Priorities. BYU. Google photos. Spotify. Kindle. Chick-fil-a. Instagram. These are the top apps on my phone. What I spend all of my time on. From what I've seen, it doesn't look like this is uncommon.  Sometimes, this o vertakes my time for other things - when I scroll during institute, order food while my roommate is talking to me, dance party instead of meal prep, or do anything else besides my homework.  I noticed my habits were stimulating a lack of motivation in studying and causing the time to do anything even remotely productive to double. Not all was bad... but there is a need to see what was "good, better, and best". I had been budgeting out time and was stressed because there were never enough hours in the day to do what I needed to get done. I didn't realize how much time was being wasted. Trying to do the "best" things, I started to tune out and later turn off the noise (of notifications, stopping all music, avoiding any/all distractions) a

  Impressionable.    In one of my previous blog post I talked about how impacted we are by media- it defines us within our personal experiences and is what we identify with.    It's not if you're learning, but what.    Thankfully, media has been regulated over time to help promote learning and education: PBS Kids- has children TV programs https://pbskids.org/ PBS Learning Media- has classes that match curriculum for Pre-K up to the end of high school  https://utah.pbslearningmedia.org/ National Geographic- has shows/games to promote exploration and science   https://www.nationalgeographic.com/ Various online games to help learn concepts- https://www.coolmathgames.com/ https://www.abcmouse.com/abc/ https://www.funbrain.com/ There's a lot to learn, and as we know, not everything we should see will be included in the media. However, there's a lot we do have access to that we should be taking a

Gaming.  I've never been a big gamer so I wanted to expose myself to media I hadn't really encountered before. Gamers get a bad rap- sitting down all day staring at a screen, sometimes forgetting to eat good meals, staying up late to finish one single accomplishment... It sounds horribly unhealthy until you see the parallels between that lifestyle they live and that of college students.  My motivation is to get good grades (or sometimes just pass the class), but what are they getting out of this experience?  I was astounded to learn of real-world benefits that gaming can provide. A much more positive take than what I was anticipating.  Surprisingly, gaming has many upsides (Granic et al., 2014) : Concentration and memory recall tactics Problem-solving/critical thinking skills Increased creativity Social/interpersonal skills Evidently this will be dependent on which games are played.  However, video games aren't all bad. They're not all good either though. It would be f

Underrepresentation.  Within our media. Within the groups that create our media.  One story being told over and over- and it isn't even a full one.  Our overlapping lives aren't being presented as overlapping, but rather are shown as very separate and some even shown as irrelevant. Some aren't even shown.  We are so impressionable when it comes to media- it becomes what we identify with. For me this comes through books. I was reviewing my childhood books the other day after we had a lecture on what "readers" look like. I took a mental inventory of the books I had been raised on, but also a mental inventory of how they raised me.  Myopically. These stories were just that- a singular representation of how I had grown to see the world. I learned that I didn't have as wide of a scope as I had thought, and noted the danger in such a viewpoint. I found that not only is underrepresentation prevalent in my media, but also with those who had made it (graphs below).