Three Semester Reflection

I have changed significantly during my college experience so far. I built a lot of mental strength and resilience since my college experience began during the pandemic. It was really hard for me to transition to entirely online school and the way that school works in college is very different than what I had experienced before. I also really impressed myself with my grades, despite all of the challenges that came with a full year of online school, and I feel more equipped to deal with other hardships that may come my way. I think that through both experiences in this class and outside, the way in which I consume media has changed drastically. I believe that I am more aware of the effects media can have on me and can look more critically at the motives behind the media I consume.

The title of this program, Media, Self, and Society, fits the content well in my opinion. The content we learn is important in our world, where media shapes our everyday life more clearly than ever. Through social media like Instagram and TikTok, so much of my day consists of consuming media, which can have a large impact on me. In a time where it feels like there’s more news to report on than ever, it’s important that everyone can look at media critically. A lesson in class I found valuable was learning how to effectively use search engines, a topic from last year. Through this lesson, we learned how to use search engines to optimize the content we are looking for, and learned about functions we can use to cut out unnecessary information from out searches. We also learned about “click restraint,” which is scanning the search results to make an informed decision on the tabs to go into. An important, and my favorite, part of every class for the last year an a half has been the eye opener of watching the news in 90 seconds. This has been a way for me to stay connected to what’s going on in the world and be able to analyze what is being covered, in what amounts, and in what manner in a class setting. Being able to see other’s criticism of the news is also important and interesting. I think that topics like these have changed how I see my role in media. I now am more aware that I have an active role in the media I consume, and that I need to always be mindful to asses the media around me.

There are definitely a lot of connections that can be made between media and health-related fields. While I’m unsure what career I want to have, I am a psycholgoy major and taking all of the pre-health science courses. I believe that the last few years with the COVID-19 pandemic have drastically brought health into the limelight. It is really easy in today’s world of an excess of media for disinformation to spread. In terms of psychology, there has been a massive shift in people’s mental health (which is an entire separate discussion of its own), because of both social media and the pandemic and the effects of this will be witnessed and studied in many years to come.