iExamen 1

When I woke up this morning, my first communication encounter was through the iMessage app on my phone. This form of communication makes it easy to reach my friends when we are not all together. Specifically, we expressed our hunger and agreed on a time to meet up for breakfast. When we were together, I noticed everyone appeared to be tired and dressed comfortably for a relaxing Sunday. Our conversations during our meal consisted of talking about our weekends and talking about all the things that happened when we weren’t together. During this moment, I realized how much I enjoy mornings like these and being able to reflect on the memories made over the course of the weekend. I was also able to communicate how I felt about the upcoming school week such as anxieties but also all the things worth looking forward to. In my opinion, I love being able to have face to face conversations with people rather than communicating through texting. 

During breakfast, I received a FaceTime call from my mom, who was out to eat with my dad at Panera. In this interaction, I was able to update my parents on how things were going at school and answer their many questions. During this call, I realized how thankful I am that my family is accessible through phone calls and FaceTime calls. It’s important to me to be updated on what’s going on at home while also being able to tell them about my life at school. This conversation consisted of discussing my housing application for the next school year and how they are celebrating my siblings’ birthday this week. I always love a random phone call from the people I love the most who I can’t see as often as I see my friends here at Loyola. 

For my hour of being technology-free, I decided to leave my phone behind when meeting my friends for dinner at the dining hall. Personally, this wasn’t very difficult for me to do because I tend not to look at my phone much during meals with my friends. However, the one difficult part was not being able to text in our group chat to find out where we were sitting to eat. I noticed that I was able to be more involved in group conversations without the distraction of my phone being a factor. In addition, these conversations were more meaningful because they had my full attention. I was able to notice that for the most part, everyone was in a pretty good mood. We laughed a lot, maybe even more than normal. Overall, I enjoyed having a break from my phone and other technology and it helped me have an intimate experience with my friends.