Unmotivation, even with everything going on in my personal life, school was still going. However, the motivation that was there even when online learning started, went away and up until now has not come back completely. Missing assignments started to pile up and I just did not care about it at all. Professors not being understanding and assigning even more homework than what they used to before the pandemic. Their excuse; “you guys spend the whole day at home.” And all these led to another unexpected emotion, confusion. With everything going on I started to question myself in many ways. “ Do I really like this major?”, “Should I withdraw my classes?”, “Should I not register for next semester?”, “Why is this happening to me?” and a bunch of other questions that I had no answer for.

Two months of the same went by and it was June already, the 4th month of the pandemic. By then the semester was over and all that stress from school was over, however the questioning it created was still there. Thinking about the summer months brings back the best memories of the year. I got to spend quality time with my family, something that would not have happened if things were normal. In August I also got to travel to a different state for my birthday. I spent 10 days there and for the first time in six months I got to see one of my friends, which would have seemed crazy at the beginning of the outbreak. Those experiences brought back an emotion I hadn’t felt in months, joy, the kind of joy I  had not felt since the beginning of that year. The next four months of the year went by insanely fast, Fall semester started, unmotivation and all the questions were still there. At some point I just did things because I had not and not because I wanted to. Excuses were made and I just kept going with it. 

 

Thankfully by the end of the year the situation had immensely gotten better. Vaccine research and studies were giving great results,  blended learning started to be offered. 

After a year of living with COVID-19 I learned that people have to appreciate every second of their lives because one would never know when things can completely change. I think that if the coronavirus hadn’t happened there would be many things I wouldn’t have realized. Good and bad things happened in 2020, it is surely going to be one of the most impactful years of my life, it changed me in multiple ways and taught me many lessons. At the end everything happens for  a reason.

• What were you told about Wikipedia in your early schooling? How has that changed after reading Purdy?

Looking back to my early schooling, ever since I started having access to the internet my teachers always recommended not to trust wikipedia, because I was told it was not reliable nor true to use. Those that contribute to the Wikipedia articles do not need to be experts or professionals, and incorrect information can seep in. At first it was a recommendation to as years went by it became a rule, wikipedia information was not allowed in any of my essays or research projects and if I used it they would take out many points from my work. I think that having that rule caused that I grew up having the mentality that wikipedia would never be useful for any kind of work. Now that I’m older every time I look something up I don’t even open the wikipedia link, it’s like it doesn’t even pop up, I just ignore it exists.

After reading Purdy’s ideas, I understand that college level writing should involve more advanced sources, rather than a general encyclopedia, which includes the use of Wikipedia. However, even other sources are not reliable and have many errors.

• What are some ways that Purday explains Wikipedia can be a useful tool to you as a student and scholar? Describe at least two.

According to Purdy’s article, Wikipedia is a good source that can be used as an aid to explore and find more further information or articles connected to the topic you can access too when you are reaching for. Since Wikipedia has links citing the sources used for the information listed on their site. Its easy to look at such sources and evaluate for yourself if they are credible and how reliable they are for your research.

Also Wikipedia can help you see at a glance of an outline for your research. The table of contents and headings can aid and provide ideas for your research papers.

• After reading about how Wikipedia works, would you consider it a community platform? For what reasons? Were you aware of the conversations taking place over every article edit?

Before reading Pursy’s article I did not know that much about Wikipedia, as I said before I have always ignored the fact that wikipedia existed. The only times I have used wikipedia were when I had been really desperate to find information of something.  However I have never used it as a primary source and I have never cited wikipedia for any of my works. Yet, most of the time when you search for something in Google Wikipedia is one of the first that pops up. Yes, I will consider this a community platform because is like a collaboration group working together building information, and interacting as well. I did not know that there is a conversation taking place over every article edit. 

• Carr argues that having such advanced technology in our pants pockets is affecting the way we learn and read. What does Carr mean when he says having access to infinite knowledge is making us stupid?

In my opinion Carr is trying to convey the idea that advanced technology has given us so much convenience and infinite information, leading people to misunderstand the knowledge they  have or know. In Carr’s article, it mentions that “because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” My understanding is that the internet has allowed  people to search for any knowledge or anything they want to know without any guidance just by having the internet, and this gives people the illusion that they have and hold the knowledge because they can look it up whenever they want, but in fact, it is only temporary because maybe the knowledge they get is partial or not always accurate. The more we rely on artificial intelligence to make us smarter, the more we become mechanic, like artificial intelligence. The flood of information is at our fingertips, and the making of the web is purposefully designed to distract our attention as we navigate it. As scientists have seen, our brains continue to create paths and connections, and the use of the internet creates paths that favor skimming through words while comprehending less, rather than patiently reading and maybe re-reading articles.

• Do you think there are problems with having immediate access? What are we losing by doing this? (For example, have you ever had to go to the library and find a physical book to conduct research?)

To be completely honest I don’t think there’s any problem to having immediate access to internet and technology. Having this resource at our immediate reach has made everything easier for me multiple times. I actually do enjoy the convenience of immediate access. However I am aware that due to the immediate access to technology, many people has become dependent to it.  Our brains has become lazier and we might lose interest in many things because looking for answers and researching about something that we’re curious about doesn’t take any effort. Finding answers to some of our questions can only take 3 minutes sometimes, you just have to look up the question and snippets of the parts of the book that has the answer will pop up, and we end up only reading that part instead of the whole book.!We also might lose concentration because there are too many things that distract us from reading on the internet, there’s many things such as social media, videos and even publicity.

• Shirkey argues that by constantly having access to the internet, we are able to experiment with new areas of knowledge in a much easier/accessible way. What are the pros/cons of this?

There’s pros and cons to having constant access to the internet. In my opinion some of the cons are that it makes people less likely to innovate because the huge amount of information on the internet makes people have a fixed mindset and rely on the internet to look up things without thinking really thinking about their our opinion or  position towards different situations. And the pros are that the internet allows to receive real time updates of news stories, play games, or chat with someone who is on the other side of the planet. It is a straightforward experience that lets us access a wealth of knowledge. Thanks to technology, you can access this information in the comfort of your home and looking up things doesn’t take as much time as it could.

• What do YOU think? Is the internet giving us new knowledge, or is it melting our brains in a way? Or both?

Honestly I think the internet has both giving us new knowledge and has melted our brains in a way. Having access to the internet to find answers and research about certain things has made things easier and faster, however I think it also has kind of melted our brains because most of us rely on the internet more than we should, sometimes we don’t even make an effort to do a proper research about something, instead we just find it in the internet and trust that the answers or articles that pop up are right. When Carr mentions in his article, that infinite knowledge makes us stupid, I think it’s true, for my own personal experience I am pretty reliant on the internet, when I am confused or need to find doubt about something  my first thought is to go online and search for it, to find the answer or the solution, my brain doesn’t make an effort to have my own thoughts first and then maybe use a little help from the internet, all I do is look it up and then use the answers I found . I have become impatient so I no longer want to take a long the time to understand why things are the way they are, I don’t care about the process, I only care about the result which also leads to me not remembering the knowledge as much because I simply don’t fully understand it.