A New Beginning
It’s as if this scene of my life came out of a Michael Bay movie. A Transformers movie to be exact, allow me to explain. In the Transformer movie if you are not familiar, there are cars who transform into some sort of high tech warrior. I’d like to consider myself an unfinished version of a human Transformer that went from being in the shadows of consciousness, lacking awareness and self determination when it came down to technology. You see there was no mindfulness, there was no need. Social media was a thing to do when you plain and simple did not have anything to do. Just scroll and like what you like, scroll pass what you don’t. Then it happened, my first semester attending Channel Islands University as a transfer. With this came a class, a particular one. A class that taught me the value of technology, and made me rewire my perception of the media, and the methods I used to analyze and better yet dissect the information around me. A class I believe all students should take, Transfer Year Seminar.
We began the class choosing a topic we believed to be an important social issue in our lives with the hope of either building or contributing to some sort of bridge to suggest a possible solution, it’s what students do. My choice was the Syrian Refugee Crisis which I regret not one bit. This issue has shown me how little I am doing, with such easy challenges in my life. Nothing compared to being homeless, without doing anything at all. So here we stand with our judgments and stereotypes and continue to fail by simply staying on the outskirts of the situation, miraculously hoping for a solution to fall from the sky. Ladies and gentlemen, if there is one thing I have learned is that we must contribute when we want change, not just simply sit back and hope.
This is where technology comes in. Just like a carbon footprint, we now have a digital footprint. It is safe to say that majority of the world is catching up to this technology movement and are relying on it more and more in our everyday lives. We must no longer rely on the media to speak for the masses as it was before. We must no longer wait a few weeks or months to hear about a certain issue due to its place of value in the medias eyes. Participatory culture has become a movement in our world through technology. We can now connect with someone across the world about our favorite popcorn, and if we analyze it a little deeper than we can now connect with someone across the world about revolting our government.
The most useful knowledge I have learned from this class has surprised me. As a student, I walk into a new class in the beginning of each semester and honestly think I’m going to walk out knowing words, concepts, and most importantly take a tool from there that I did not have before. It is quite contrary in this case. Transfer Year Seminar has made awareness stand out for me the most. It is a quality we all have, a quality of being aware. Never had a given social media, let alone the capstones we can create through participating. It is such a fascinating thing that the depth of the study we conducted about a particular issue at the end of the day transformed me to be a deeper thinker of everything I do with technology and media. All jokes aside when people ask me what I’d like to do with my major I respond; “I want to change the world.” People laugh, almost every time. But now, so do I, at the fact that you honestly believe I can’t do so now with this irreplaceable tool we have like social media.
