The Experience of Writing

The experience of writing now versus when Helen Keller wrote "The Story of My Life" is very different. Most obviously for the fact that I am writing with a pen and paper (and now typing online), while she had to write using brail. I would assume, considering I have never attempted to read or write brail, would be almost a completely different experience to the one I am currently having.

Another difference is that Helen would have different constraints put on her. What I mean by that is she was probably not under much of a time constraint to have her book finished. Where as I have a due date to complete this assignment by.

Another reason our experiences would differ is nowadays, most people would prefer to type something rather than have to handwrite it. As I have realized (for who knows how many times) that handwriting can be a huge chore and difficult for others to read. I know that it has become difficult for me to want to handwrite something because I am so used to typing almost everything. In the time when she was writing, there was no such thing as the technology we have today that really just makes our lives easier. In regards to making our lives easier, I know for myself that it is much easier to type something and takes a lot less time to do something when I am using a computer rather than a pen and paper.

The only similarity that comes to mind about these two experiences is that we both have to edit our work. Like any piece of writing, it is necessary to ensure that it makes sense and the reader is able to understand what is being said.

Anonymity Online

I’m sure we’ve all experienced the trouble that the Internet can bring to us. Whether this is through wasting countless hours on social media, a site that displays some quite hilarious cat pictures or through the unpleasant experience of cyber-bullying.

The fact that the Internet protects who we really are in many ways is often the reason behind people feeling like they are capable of being much more honest and often very harsh towards others. This emotional disconnect is often what causes cyber bullying to occur as often as it does. Tragically as we have seen in recent history, it is causing more and more young people to take their own lives , which I think is a terrible shame. People are often bullied because of things that are key components of themselves, sometimes including gender and race.

Those two things are something that we as humans, cannot change about ourselves. These raise the issue of whether or not we choose to become someone else, or take on the image of someone else online to avoid these biases. Although, these things are often deeply engraved into how we react to certain things or come across to people.

For example, a woman and a man would most often react differently to someone posting some sort of offensive sexist joke on the Internet. The same could be said for any sort of racist comment. (Although, I hope everyone would agree that those would be gaining the same sort of reaction from almost any race.) These things would definitely cause a loss of anonymity online in some way. Having complete anonymity online causes huge problems not only to do with bullying but for people who partake in dating websites as well.

There has been a huge phenomenon lately often called being “catfished”. This happens when there are two people who are in an online relationship and one of the people in the relationship is not who they say they are. The anonymity of online can cause huge heartbreak and dysfunction for people who are the ones being deceived. Often these people who are lying about who they are do not even know the person that they are pretending to be. For me, if I found out someone was pretending to be me online, using my name and photo, to engage in anything with another person, I would be incredibly mad. To me, this could also be considered a form of identity theft. Now, as terrible as being catfished might be and as horrible as cyber bullying is, the biggest benefit of anonymity online is allowed people to be more honest.

This honesty without fear of backlash and having people know what you truly think can be incredibly helpful to gaining honest feedback and opinions of people around the world. A person’s view on the world and what is going on around them will forever be affected by the things that make up who we are; the things we can’t change about ourselves, whether that be gender, race or anything similar.

Rant

Like most students here at Mount Royal, along with school I also have a part time job. I work at a Boston Pizza near my house as a host. I deal with a lot of people on every shift and most of the time, there are little to no problems with customers. On Thursdays, everything changes.

As anyone who has worked in a restaurant job before knows, any time there is any sort of special event going on, you get a flood of people.  At my job, this is Thursday nights, which are also known as kid’s night. This means that to bring more kids into the restaurant, we advertise a magician who is there from 5 until 8 pm.

Chaos ensues during that time 3-hour period of time.

Every Thursday night that I work, I feel like I never stop; by the end of my shift, my feet are aching, my back is sore and I’m just exhausted. There are endless amounts of families walking through the door and more than a normal amount of phone calls. This is presumably because no one in their right mind (who doesn’t have a child who enjoys magic tricks and balloon animals) would want to endure the level of noise and mess in the restaurant. I know I sure don’t want to.

Children could possibly be the messiest beings to walk the earth. Table after table after table I find crumbs, bits of crayons, paper left strewn everywhere, napkins and disgusting leftover food on the ground, left behind for me to pick up. It doesn’t help that the servers are so busy with their tables and customers; they don’t have time to clean up the gigantic mess left behind. So of course I am the one who is left to deal with it.

Without cleaning these tables, the people arriving would have nowhere to go and would have to wait, resulting in some not-so-happy families.  Even some people when I ask them to wait so I can go clean a table for them give me some sort of unhappy glance as they sigh and take a seat in the small waiting area. All I want to say to these people is, “would you like to sit a dirty table? I don’t think so” or “sorry that we’re incredibly busy right now, which you can clearly see, and there’s only two of us working tonight and we obviously can’t be everywhere doing everything at once”. Those thoughts always flow through my head when I deal with annoyed customers, but I understandably keep my mouth shut, smile sweetly and do what I have to do.

Another thing about work that kills me, especially on Thursdays is when people call and complain about a take out or delivery order being wrong and then want nothing done about it. I’ve had several people call and yell at me, even though I wasn’t the one who messed anything up and when I suggest they come back in so we can make it right for them, simply refuse and hang up the phone angrily. Sorry that we’re not perfect and sometimes, people make mistakes! It happens.

After working with people in this sort of setting, it makes me a lot more conscious of how I act towards the waiter or waitress at a restaurant. I think everyone should have to have at least one experience of dealing with these crazy people so that I don’t have to deal with them anymore.

A Pleasant Stroll ...

It was a fine Sunday afternoon that I chose to stroll through the mall and browse through the many fabulous stores. I brought along a companion, who, to my delight was happy to wander through the stores, make jokes and keep me company. After killing a few hours through our slow paced, window shopping (much to my wallets delight, I made no purchases), we decided it was time to leave. Now, this is where things began to get weird.

As we were walking along, almost to our destination of the car parked in the crowded parkade, we passed a small shop at the end mall that looked as though it was only frequented by those of the geeky or nerdy variety. Maybe I'm wrong, but in the many times I've gone on adventures through this particular part of the shopping centre, there have been a very select few people in this store who fit the stereotypical definition of nerd. The mean side of my companion and myself came out at this point, making jokes and remarks about the few people we saw in the store, labouring over whatever sort of project they may have been tackling at that point in time.

Once we had laughed at what we thought to be hilarious jokes and made our way through the double doors into the parkade, we rounded the corner and were shocked by what we saw. Now, we weren't nearly as shocked as the person we now faced was. We had come face to face with what appeared to be a young man dressed in full viking gear; helmet complete with horns along with fuzzy, what looked to be leg warmers. This was something I don't think that anyone would expect to see on a busy Sunday afternoon at a shopping mall. This "viking" was shocked to see anyone come around the corner and presumably believed he could just sneak unnoticed to his destination, whatever it may have been. He looked at the two of us with a complete "deer in the headlights", as my companion later described it, look and then scurried on past to whatever viking event he was supposed to be attending.

The shock of this unexpected sight caused neither of us to say a word to each other until we arrived at the car. Both of us mirrored each others looks of utter disbelief at what had just happened. Once we were in the safety and quiet of the car, the laughter and many exclamations of "what was that?" and "what did we just witness?" began.

Now, if anyone could explain to me where this supposed viking was going or what he was participating in that required such a ridiculous outfit, it would really solve the mystery of what at first seemed to be like any other Sunday afternoon.

First Post

Hello world,
This blog has been created with the intention for use in my GNED 1401 class at Mount Royal and is meant to be viewed by my professor and peers.
More to come!