years older me and  was going to be a senior in her high school while I was just entering. Her experience in high school was straight out of a movie. She had great grades, was on the cheerleading team, practically knew the whole school, and had “the life of the party” kind of personality. She wanted me to go to her high school, but I decided not to; I didn’t want to be in her shadow. In New York City, most junior high students have to go though an application process to get into the high school of their choice. We get a huge textbook of all the high schools in the city and in this book is a detailed description of the school what it has to offer as far as clubs and extracurricular activities and where it is located. So....Long story short, I didn’t get into my first choice high school and had to settle on my second choice. I was not familiar at all with what was going to be my new high school, but I was still excited. 

               Before I ever seen what would be my new school, I had already planned out how life was going to be for me in my high school. Like my sister, I was going to be on the cheerleading team, have great grades, be a part of as many clubs as possible, and have lots of friends. Like the social network Second Life (a virtual world that mimics living in the physical world), I had created  a hypothetical life (not in a virtual world but in my head) on how the next fours years of my life would be and it looked promising. 

               When I walked into my high school for the first time my expectations were not met, not in the slightest bit. My fantasy of a high school turned out to be one floor inside the building of another school, there were no lockers and whenever I went from one class to the next the hallways were extremely crowded. Over the next four years after I began to  make new friends and become more involved in extracurricular activities, high school got a little better but not that much. I had such high expectations for my life in high school and when they were not met all I wanted to do was hurry up and graduate. My school did not have that many clubs to join, nor did it have any sports team. I got the good grades that I wanted, but everything else I anticipated turned out to be such a disappointment. 

Transitions

BlueMem #4 The start of an addiction  :-/

        Facebook-I remember the first day I ever created an account. I had finally given up on the MySpace movement and was actually fine being off of the internet. When I first learned of Facebook, I really didn't understand what all the hype was about. I just couldn't wrap my head around how this website could possibly be better than MySpace. I mean you could personalize your background on MySpace, have pictures changing on your page, and best of all you could choose a song that almost always represented either your current mood, your current hate for someone or your new found love interest. Facebook didn't give you any of these options therefore I was no interested in creating an account!

                After being disconnected from social websites for about a month, my friends relentlessly harassed me about creating a Facebook account. I really didn't want to though; I mean I really, really didn't want to! Facebook just looked boring to me. After a while though I gave in and finally created an account. I rarely went on in the beginning, but after I started to get into the swing of things I found myself going on Facebook more and more every day. Before I knew it, I was on Facebook at least several times a day and then it just escalated from there to several times an hour. Facebook was like a very addictive drug to me. I had to be connected at all times.

                 I love the whole idea of Facebook- you know giving people the chance to stay connected with old friends and make new ones, but my like for Facebook kind of stops there.  I'd like to say that it changed my life for the better by giving me the opportunity to connect and say connected with new and old friends BUT…………. it didn't. All it did was enhance my procrastinating skills and trying to rid myself of it use to seem impossible. After about two years on the social network I have learned things get really redundant on Facebook really fast and that has reduced my desire to go on Facebook as much as I use to.   In his piece "Growing Up Tethered" Turkle describes the collaborative self as one that needs to connect to complete feelings or thoughts. Well when it comes to any of the social networks such as Facebook or MySpace, this claim has a lot of truth to it. People who are actively on Facebook or MySpace use these sites to evoke some kind of feeling or thought. This feeling or thought can be expressed explicitly or be expressed with a quote or a song. Using myself as an example, my collaborative self needed to be connected to something or someone to express a feeling or thought. Even if I didn't always use Facebook as an outlet, I needed and sometimes still need to connect to something to get emotions out.  

The Painful Text Message

BLUEMEM #3-Inducted into the Exclusive Cell Phone Society

         The first day of Junior High School is a day that I can never forget no matter how hard I try. I had a lot of emotions built up for that day, I was nervous because I did not know if I would end up in a classroom with the friends I had already made in elementary school. I was happy because I got to wear the new pair of sneakers my cousin purchased for me the night before and also a little pissed because my new uniform required me to wear a yellow button down shirt that was as bright as Big Bird’s feathers( I am not a fan of bright colors). BUT!! The thing that made me most happy about about starting Junior High was the fact that I was finally receiving my first cell phone. 

All of my friends already had a cell phone; most of them received their phones over the summer. When the first day of school arrived and my mother handed me over my phone, it felt great to finally have my phone in my possession; it was mine and I was going to use it as much as I could. My middle school didn’t allow students to bring in their cell phones so I had to hide it in my bag and keep it hidden for most of the day. When lunch time finally came, I was able to take out my phone and get all of my other friends numbers. It felt so good to finally be apart of cell phone society. Me and my friends texted each other during lunch time for fun, but we were extremely cautious of our surroundings because if we got caught with our phones they would be taken away from us until the end of the year.

By the end of the school day, I was texting any and everyone I could. As I walked home, I texted my sister telling her how my day went. I texted my best friend telling her that I would call her on the phone later that night and I texted my cousin to inform her that I finally received my first cell phone. It was a great day. I had gotten though my first day of classes, didn’t have any homework and had a phone that I could devout all of my attention to. In the midst of all of my texting however, I failed to acknowledge what was going on around me. While I walked close to the edge of the sidewalk, I had my face completely into my cell phone. When I was finally done with my text message, I hit the sent button and as I looked up, I bumped head on into a pole. My nose was throbbing and I felt a lump start to develop right in the middle of my forehead.

In his writing “The Nostalgia of the Young” Turkle discusses how the desire to constantly be connected to our phone or the internet has become so apart our identities and sense of self that it is almost impossible to rid ourselves of this dependence. My memory of the day when I received my first cell phone supports this idea because as soon as I became apart of what I saw as the “cell phone” society, I could not rid myself of this desire to always be connected. I walked right into a pole and hurt myself because I wanted to let others know so badly that I was now available at their every text.  

Almost Exposed

That awkward moment when you realized you said a little more than you should have!
BLUEMEM #2: That dreaded day in Kindergarten

     In Kindergarten, I had the best teacher. I still remember the first day I ever seen her. She was really petite, had bright icy blue eyes,  blond hair styled in a short bob cut, and the most angelic face I have ever come into contact with in my life. I guess all her features seemed to mesmerize me because I live in a predominately black and hispanic neighborhood and features like hers was something you only seen on the television. Her name was Ms. Bernstein and despite the conditions of my overcrowded elementary school, she made waking up and coming to class everyday something to look forward to. 

During class time, I was always one of the students that participated as much as could with class activities. I remember looking at other students that always had to stay in from recess for misbehaving and thinking that I refuse to be one of those people. If I would ever choose to be mischievous, like when I took the book that someone else wanted from the book shelf right before their hand could get to it or skipping in front of someone in line so that I could get the last slice of pizza for the day, I would make sure not to get caught. In my opinion in my beloved teacher’s eyes, I, Shanna Williamson could do no wrong :-D. That title, the goody two shoes, which I held on to with much pride was almost taken away from me one afternoon.

One day our teacher was upset with the class because the class as a whole was a little more disruptive than usual that day. As a result of the whole classes’s behavior, I remember that we all were being punished and our punishment involved us ALL being forced to stay in from recess. Now, I didn’t think it was really fair to have the whole class punished when the whole class was not being disruptive. I loved reading my pop up books as much as the next five year old, but definitely not during recess! Anyway when my teacher left us in the classroom reading while she went to go use the bathroom, I chose to vent about my frustrations with her harsh punishment to some of my classmates sitting around me. One of my classmates decided that she was going to tell our teacher everything that I had said. I begged her not to but she was pretty adamant on what she was going to do. I felt stuck and as soon as that student turned away from me, Ms. Bernstein walked back into the classroom. I didn’t know how to tackle the situation that i had just placed myself in so I did the one thing that any kindergartner would do when they feel helpless; I CRIED! Thankfully once the student that was ready to snitch on me saw my tears she decided not to tell on me anymore. In Scott Rosenberg’s piece “Putting Everything Out There,” he suggest that “In the end we’re each going to find the compromise between sharing and discretion.” Well that day in Kindergarten I definitely found the compromise between sharing and discretion with the students in my class(especially the one that wanted to snitch on me!). I decided that from that day forward that “Putting Everything Out There” is not always as liberating as it may seem.

Left CLueless

BLUEMEM #1-When I asked them why?, “because he overdosed” was their reply
 HE OD'D! As if a nine year old was really supposed to understand what that acronym stood for! My sisters told me that he Over Dosed on drugs. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but I was aware of the fact that he was not going to come back. He left for college with a bright future ahead of him only to send a dark cloud back through my front door with the news of his death. I didn’t want it to be true and dealt with the pain by watching old videos of him. He was so happy; always laughing, dancing, and playing with his dog. He always invited me over to his house and we even shared the same favorite color. Did I mention that he was great at solving problems? He could find out the answer to any riddle, any mystery, he was a real investigator! I mean he could sit in his chair for no more than 30 short seconds and figure out anything with a given set of CLUES.

                 The shock of his death really took a toll on me. School kept me busy during the daytime but once I got home I didn't know what to do with myself. My sisters had little to no sympathy for me. They would constantly remind me of his death whenever they had the chance and got great joy out of seeing me cry and run to my mother's room. My mother didn't seem to care that much about his death either. She would just dry my tears and angrily tell my sisters to stop provoking me.(BUT of course they never stopped!). I felt so alone in the world; I lost a good friend and no one seemed to care.

                 It took me a long time to a come to terms with his death, but once I was able to do so, life became a lot easier and joyful. Looking back at it now, I guess I can understand why my sisters chose to provoke me so much or why my mother always seemed so nonchalant about the situation. I was essentially creating a huge fuss over an actor on a children's show that in reality was not really dead; Steve from Blue's Clues. In his piece "An Introduction to the Blogs," Barlow argues that humans prefer their real lives no matter how limited or bad it is over the "second life (a virtual world that mimics real world living)." I disagree with this idea because had I been exposed to another life that would have allowed Steve from Blue's clues to live and continue to be in my life, I would have surely preferred to devout most of my time to that world.  I personally believe that when faced with a decision most people like to choose the option that makes them the most comfortable.  In my life during the time when I thought Steve was dead I know I would have opted for the life with him rather than without.

     

         

                         R.I.P. STEVE 

You left me to solve my own problems in the world; you left me clueless. Even though your not really dead, I really did believe you were dead for a long time. You bring back nothing but blue rose memories.

Your Friend,

    Shanna