That Awkward Moment When...

"You really need to download Snapchat!" Said my friend, Lauren, for the 800th time this week.  

"Fine!" I said reluctantly. I gave in and downloaded the application to my phone. I was not really sure how to work it. 

I went on the app and played with it to try and figure it out. I noticed that you could add your Facebook friends. I had just become friends with the hottest guy in my writing class, Joe Smith, on Facebook. I asked Lauren if it was weird to add him and she said, “What do you have to lose?” She was right. I confidently clicked the check mark next to his name and added him.

I patiently waited for him to approve my request. After what seemed like forever, I finally saw that he accepted it!

Suddenly, a notification popped up on my screen: Snapchat from JohnSmith. I screamed and showed Lauren. We both started jumping up and down. I opened the snapchat and it was a picture of his beautiful face.

“You have to snapchat him back!”

I went to go snapchat him back and noticed he was not on my friends list anymore. I guess I must have accidentally deleted him. Feeling bad, I quickly re-added him. I waited for him to add me back, but I got nothing. I figured he must have fallen asleep, so I did the same.

The next day, I checked again but still no add. Lauren, who seemed to think this was funny, said, “I’m making my status ‘That awkward moment when you add someone on Facebook, accidentally delete them, then re-add them and they don’t add you back.’” I proceeded by throwing my pillow at her. I was dreading seeing him in class. 

Needless to say, it was very awkward on Monday.

Today is (finally) my birthday! I have been counting down the days for this. Especially because I am pretty sure I'm getting the new Iphone, which I have been begging my parents to get me for months.

I head downstairs to the kitchen to find my parents waiting for me at the table.

"Happy birthday, Jess!" I sat down at the table in front of my favorite cake. They started singing "Happy Birthday" to me and I just had a smile on my face.

I shoveled a piece of cake down my throat and awaited my gifts. My mom handed me cards and a huge box. I was a little disappointed because this meant that I was not getting the Iphone.

I unwrapped the wrapping paper off of the box to find a Forever 21 box. But all of a sudden, the box started to ring. I took the top off of it to find an Iphone inside. I jumped up and ran over to my parents and hugged both of them. I couldn’t believe it.

A little later, my mom and I went to a mall that I have never been to before to buy me some birthday clothes. To be honest, the only thing I was paying attention to was my phone. My mom and I walked into the mall and I had not even picked my head up. I heard my mom say something but I was so invested in the phone that I did not really listen to what she said. I nodded my head to make it seem like I was paying attention and just kept walking, still not looking away from my phone.

I finally look up to see that my mom is nowhere in sight. I freaked out, not knowing what to do. Let me tell you, nothing’s worse than losing your mom while you’re shopping. After a while of freaking out, I realized that I had a cell phone now and could call her and find out where she is. I called her and she did not seem too happy. We met up in the food court and I was never so happy to see her. I took this as a lesson to always listen when your mom is talking   

For this blog, I had to go on my personal Twitter account because I do not really post on my school one. I apologize for what you are about to read because it is probably not going to be good. 

Being an education major, you can usually find me in James Hall, whether it be for class or to work on homework. So for my native place, I chose to go to James Hall to work on a group project. I stopped for some coffee before heading off to meet up with my group. We found a place that was kind of quiet and got to work. For the assignment we had to work on, we had no real topic, so we were struggling to come up with what to do it on. We brainstormed for around a half hour until we finally came up with something. We started to jot down what was in our heads onto paper to get a good idea of how were going to present our topic. At this point, the building started to get filled with students getting out of class and meeting up with friends. As the noise level started to rise, my concentration level started to fall. Eventually it started to quiet down and we got back into our work. We figured out what exactly we were doing with our idea and practiced going through it a few times.  After what seemed like hours of working on the project, we finally wrapped it up. 

Thinking of something to do for this assignment was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I was going crazy trying to think of something until I talked it over with my roommates who helped me come up with the idea to go apple picking.
 It was the perfect day to go. The weather was beautiful: sunny and warm with a nice cool breeze. We left at around 11:30am. Everything seemed to be going good. However, things were not going according to plan. We put the address of a place into the GPS and it was saying that it was 50 minutes away. I was not going to drive that far. We Googled other placed and found one that was open (because most apple picking farms were not open on  Sundays) Unfortunately, the place we were planning on going to was not open until next week (I may or may not have had a freak out at this point). We went back onto Google and called before driving there to make sure they were open and they were!
We drove to the place, which was only about 10 minutes away, and started off on the adventure. We got our baskets and headed out into the field of apple trees. I was on a mission to find the perfect apple. After about a half hour of searching, I found it. 
After we finished picking our apples, we decided to check out the rest of the farm. There was a store where they sold things such as fresh apple cider, apple cider donuts, and other fresh produce. After going in the shop we went to the back and saw a bunch of things to play on and take pictures with. Obviously the kid in me wanted to go and play. We played around and took lots of pictures. 
All in all, this was such a great experience. I had so much fun being outdoors with my friends and just enjoying the nature around us. I'm actually trying to be a more active person and not just sit at home watch television and play on my phone, so this was the perfect activity for that. That is basically what I got from these readings and this assignment. 
"But real adventures, I re­flected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must he sought abroad." This quote from An Encounter is so true. To be able to experience an adventure, you need to get off of your butt and go do it. 

   I was always a believer in telling stories that you have personal affiliations with. When you write a story that you have personal experience with, you can put more perspective and emotion into it. Many of my writings have been some sort of experience that I have dealt with or that I have seen someone deal with. 
           I definitely enjoy writing personal stories more than any other. Pagnucci writes that personal stories help us to hang on to memories and details and they help us to understand ourselves better. He gave great examples of this in "Living the Narrative Life."
           As for the article by Onjattje, I was not as impressed with this writing. I found it to be not as interesting, but I did like how he switched from narrative form to poem. 
          As a whole, I did find these articles interesting. I most definitely agree with the fact that person experiences enhance writings.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, text messaging and many more. All of these ways of communicating have a huge impact on us, even if we don't realize it. We are so used to communicating through social networking and texting that it affects they way we right and talk. I will sometimes catch myself saying abbreviated words (Perf as if perfect and awks as in awkward). This is especially shown while typing out an email or a paper for class. Because I am so used to writing in social networks, I tend to overlook the things I write, because the way I type and talk is just a natural thing. Things like autocorrect is so familiar that I will be typing a paper or email and will not realize I spelt something wrong because I am just used to it being corrected for me by my phone. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way =(.
Another big effect is that any big event in my life, I feel the need to tweet about it. Even small things, like my bowl from Chipotle or my Starbucks drink, I will post a picture about it on Instagram. Social media is the mail form of communication and it consumes my thoughts constantly. 
All in all, you just have to be aware of your recipient. Be aware of who your message is going to and make sure you read everything over before you send or post it! 

     With the question presented in front of me, an obvious answer pops into my head: YES! Technology is the biggest distraction there is. There are many occurrences of how I am a victim of being distracted by technologies. For example, I start off every morning by playing on my phone and going on all of my social networks (this could take up to a half hour).  Another prime example is  while doing homework on my laptop, I always seem to click off of my word document and onto websites such as Facebook or YouTube. Then next thing I know, it is 10:00 pm and no homework has gotten done.
     With all of this being said, it is pretty apparent that I am a bit addicted to technology. But I have learned some tricks to I am not as distracted. For instance, if I have a reading for a class, I will always print it out. That way, I can't click off of the reading and onto another website. I will also turn my phone off or put it somewhere out of reach for a while. Another trick is to use technologies as a reward system. For example, I will say to myself that I can't answer a text until I have finished reading a page or writing a paragraph. This forces me to getting work done faster because I want to be able to use my phone.

After reading the articles "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" and "Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently?" by Marc Prensky, I can safely say that I am a digital native. Since I was born in the year 1992, I have grown up with technology my whole life. Using technology came very easily to me from a young age. I loved playing video games with my brothers or chatting with my friends on AIM. Watching television at night with my family was also a fun thing we all liked to do together. 
        Technology is all around us and everyday we get closer to new ones being invented. From now on, children growing up will all be digital natives, as well. We are in a world where you can search the internet wherever you go and be able to do it through a pair of glasses. It amazes me how far technology has come, and I can't wait to see what the future brings.