Research Blog #1
22 September 2010
In the early morning of September 22, 2010, I positioned myself in front of a blank television screen for approximately twenty minutes. The experience was at times frustrating, stimulating, reflective and monotonous. For the first five minutes I dedicated my time to absolute nothing. I was just alone with my thoughts, feelings, anxieties and insecurities. This prove to be the most frustrating aspect because it felt as if the time was standing still and my time was wasted on the emptiness of the television screen. I started thinking about school, my family, friends, assignments and job aspirations. I begin reflecting on life and contemplating my academic future in the graduate school of media production. I thought about the first day of orientation, classes and my classmates. This made perfect sense because the last thing I looked at before staring at the blank screen was my research methods syllabus. My thesis project ran through my mind several different times and quarries/concerns started to arise. I was nervous about the next eight months of academia, including finding research, meeting deadlines and reading academic texts. My eyes at all times during this process were focused intently on the television screen. However, during the first ten minutes of staring, I began to accept the fact that the screen would not turn on. I used the first ten minutes as a time of personal reflection, to gather important thoughts about the issues that life has to offer. I found this experience to be very therapeutic but at the same time I began to develop overwhelming feelings of anxiety about graduate school and my thesis project. I knew at this moment, it was time to distract my mind from the chaotic stress of school. At the beginning of this experiment, I had a note pad and pen ready just in case boredom set in. For the remainder of the time allocated, I decided to doodle in the notepad. I drew everything from pictorial representations of animated characters, animals, cursive writings and stick figures. I must admit I found the last ten minutes to have gone by quicker than the pervious ten minutes. I found that distracting myself from my own thoughts enabled me to relax and enjoy the rest of the experiment. Overall, boredom set in once again and I found myself reaching for my mobile device, constantly checking the time. Once my alarm clock went off, indicating the twenty minutes was over; I turned on the television screen and started watching the morning news.
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