Digital Media Literacy – Erin Giles

On the car ride home from Middlebury, my mom asked me a question that I hadn’t really thought about up until now. She said, “Was Middlebury easier or harder than what you expected going in?” After being accepted to Middlebury, I heard numerous stories from people all expressing their love for the school. Along with those stories, I also heard a few that talked about the enormous work load and the rigorous classes. My senior year of high school, I had an incredibly tough schedule. I took four APs as well as another class which was around the same level of rigor. After taking all of these classes and surviving, I thought that I was well prepared for what lay ahead.

Looking back now, I can see that I was wrong. I underestimated how tough it was going to be to receive good grades at a school like Middlebury. I am not saying that I did not enjoy this semester because I did; I am just a bit surprised as to how hard college really is. Even with my crazy work load, I would not trade my first semester experience for anything. I met a ton of great people and was taught by some of the best professors in the world. All in all, I feel incredibly blessed to have the chance to attend Middlebury and I look forward to what’s to come.

As I sit on the break bus bound for Boston, feelings of irritation and anger surge through me. The bus left at 4:30 and was expected to arrive at South Station around 8:30. It is 8:30 right now and we are still 45 minutes away from South Station. Unfortunately for me, Boston is not my final stop. I live in Maine so I have to take another bus that goes to Portland, a bus that leaves at 9:15. Over the past four hours, I have watched the bus fall more and more behind schedule and now it is official, I am going to miss my bus to Portland. The next bus that runs to Portland isn’t until 10:15 so it looks like I will be spending some time in South Station.

This was certainly not how I expected my night to go. As of this morning my family was coming to meet me at South Station, we were going to have dinner together, and then I was going to go home and see my dog and my boyfriend. Now I will not be home until at least midnight. Transportation is great in general, but on days like these, it frustrates me like no other.

When learning about this assignment, I was a bit nervous. I had never taught a class before and I am not the best with public speaking. However, after a minute of teaching, I relaxed and really enjoyed myself. My partner and I’s experience started out a bit rocky with not receiving a response from our teacher and later finding out that she was no longer able to host us. The day before the lesson plan was due, we found out that another teacher was going to host us and we were no longer teaching math, but english. This was a bit of a curveball, but ended up working out very well. The teacher that we worked with was incredibly helpful and helped the process run very smoothly. One of my main concerns going into the lesson was that the students would be very shy and quiet. If I was a 7th grader and two college students came into my class, I wouldn’t be very talkative or outgoing; however, to my surprise the kids were very interactive and full of energy. Watching all twenty of them collaborate on a Google Document together was really interesting and fun. At first the kids were having a tough time working together and the majority of them were fooling around with font size and color. After about five minutes or so they began to get more serious and ended up creating a paragraph that was very well written. Both Norris and I were very surprised with the quality of their writing.

Looking back, I find it a bit ironic that we were teaching the students about collaboration and this tool was exactly what Norris and I had to do in order to complete this lesson. Finding time to meet up and work on our lesson plan was a bit challenging, but everything worked out in the end. In addition to collaboration, communication is key to a great lesson. We worked with our teacher on our lesson plan and she really helped us to decide what was important and how to get our message across to her students. We also had to communicate with one another about who would do what and make sure we were both on the same page. One reason the lesson went so well was because we knew that we both had each other’s backs if the other got stuck. Even though the path to our lesson wasn’t perfect, I really think our lesson went well. After teaching the class, I felt very accomplished and was happy that everything ended up coming together. Not only did the students learn something, but I learned a lot about the challenges of working in groups and coming up with a lesson plan.

When I first stepped foot into high school on the first day of school, I was incredibly excited for the next four years of my life to begin. High school meant freedom, driving, football games, and many more privileges. Along with all the great things came the added stress, increase in homework, and the importance of grades. However, in general high school was an exciting change.

Looking back, I see how minuscule the change was in comparison to the transition from high school to college. When you go to college, you leave everything that you have ever known to live in a small dorm room with a complete stranger and learn from some of the best professors in the entire country. For some people, the change is even more dramatic. One of my friends decided to attend college in Tennessee. This requires a plane ride and is much more difficult to return home. Lucky for me, Middlebury is only four and a half hours away. I can come home for the holidays and even for a long weekend. Even though I took four APs my senior year and another class that was equivalent to an AP, the amount of homework and studying required to do well on tests is significantly more than what I am used to. Here, you have nobody to motivate yourself but you. You are alone and are solely responsible for how your future turns out. If you choose to party every night and not do homework, then it is your fault when you don’t get into Harvard Law. However, it also works the other way. When you work your butt off and get into your dream graduate school or land the job you have always wanted, you have yourself to congratulate. All in all, I believe college is what you make of it. I have heard many people say that college is some of the best four years of their life. To quote Eminem, “if you had one shot, or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted. One moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?

It has been almost 70 days since I have been home and it is finally starting to hit me. Going into college, I was almost positive that I was going to experience severe homesickness. I had heard lots of horror stories of people who were so homesick they cried every single night and begged their parents to come and get them. The captain of my softball team my freshmen year was an incredible three sport athlete. She was a great student and seemed like she had it all together. Come to find out, she was incredibly homesick her entire first semester of college. It got to the point where her parents were worried about her safety. My family and I are incredibly close and we do everything together, which is why I feared being very homesick.

Surprisingly, I have not felt homesick at all up until now. To be honest, I think it is due to the fact that I have no time to think. When I am not in class, I am either playing softball, doing homework, or studying for my upcoming exams. The only time I have felt homesick was when my brother turned 15 and had a family party at my house. My mom sent me videos and lots of messages telling me how much she missed me and how the parties weren’t the same without me. With that one exception, I have been doing very well. However, recently I have found myself missing home, my friends, and my brother and sister who I have not seen in over two months. During fall break, I chose to fly to Maryland instead of going home. I do not regret my decision, but I wish I could have had a few days at home as well. As exams are beginning to pile up and the material is getting harder, I am feeling the pressure. I am still trying to figure out how to balance my time so I get all of my school work done, while still managing to practice softball, workout, and have a social life. Needless to say, I am counting down the days until Thanksgiving break.

This past weekend for fall break, I traveled to the University of Maryland. As I headed there, I didn’t know what to expect. The school is very different than Middlebury, with over 22,000 students and being located only twenty minutes outside of Washington D.C. Surprisingly, I really liked the school and the atmosphere.The campus was very pretty with all brick buildings and I did not feel like it was too crowded. The sport’s facilities were huge and very nice. When I was younger, I always wanted to go to a school with D1 sport’s teams where the student section was huge and the teams were dominant. As I grew up, I realized that I liked smaller schools better, but it was still nice to be able to see what my old “ideal school” would have been like. One major difference between Maryland and here was the amount of diversity. Forty percent of the student population is non-white and there was a very noticeable difference from the population here at Middlebury. Also the food selection was very different. In the main food court there were places like McDonalds, Sbarro, Auntie Anne’s, Panda Express, and Chick-fil-A. If you took a ten minute walk away from campus, you came to a strip of restaurants and bars. The strip included pizza places, Chipotle, as well as my personal favorite ColdStone. Even though I really enjoyed switching it up a little and eating more mainstream, I am very thankful that Middlebury does not have these options. I enjoy being able to eat meals from the dining hall rather than pay for food and consume an enormous amount of calories every meal. Overall, I really enjoyed my trip and I would love to go back. However, I definitely made the right choice in coming to Middlebury.

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Unfortunately, the timing of my digital media fast was not ideal. This past week was a very tough five days with three exams ranging in economics to spanish. In order to prepare for these exams, I stayed in last weekend. I was really looking forward to going out with my friends on Friday and Saturday night, but unfortunately my sickness didn’t allow it. I haven’t been feeling well the past couple weeks, but with my hectic week, my sickness seemed to progress and get a lot worse. Instead of having a great weekend, I had to lay in my bed for an entire day with no ability to talk to anyone or even watch Netflix. I woke up at 9am on Saturday and had to text my team captain and tell her I didn’t feel well enough to make our softball lift. I texted my friends and my parents to let them know that I wouldn’t be available for 24 hours and turned my phone off at 9:30. I then went back to bed and woke up at 2pm. I woke up and baked brownies and sugar cookies with a few of my friends and then went back to bed at 7. I slept until 9 and turned my phone back on to find 30 text messages and 12 emails waiting for me.

I was actually very surprised at how easy it was for me to not use technology. I would have liked to talk to my friends or watch TV while I was sick and laying in bed, but I did not even find myself tempted to turn my devices on. I think the hardest part about not having my phone was feeling like I was disconnected from everyone. As I mentioned before, the timing for this experiment was not ideal and I realize now that I shouldn’t have left it until last minute. A couple days ago, my great grandmother had heart surgery which failed. She has come to terms with the fact that this is her time to go and was transferred to a hospice house. I am pretty close to my great grandmother and my mom is very close to her. My mom is having a very hard time with the recent events and I felt bad not being able to be there for her. My biggest fear, however, was that I was going to turn on my phone to find out that she had passed away while I was digital media fasting. I would have felt horrible that I was unavailable. Although this is an extreme case, I believe it shows how important digital media is to us today.

Overall, I would say that the digital media fast was easier than I thought, but if I had to sum up the experience in one word I would call it inconvenient.

As I’m sitting in the library on a Saturday night while nearly everybody else at Middlebury is partying, I’m thinking about how tough this upcoming week is going to be. So far my time at Middlebury has not been stress free, but I have not yet had a week where I was so stressed that I burst into tears or started to pull my hair out. However, I believe that week is approaching. Next week, I have three exams: a Microeconomics exam on Wednesday night, an Ecology and Evolution exam on Thursday night, and a self scheduled Spanish exam on Friday. Along with all these exams, I have regular classes and softball to worry about. So instead of going out with all of my friends last night and tonight; I am currently in Davis Library with the other five people who decided to stay in on a Saturday night as well.

After just waking up from an hour nap, I can honestly say that I don’t know how anybody could survive college without naps. Now I am sure that I have an earlier schedule than most people, four 8am classes, but that was not by choice. Looking into the future and considering biology as a potential major, the Ecology and Evolution class that I needed to take was only offered at 8am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. After pairing my 8am class with another class at 9:05, I am wiped out. By 10am, the time that I would be sleeping until without classes, I already have two classes under my belt.

However, the early mornings combined with the late nights are killer. On the second day of classes, I was in the library until it closed at one in the morning and two nights ago, I was up until two. The only solution to sleep deprivation is plain and simple: naps. They can help to improve focus, gain more energy, and be a happier person overall. So if you are not napping on a regular basis, I would highly advise you to start. You will soon notice that they make a HUGE difference.

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The “freshmen fifteen,” three words feared by college students all around the country. As college cafeteria food improves, the will power of students diminishes. Middlebury for example has quite an array of options for students. With three dining halls that offer an enormous amount of options, it is nearly impossible to not find something that you love. For example, Ross Dining Hall has a couple main entrees for dinner, but also has pizza every night. If you are not happy with the steak and potatoes that are being offered, you have another great option. Along with pizza, all three dining halls contain a salad bar throughout the day as well as fruit. Soda machines contain almost any type of drink you could want and the chocolate milk is heavenly.

After finishing your main meal, there is still more to come. The desserts are incredible, ranging from German Chocolate Cake to Banana Cream Pie. Every day there is a new dessert and every day that dessert never fails to impress me. Although the desserts are great, most days I like to go with a simple ice cream cone. My biggest weakness is the ice cream machines that are always open and inviting me to have some. The chocolate sauce, caramel, and sprinkles do me in and I find myself having ice cream every single night.

Lucky for me softball is starting up soon and I will be working out almost every day; however if I didn’t have softball, I would be in serious trouble and on track for gaining the freshmen thirty.