In August of 2003 I was a freshman in high school. I was sheltered from having attended a private, catholic school for nine years, but made the decision to attend a public high school where I was most definitely no longer sheltered. I wore a pink Tinkerbell shirt to orientation for goodness sake. The Tinkerbell shirts soon went away and I was becoming a more mature 14 year old (insert laugh emoji here). This was the year I first started using social media, besides having used email and AIM. I created my Myspace account and from then on have been using some sort of social media consistently since then. Currently and regularly I use Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest. I do have Twitter on my phone, but I rarely ever use it or open the app. Out of those main 4 I use Facebook the most. This is because of the number of people I am connected with, the updates I see on the lives of my friends and family members, and the ability to sell items on buy/sell/trade groups. I use Instagram mostly just for the filters so I can then upload them onto Facebook and I almost never scroll through my Instagram feed. I check Snapchat once a day (more if I am sent something) and I send snaps throughout the day maybe once or twice a week. I check Pinterest maybe twice a week, but I never post anything or create boards. I used Twitter and Myspace years ago, but have stopped for various reasons. I stopped using Myspace because I replaced it with Facebook. I stopped using Twitter because Facebook sort of took over my social media life; I didn’t have much of a reason to keep scrolling through Twitter. What I like about social media can be explained very easily. I like how it is instant and in the moment. My immediate family lives in California so when my mom goes on a hike with my twin sister I can see pictures as they’re hiking through Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. This is the main reason why I like social media. It also allows me to feel close to my family when they are so far away. Social media makes it easy to view and send pictures and to stay updated on the lives of those who you may not see or talk to every day. While I do like social media, I also have problems with it. I don’t like how I am constantly checking Facebook. The app is so easy to access that anytime I am bored I can just refresh my feed to view something new. I try leaving my phone in the other room or deactivating my Facebook page, but that never lasts long. Social Media has changed communication for me by making my communication much less verbal. If I see something at the store that my boyfriend might want I will snap him a pic of it and tell him to let me know if he wants it. If I haven’t talked to my sister in a few days I will snap her a pic of something in my life or post something on her Facebook wall instead of picking up the phone to call her. When I am selling something on one of the buy/sell/trade sites I do all of my communication through messenger rather than on the telephone. Is it easier? Maybe. My top two sites I use right now are Facebook and Pinterest. I should also classify Instagram as one of my favorites because this is where I put filters on pictures to send to Facebook. My boyfriend and I are about to start renting a three bedroom house and each get a room to design for ourselves, plus our bedroom so Pinterest has been a huge help to me in that department. Facebook on the other hand seems like it has just become a part of my life and I’m okay with that. It is somewhat hard to think about how many times I check Facebook, but if I can see pictures of my dad finishing his marathons or videos of my one year old cousin walking then I can live with how many times I open the app. When I was younger I used social media more for myself. I would post pictures from parties in high school and update my Myspace “top eight” when I had gotten into fights with friends. Now, I use it more to see what everyone else in my life is up to.
I really just want to get a more clear understanding of using social media in a professional manner. I definitely need to clean up my LinkedIn and this class is a sure way of doing so. I have a friend who was a social media manager for a website where people would post a picture of something they wanted and others would “hunt” and find where they could buy it. She was always holding contests, updating content on their social media sites and live streaming from conferences or events she was attending. I think getting a more clear understanding of using social media professionally might help me to decide on what career path I might take.
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On November 4, 2011 I met my best friend and the love of my life, online. It was by chance; my work friend had downloaded a dating app onto my phone after he broke his own and I created a profile for myself while I was bored on my lunch break. I didn’t know what I was doing clearly because I received a message from a man named Torey from Omaha, Nebraska. Immediately after our first conversation I knew something was special about him and I deleted my profile and the app from my phone. On his end, he was home sick from school the day he downloaded the app which he had heard about from some of his football buddies. For two years we called, Facebooked, texted, emailed, FaceTime’d, and Skyped each other. Through FaceTime I got to see he was real (and not a Catfish) and I even got to meet his closest family members. He wasn’t a creep trolling for girls on a dating app; he was a man I was falling in love with. I got to know him through technology, but there wasn’t always a screen separating us. Well, technically there was, but I was able to actually see his face and his facial expressions. I got to see him laugh, smile, and sometimes, when he was at his worst, cry. On August 14, 2013 I moved from my home in Marin County, California to live with Torey in Omaha, Nebraska, after not having the chance to meet him in person. (We never had the time to take off work, and not enough money to get from point A to point B.) Although I knew this was risky, there was so much technology that had confirmed he was who he said he was. After two years of talking to him and video chatting with him I felt comfortable enough to take that risk, especially after I got my acceptance letter from Creighton University. I would have never applied to Creighton if I hadn’t met Torey; so with going back to school I knew this was the adventure I was supposed to be a part of. Almost three years later and we are happier than ever. We have been living together for over a year, and will be moving into our second apartment in Papillion in the end of September. In December of 2013 we even got to take a two week vacation to California so he could meet my family for the first time and they loved him, for the most part. My dad understandably still has issues with the way I handled this. There are many drawbacks of a life and relationships lived online. You don’t get to touch or feel or spend time with the other person. You don’t get to smell them, or go on dates, or share experiences with them. You could even be talking to someone who isn't actually the person you think they are. In my case, I was extremely careful as well as very lucky. I made sure to get all the details of his life, and made sure they checked out. I talked to his family members, and got daily pictures of him so I knew he wasn't stealing someone else’s pictures and, above all, I FaceTime’d with him at least once a day. On the contrary, I believe the biggest benefit to an online relationship is that you do get to know someone in a more personal way (if the person is being genuine). I gained something that is so important to me. I got to know him as a person, at his core; his soul. I got to know every little detail about his life and his stance on every issue from abortion to whether he eats his pizza hot or cold. The best part, and most special part, I think, is that there isn’t any sexual pressure in the relationship because you aren’t physically together. You get to be exactly who you are, if you are being true to yourself and the ones you are talking to online.
I am in this class because of a few reasons. One, I love learning about any topic related to journalism. I sat with my adviser trying to create my fall 2014 schedule, and I asked her if I could take all journalism classes. She laughed and said no. Two, I had the pleasure of interviewing Carol for an article I was writing for the Creightonian last semester, and she was wonderful. I hadn’t taken any of her classes yet, but enjoyed that short period of time we spent together. Lastly, it was a credit I could use to fulfill my journalism requirements. My experience with media started very early on. When my twin and I were around 4 years old we got our first mac desktop; although we usually only used it for school work and playing games. Now, I am most often connected to social media – Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. I get all of my news from my phone through the weather channel, CNN, and my hometown paper the Marin Independent Journal among many other avenues. I tend to get a lot of news and information from Facebook. The news and information might not always be true so I usually Google the news and get the information from a credited source. I do find myself always on a screen when I am bored. Whether it’s my laptop, iPad, or iPhone I'm constantly checking them. I gravitate more towards my phone for quick information because of the easy access. I use my laptop strictly for school work, and I use my iPad for watching television shows on mediums such as Netflix and Hulu Plus. The only part of news media that frustrates me is when it comes to reporting on celebrities. You always see “from a source” who is usually anonymous. It bothers me how people can write about someone’s life when they essentially don’t have all the facts. This has been a huge debate from my peers and me when it comes to Queen B (Beyonce) and her husband Jay-Z. There have been numerous reports that he is cheating, and that they are getting a divorce. As a huge Beyonce fan I dispute any of these claims. I think that news media is all about getting viewers or getting someone to view their blog or webpage. On the other hand, I think that journalists, or people that refer to themselves as journalists take their job more serious. Journalists check the facts and ethically won’t print something that isn’t true. I have zero experience with programming; however I am in a Computers and Scientific Thinking class so as the semester goes on I will have more of an idea on what programming is all about. I think it’s awful how connected we are as a world, especially in America. Children especially are glued to the television, their tablets, and want a cell phone at a younger age. Instead of playing with sidewalk chalk outside or having a lemonade stand during the summer I’ve seen a lot of children rather stay inside glued to their devices. I think the only benefit of having the world so connected is that we get information incredibly fast. When there is a tornado watch, an alert can be sent to your phone from the Weather Channel. When there is an Amber Alert, the alert is directly sent to smart phones. Technology is only becoming more advanced.
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PaigeCreighton University Archives
December 2017
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