For this activity, write a brief (500-600 words) essay in which you reflect on how technology intersects with your own identity. This may mean thinking about how your social media use or online gaming shape who you are. It may mean choosing to think carefully about one particular technology: something mundane like a smart phone or car, or something a bit more potentially humorous like the toilet or spanx, or something nostalgic like vinyl records or instant cameras. The point is to reflect about how technology informs, complicates, benefits, constrains, etc. your sense of yourself.
With this kind of essay, my advice is to pick one particular technology. As you might have discovered with our previous activities, you’re being challenged to take seemingly broad categories and think very specifically about them. Too, I would highly suggest picking something that actually matters to you and that might not be obvious to others. Social media, for example, will be an easy target for this activity, but it’s also a potentially very cliched route to take.
Similarly, strive to talk about yourself in specific ways. Choose some aspect of your personality, history, education, character, beliefs, etc. to reflect on. You are, in many ways, “boundless,” so don’t try to stuff everything in a 500-word essay.
Though it is not very long and it is reflective, treat this essay as you would any other essay. Aim to have a clear, compelling main claim. Discuss specific, concrete details. The essay should be well-organized. Find ways to show your reader how you’re feeling and not just tell your reader how you’re feeling. Don’t just say, for example: “I worry about how much I compare myself to other people on Instagram.” Say: “I can’t look away: A sunny beach where the golden setting sun glints off cresting waves. My cousin seems to always find time to soak in the sun. No one but firs and pines for miles from the vantage point of the snowy peak. A former high school classmate posts regularly on his solo backcountry adventures. The packed house parties. The laughing friends around a fire pit. Why do I always feel like I’m somehow missing out?” – And even this example is starting to stray into cliche territory. This essay is about your sense of yourself, so push yourself to say something more than what could apply to any other random person.
Finally, you are free to discuss texts from the course, especially if one or more of them serve as some kind of inspiration. This isn’t, however, a close reading activity, so make sure to keep the focus on your sense of yourself.
There will be a peer review connected to this activity.
The goals of this activity are:
- to practice key writing habits: crafting paragraphs, essay organization, main claim construction, using specific details
- to demonstrate a developing sense of technology
- to reflect on how course topics interact with identity
