I thought this day in class was fascinating. I definitely used the chat room the most for communicating with the rest of the class, and I think I was in the majority in that respect. The chat room had the quickest turn around time, and I know I picked it because it was the closest thing we were going to get to a real life conversation out of the forums offered. I did tweet once and got a few retweets which made me feel good, but I wasn’t tweeting for the validation; I just wanted to try something else since the chat room got out of control and difficult to keep up with at points. I also only sent in one email and read that the least because I found that the most cumbersome mode of communication available to us. I think by the end of class we had a good flow going.

My expectations at the beginning of class and my impressions of the experience aligned a little bit but differed in some ways too. I figured I’d probably contribute and keep up with the dialogue but also still browse other sites at the same time. I did basically that, but, especially when the video was going and we started commenting on the fact that we were very overstimulated, I found myself prioritizing or choosing the places where I wanted to be stimulated and actively not paying attention to others. For example, because I was so focused on the chat room and my other tabs (I had Facebook, Twitter, Zappos, Gmail, Blackboard, Pinterest, Sephora, and Free People open), I didn’t even attempt to keep up with the second film. I knew that if it was anything like the first one, if I missed even one part I could potentially be very lost, and I didn’t feel like putting all of my attention into it. The video also gave me a bit of a headache, but that also may have been due to the fact that I refused to turn down my music I was listening to on Spotify out of stubbornness. I was getting so hyped up by everything going on that I checked out and picked one or two things to keep up with.

One thing I thought was interesting was that multiple people said that they were way more talkative on this day with only virtual communication than they have ever been in the class thus far. I am a very talkative person and while I do think before I speak, I almost always err on the side of expressing my thoughts even if they come out not as I had hoped rather than not saying anything at all. I learned that I could be in the minority since a lot of people sounded like they don’t speak as much in class because they are worried about sounding dumb or because they don’t like the sound of their own voices. People who feel this way are more able to maintain communication with others these days because all of the virtual outlets that are available to us. We only used four and look how much we were able to maintain a constant stream of dialogue. I feel like there are so many big personalities in the class that we don’t get to see as much because people are afraid of the way they will come off to the rest of us, which makes me thankful that we had a day like this where we were able to openly talk while hiding behind our screens, but it also makes me concerned about the future of human interactions. I don’t want us to only be able to communicate if we are able to edit all of our words before we decide to share. I think that takes a little bit of the human out of human interaction.

I also thought it was cool that we pretty unanimously decided that we spoke more casually online than in a normal class. I completely agree with this. I never capitalized letters, spoke in fragments, used abbreviations, and made jokes. I behaved more similarly to the way I do outside the classroom. While I still maintain that I am pretty open about speaking my mind, I don’t think I would have shared the fact that I took a “How Spicy Are You?” quiz on Buzzfeed earlier in the day during the course of a normal class period probably because I figured it wouldn’t be conducive to our class discussion, but boy was I wrong at least for today! I think Tuesday’s class was a bonding day for everyone who was there because we were able to talk to each other more as fellow college students and potential friends and less as classmates that I will never speak to again after this semester. Even though we did spend time on the Internet for the entire class period, I would definitely not call that time wasted.