Long Distance

Long distance relationships can really suck. And I'm not even referring to romantic relationships. I'm thinking platonic relationships.

Since coming to college, I have had a lot of experience with long distance relationships.
During the school year, I'm here in Utah and my best friend goes to college in British Columbia.
My first summer was spent in Romania - time zones make everything harder.
My second summer was spent in Vietnam - while my best friend was in Germany.
Last semester, I was here in Utah while she was still in Germany.

This is when media has been wonderful.
iMessages are free internationally and can be sent over Wifi if you don't have international service.
Facebook messages are also free and use Wifi.
Skype is free as long as you are calling another Skype account and not a phone number.

Friendships can certainly last without talking for a couple months, but having someone who understands you to talk to about your life makes life better. Keeping in touch can also be a major help when suffering from culture shock (a very real thing that can make traveling very hard).

Harry Potter and the Younger Sibling Effect

We were talking about infant programming in class this week. At one point, someone commented about how a parent they had talked to allowed their infant to be around the TV and other media because the older children in the family were using them. This made me think about my own life. Harry Potter has and always will be a big part of my life. Most of my Facebook News Feed is actually HP Fandom related pictures. While it is a wonderful part of my life, it was not always.

I distinctly remembering seeing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets movie in theaters. I was 7 years old, and I have a very clear memory of the Aragog scene. I was this little girl curled up on the theater seat with my head tucked into my knees and my ears plugged, waiting for it to be over. While causation cannot be proven, I still greatly dislike spiders and especially do not like being surprised by them in my room.

I have two older brothers. This Harry Potter incident is only one of many instances where I was dragged into doing something inappropriate for my age because my brothers were doing it. While I understand the difficulty of separating children, I definitely think parents need to be more aware of the media exposure of younger siblings. Different age groups have different needs and different understandings of media. Remember, I am not talking about how much media usage, but the content of the media. While my older brothers were not bothered by Aragog (as far as I know), it greatly bothered me. Little kids should not be watching the same things their older siblings are, especially if there is a large age gap. They simply won't understand and respond the same way.

The Why of Media

First off, an explanation:

I am taking a class called Media, Family, and Human Development this semester. For this class, I have to write one blog post each week about my thoughts on the media I have seen that week.

So here is my first post:

We talked in class today about why people watch what they do on TV. As someone who watches a lot of different TV shows (and I mean, a lot), I thought I would talk about the shows that pull me back. The ones that I watch over and over again, not just the new episodes as they come out. After going through all my shows, I ended up with the top three shows that are my go-to shows when I don't have any new episodes to watch (and sometimes even when I do, because I just love these shows so much)

1. Stargate: SG-1

The main reason why I love this show is pretty simple. This is the first "adult" show I ever watched as a child. This show had 10 seasons that ended when I was in 6th grade, but I had been watching every new episode as they came out since season 7. Of course, back in those days, my parents wouldn't let me stay up to watch them, so we would record it on VHS (gasp) and watch it the next day. So this show will always have a nostalgia factor going for it.

As I have gotten older, this show became something more to me. In my sophomore year of high school, all 214 episodes were on Hulu for free, so I proceeded to watch them all in order. It was definitely a lesson in how much children don't get when watching TV. I missed so many major, overarching plot points. As I got to watch it, I realized how much I loved the characters and the character development. Watching the same character in season 1 and season 10 is so weird, but such a good representation of how people change over the years. It's a good reminder that change is possible, even if it doesn't seem like it at first.

I also find the science fiction aspects really interesting and love how they address various ethical concerns. Obviously, the scenarios can be a bit unrealistic (it is science fiction), but the ethics can easily be related to real-life issues as well.

2. Eureka

This show makes my top three because it's the only show I watch that could count as a comedy. Obviously, all shows have their comedic parts, but this one is the only one that is a comedy. This is also my only other science-fiction show besides Stargate. When I need something funny to watch and just relax, this is what I watch. The reason why this is the only comedy I watch is that it is smart humor (seriously, joking about Boson Cloud Exciters) so I feel like I'm learning something (unlike most humor which makes me feel like I'm losing brain cells by the minute) and it isn't as outrageous and overdone comedy-drama as most comedies.

Also, cool science! So most of the things they show don't exist, but a lot of them are totally plausible. So it's cool science without having to sit in a science class and learn all the nit-gritty details about how these things work.

And as always, I love the characters! They have a lot of variety of characters and situations to be relatable to different people. And they all have something lovable (well, all the main characters) about them even though they all have flaws too (but hey, that's what makes them human).

3. Flashpoint

This is a show that none of you have probably heard of. This is a Canadian crime drama, but it's not quite your standard crime drama. It's all about talking down people who are threatening violence against themselves or others. That's one of the things I appreciate the most about it. It's about using violence only as the absolute last resort. As part of talking people down, they also do a lot of profiling, which is super interesting to me.
The characters are also super lovable (naturally) and it does a good job of showing how the stress of a job like law enforcement can affect an individual and their family. As someone who sees how wrong families are often portrayed on TV, it is nice to see a more realistic look at families and how they handle difficulties.