Monday 9 July 2012

Bye Bye Facebook. Living disconnected from the social network giant that dominates the web.


Bye Bye Facebook.  Living disconnected from the social network giant that dominates the web.
This weekend I made the decision that others have only dreamed of a few follow through with.
I deactivated my Facebook account.
For me, the principal reason behind this decision was the realization of the inordinate amount of time I was spending on the site.  I’d check it on my phone in the morning, have it open on my laptop no matter what else I was doing it, and flick through it whenever I had nothing better to do.  I was constantly connected to Facebook, and I’m not the only one.  Don’t deny it, you probably do it too.  You’re sat at home, you’re bored, what do you do?  Many of us would choose to have a flick through the news feed, but it doesn’t stop there, we’ll spend ages scrolling right through, or checking out the profile of the new girlfriend of our best friends third cousin twice removed.  Facebook, as we well know, has become the ultimate procrastination.  But has it become more than that?  Are we addicted to Facebook?  If you had asked me this a while ago I would most probably have told you not to be so silly, and that we couldn’t possibly be addicted to the social networking giant.  Now however, I am beginning to change my mind.  If we weren’t hooked on the site, why would we dedicate such a large proportion of our time to it?
Another thing that concerns me about Facebook, although it can be said for any form of communication that doesn’t involve actually talking to people, is the difficulty in communicating exactly what you mean.  A rushed response to a wall post quickly gets misinterpreted and before you know it the situation has spiraled way away from where it began.  On Facebook it is very easy just to quickly reply to a message and put little thought into the words you use or how you may come across to a person that doesn’t know you or the context of what you said.  At least with emails you are more likely to put some more thought into what you’re saying and anyway, it goes directly to the person you are trying to speak to, without the world and his wife butting in and getting the wrong idea.
Deactivating my Facebook account is also serving as a bit of an experiment, I believe that we are now far too reliant on the site and that those that don’t use it are potentially excluded from many opportunities.  My experience with societies at uni is that they tend to use Facebook to set up their events and pass on important messages, few of these groups then back this up with emails, so what happens to the proportion of their members that don’t use Facebook?  These people do exist, I promise you!  They may be international students that have their own version, for example the Spanish tuenti (Looks just like Facebook in every way...).  How do those members know what is going on?  These days Facebook has pretty much eradicated the need to send emails/make phone calls to tell people what we are up to as once we have typed one post it is there for the world to see.  God forbid we should actually need to print our photos to share them, or send a nice email to a friend to catch up.  It’s all on Facebook, so what is the point?
I am almost certain that, like it or not, I am going to have to reactivate my Facebook account by the end of the summer.  Not only because I have a society to commit to, that will be making full use of Facebook no doubt- but also sending emails(!) but because I think that I might well miss out on things in my final year of uni by choosing not to use it.  This is wrong that we feel we have no choice in the matter, but would anyone dare to prove me wrong?  Or join me in saying Bye Bye to Facebook for a while?
I’m really interested in what other people think about this so please get in touch with me! Rebecca.nobes1@btinternet.com

Tuesday 3 July 2012

So now what?

One of the biggest problems about coming home from the year abroad is finding something to keep yourself occupied for the 3 months before you have to go back to Uni again to finish it all off.  So far my feet haven't really had the chance to touch the ground, which is just the way I like things to be.

After arriving back in the UK on Friday 22nd I almost immediately headed up to Lancaster for the week for Grad Ball, Extrav (Big end of term event in each college), sort out some bits and pieces and of course see all the people I'd not seen in quite a while.  This didn't go as smoothly as planned as 1.5 hours into my journey I had to call out the AA... Long story short, my car is fine now but my Mum did have to come up in my Nanas car and swap with me so that I could continue my journey northwards.  Grad ball was a really good night, as was Extrav, as ever I think it's about the people that you're with as opposed to what has been organised, it's your night and it is what you make it.  I also attempted to visit the Lakes but managed to pick the day that Kendal flooded and had to turn round and drive right back again...

I got back to Maldon on Sunday evening and had an interview at Stansted airport on Monday morning. Today I've gone and joined the gym and had a call to say I've got the job and training starts tomorrow, as I said- feet never touch the ground for long!  Don't get the wrong impression though, this job hunt hasn't been quite as straightforward as it seems!  I had already been given a job in catering for the police at the Olympics but the company have been less than efficient shall we say and so that was beginning to look less and less likely.  I sent a lot of CVs and applications last week and luckily had this response.

I've also been thinking a lot recently about what I want to do when I graduate, I think this is because of the amount of people I know that are graduating this year and I'm seeing them make their plans and sort out everything for their jobs or courses that they're starting.  People tend to assume that because I study languages it means I'm either going to go into teaching or translation, and I'm not saying that I've not considered either of those options, but equally they're not my only options, in fact, I'm increasingly beginning to consider jobs that have no direct relation to my degree at all, watch this space, I guess I'll have to get looking at applications at some point...