Welcome to My Life, a Beaker of Bizarre

According to Marc Prensky, a “Digital Native” is anyone around the age to be in college (as of 2001) or younger. These people have grown up in the digital age where they have always had some form of technology accessible to them. They play more video games and watch more TV than they do reading books. They go to the internet as a first option when researching rather than a book or another person. They prefer to play games rather than doing actual work. A “Digital Immigrant” is someone in older generations who did not grow up with things such as the internet or computers readily available. Instead, they have had to adopt these into their lives much later and had to learn to use them after having already lived life without them. They appreciate a good book or long walks outside more than the average Joe who was born later than the ’80s.  Using the age definition, I technically fall under the classification of Digital Native. I was born the year Prensky wrote his paper. I grew up with...

This picture was taken at my boyfriend's brother's wedding. He remains very close with his family and so we go to family dinners quite often. I have not connected with any of his family on online platforms but I have managed to form a good relationship with all of them despite this.    Currency, I am in a committed relationship that has been going on for almost a year in a half. Moving to Corvallis from my hometown in New Mexico, I knew only one person from my graduating high school class who was also moving to Oregon. I had no other friends or even family remotely close by. Being an introvert, it has always been really hard for me to make new friends, especially since everything my freshman year was online.  A month before I left New Mexico, my best friend had moved away. On one of our multi-hour late-night phone calls, she decided to sign me up for a dating app as a joke despite me being against them because one of her friends had signed her up the night before. Origina...

 I think every social media platform has its own benefits and drawbacks. For example, Snapchat is an online platform that allows you to share pictures and videos with specific friends, groups, or everyone you are friends with on the platform through a story. Some benefits include real-time updates on what friends are doing, more personal communications, and the ability to have easy video conventions with people while still not requiring both people to be online at the same time. However, there are some issues with this. One of the major drawbacks is the limited time for which certain messages and such are available to be viewed. After an image is viewed, it's gone forever and no longer saved in a chat log as with regular text messaging. Another issue could be with privacy. A user may not be aware of how much information, such as address and other locations is being shared in videos or with the map feature if they are not aware it is even on. This is a lot of private information th...

     Hello, my name is Taylor and I am from a small town called Rio Rancho which is just outside Albuquerque, New Mexico ( fun fact, it took me almost 18 years to be able to spell Albuquerque correctly, kind of embarrassing ) . I was born and raised in the Albuquerque/Rio Rancho area and lived there for 18 years before I moved here to Oregon for college . I originally started a degree in ocean science before I quickly decided that was too easy and switched to advanced chemistry, because who doesn't switch to a more difficult major, right ?       In my free time, I love playing and listening to music . I play the piccolo, concert flute, and alto flute. I originally started on the c flute almost 10 years ago and played it all the way through high school . I joined my high school marching band and did that for all 4 years and then joined the marching band here at Oregon State when I arrived and my main instrument is now the piccolo .     ...