Journal Entry #1: A Day in the Life

While looking at my personal media usage, I am not surprised to see that I am constantly surrounding myself with many different mediums of media. During the day even when my main focus is something not media related, I often let myself be distracted with the media. I also use multiple forms of media at one time (as I write this blog, I am also listening to music and periodically checking my email).

While examining my media usage, I noticed that I frequently listen to music, go on the internet, watch television, watch movies and read magazines. Less frequently I noticed that I also read books and newspapers, talk on the phone and write for leisure.

Listening to music is the media that use the most often. It easy to listen to music while going about other non media related tasks like cleaning or doing schoolwork. I personally often use music as a crutch to get through my schoolwork in a more pleasant way. Going on the internet is a habit that I gradually formed during school. In grammar school I was taught that using the internet was going to be an important part of our future, and in doing so, they made it a large part of my future. Soon I was going online at night to talk to my friends. I began to branch out as more of my schoolwork began to involve research on the internet, and now I use it to keep up with life at home through email and Face book, watch TV shows that I had to miss during the week and keep up with the news around the world (I’m usually more focused on the entertainment aspect of the news). I probably use music and the internet the most frequently because they are easy for me to get to and they are the aspects of the media that I enjoy the most thoroughly.

Television and movies are another aspect of the media I heavily concentrate on. I watch TV mostly for entertainment, keeping up with dramas and comedies that I enjoy, but I also use it to keep in touch with the world. TV is a media I can sometimes leave on in the background while I’m doing other tasks. I really enjoy watching movies, both at the theater and at home. In general I prefer watching movies in theaters, because it allows me to completely focus on the film and not give in to the temptation to multitask. It makes viewing the movie an experience, which I enjoy.

Overall I am not surprised by my amount of media usage, because I am a COM major, and that pretty much what we do, but I am surprised to examine the reasons that I use each media. I see now that I don’t use all media just for enjoyment, and that there is good reason to look at the media as frequently as I do. It helps me to stay in touch with what is going on in the world, which is very important given the field I am concentrating my studies in.