Since the media is all around me, I was always involved with it in either one form or another. Even right now, while I’m writing this, I’m using the media by listening to music and writing this on a site that could be viewed by others. In this century of technology there is no stopping anyone forming a relationship with the media. There is just too much of it everywhere to ignore.
Media is such a big part of life that I do not even know how my relationship of it could have been started. It could be from my mother reading from a book on how to take care of a baby, or listening to the first tune I have ever heard, or maybe even watching my first television show. For sure when people walk into my room, they will know that my relationship with books, as a form of media, is very extensive. I have several shelves containing many books; I love to read and love to extend my mind to many different genres from Party Monster to Jane Eyre. As of right now, I just finished reading Catching Fire, which is the 2nd of a trilogy written by Suzanne Collins. Through reading, I’m able to absorb and learn new things that I never would have. Reading books, I’m also able to learn the author’s view on certain things and respect them through that. Without books I don’t think my life would be as complete.
Television has also been a big part of my life. I believe that if I put all the hours that I spent watching TV and mesh it all together, it would probably take-up most of the time I’ve been alive. I’m an only child, with no one at home for company, so I always leave the TV on just to feel like the room I’m in isn’t so empty. I even leave it on when I sleep, so I often dream of an advertisement or a movie that is being shown. Like many others, I also use the television to escape from my life’s problem and go to another’s where their problems can be solve by the end of the episode and mine can not. It is a nice form of medium where one can be entertained and distracted. Not only that, it could also be use to get the latest news and information through news channels and shows. Before going to school, I always watch Good Morning America to keep myself updated in the latest happenings. As for theaters, I do not go often. Mostly I go when my friends want to go or when I’m really excited over a movie that is coming out. I do however watch a lot of movies, whether it be on the television or the internet. Like television shows, I believe that it is also another form of escape through entertainment. I like many genres of Movies, though most of my favorite ones are foreign films. They are able to show me things from different culture that I did not know before.
Since I’m not sure what recordings actually are, I’m guessing that it means records, cds, or a distribution of music. Like books, I am also a big fan of cds. As much as I love books, I think that music has played a bigger part of my life than books have. I am a very big music buff. I love listening to different song, different artist, and I definitely love collecting cds. I have one of the biggest collections among my friends, and they are also pretty big music fans too. In middle school, I came up with a theory that I can’t really have a close relationship with anyone who doesn’t have a similar music taste to me. Though this may probably not be true, it shows how big music was to me that at a time I thought that way. The first taste of the music I listen to now probably came from the radio. Though I hardly listen to it anymore, the radio played a big part in finding my music style during my middle school days. Through the radio I’m able to sample different songs from different bands and see if they are the type of music I would like. I was able to hear new song and upcoming bands through the radio. It is a very helpful outlet to learning the different type of music one genre can offer.
Newspapers and Magazine are probably the forms of media that I am least familiar with. I hardly read the newspapers. There was a time when I was younger where I read the comic section every Sunday, but I believe that that only lasted for a 5 months. I think the only papers I was ever interested in where the school newspapers because it talked about topics I could be interested in, or it features certain things in school that I actually was involved in, other than that, I never read any of the papers. As for magazines, I have an extreme dislike for them. My mother is a big shopper so my only experience with magazines are catalogs. She gets dozens of them delivered every month, and I really dislike the idea that the only thing she reads in book form are pages and pages of advertisements that is trying sell her things. I might dissolve my hate for them once I find a magazine that suits me, but until then my hate for them is still growing.
I consider the internet very different from all the other forms of media. It could be because the internet is basically all of them mixed into one. Through the internet you can find electronic books in the form of PDF files, listen to music from the many music sites, read news articles from one of the public news sites, and watch movies and television shows, the possibilities are endless. What is great about the internet is that the feedback response comes right away, If you post something you are proud of whether it be music, art, or a piece of writing, if someone reads it and cares enough to comment, then you will automatically know what their response towards it is. You will know the effect you had by posting what you did. One of the reason I’m in this class and why I took mass communication as a major is because of the internet. The internet introduce me to Youtube and through youtube I was introduce to video editing which is what I really love doing and what I hope to be doing in the future. Though it does not matter if I end up with a job in this industry or not because either way, the media will still be around me and will still be affecting my everyday life.
