Mangione iExamen 1

iExamen 1

            Upon receiving this assignment, I engaged the task of observing the way I communicate with the people around me with the assumption that not much observation would be necessary to realize how heavily I depend on communication to get through the day.  In the reality of this assignment, I came to the conclusion that with everything I do, in one way or another, I was always in contact with someone.  From the moment I woke up, I immediately locate my phone to text my girlfriend with the hope of being the first person to tell her “Good morning”.  With the burdening task of getting out of bed, I get ready for my first class with another one of my roommates.  I observed him eating cereal at the kitchen table and gave him a tired and unenthusiastic “What’s up?” with a yawn to shortly follow.  Studying his body language, it was obvious he was just as tired as me, so we ate a quiet breakfast, only to hear the tiring thoughts in our minds.  While walking to my first class on this Monday morning, I recognized my brother also making his way to class from Lange Court, and so we decided to walk together, exchanging stories about how we spent our Sunday night.  I spent my first class, history, in silence.  After class though I made my way up to the front of the classroom to get some key terms I missed the definitions for in class.  I make this a casual routine after this specific class.  I don’t ask my teacher, Mr. Lutjens, for direct definitions, but report what I understood so it doesn’t come off that I wasn’t listening to his lecture.  Between my first and second class, I found myself occupied by a multitude of technology, including my e-mail, texting, Facebook, and playing Words With Friends on my iPhone.  In one way or another, this was my attempt at keeping up with society and my friends, trying to discover the latest news and gossip in my friends’ lives.  By these means of communication, texting was the most direct and focused format of conversation, every conversation with a topic on mind.  Facebook and the game apps on my iPhone were used as a means of keeping myself occupied to provide entertainment during the dull hours between classes when I’m not working on schoolwork.  The time of the day when I unplugged myself from all electronic communication didn’t really affect me as much as I thought it would.  Keeping this in mind, I planned on going to my girlfriend’s apartment to pass the time, and with her there, this hour was passing by smoothly.  I then found myself knocking on another one of my friend’s doors to catch up with him, where I observed him doing his homework as we talked about whatever was happening in our lives.  When telling him that I was unplugging from all technology for the hour, he commented, “O wow, that sucks man”, but I assured him it was not that bad.  I lost track of time and went over my hour limit from unplugging myself from technology from spending time there with my friend, and soon made it back up to my dorm.  Upon returning to my phone, I immediately located my phone to see who may have texted or called me, but this was not the case.  I had not dodged talking to anyone that hour; the only thing I may have avoided was playing video games on the Xbox.  For this system, I have a headset, which I use mainly to trash talk my opponents unfortunately, as I am very competitive when it comes to video games.  This exercise made me realize how heavily I depend on technology as a means of communicating with society, and this goes for much of my current generation.  It is no lie to say that without technology, like texting and phone calls, it would be hard to find the motivation to go out of your way to find and talk to someone when those needs occur.  By losing the technology aspect of my life for that one hour, I recognized that I had more of a reason to leave my dorm room to keep my life busy.  I had no interest in sitting in my room alone when all of my roommates were out, and had no concern for taking a nap, so I found myself feeling more productive.  All in all, I found this to be the most insightful part of the exercise in recognizing the ways I communicate with the people around me, and I would be happy to unplug myself from technology in the future, as this was not as hard as I thought it was going to be.