As seniors in college, one of the things I and all of my classmates have to deal with is figuring out what we will be doing post graduation.  Whether it be going straight to work, taking an internship to help gain experience to eventually land a job, or take some time to travel, the one constant is that we all have decisions to make.  With these life changing decisions come other decisions like location and living situations.  While this time is stressful, there are tools that can help; tools like Linkedin that can help connect us with professionals in our fields, tools like online job boards that can notify us of open positions, and tools like customizable websites that we can create to present the work we have previously done to show to prospective employers.  

When our parents graduated college, I’d imagine that their time was more difficult than us. They had to go to job fairs, search the classified sections of newspapers, and track down jobs through word of mouth or people they or their parents knew.  Leads on jobs would have to be pursued or else there would be no job to be had.  Our generation and really the entire job force has been transformed. Today we have so many digital tools at our disposal like the ones listed above that make our lives much easier.  The difference between us and our parents is that we can put all of our work into a portfolio and a recruiter can see it and then if they like what they see they can reach out; for our parents it was the opposite.  They would have to seek out a job they wanted, reach out, and hope for a response.    Information is traded at a rate previously unheard of.  This has actually happened to me where a recruiter found my profile on Linkedin and reached out for a job interview. While this can add to the ease of finding a job, it also adds new pressures such as keeping your accomplishments up to date and competing with others seeking a job based on how your profile looks and compares to others.  Instead of landing an interview and impressing an employer through your in person knowledge, personality, and skills, we are being judged from miles away based on words on a screen.  While I appreciate the fact that being connected with a job is much easier, I will be the first one to explain to people that my resume isn’t as polished as many of my peers.  This is frustrating because I am confident in my knowledge and professionalism and if I could just get in the room with an interviewer, I could potentially land the job.  But this is the new digital world we live in and to be an active member in this society we all must adapt.  When information is so easily accessible and face to face interaction is seldom, the way we present ourselves is of the utmost importance.  To me, digital tools are a blessing and a curse. Bu this is the reality of the digital age— information comes at the click of a mouse and it is up to us to use these tools to put ourselves in situations where we can succeed. 

The way that digital devices can be used to enhance the way we view literature really has no bounds.  In just the ways that we have used in class: being maps, correlating themes and recurring words in works, and assembling archives of similar work, literature can be digested in a completely different way than the traditional way of reading and taking notes.  Starting with a map of locations and significant events that we made to visualize Glass Castle, a map is a great way to break down significant events into a crossover of a timeline and a story map.  While reading Glass Castle, it was kind of difficult for me to keep track of where the family was located at all times.  With so many changes of location and each location having a significant event happening, I found it hard to remember what exactly happened or what kind of home the family was residing in; this is where the story map was beneficial.  By being able to add a description, a picture, and a different icon to each location, it was easy to remember the story and visualize the through the map, especially being a few weeks removed from reading.  

Another digital tool that we used in class to help break down the reading of literature was to use programs such as Voyant and Ngram, These programs can be used to analyze authors and how they write to break down what kinds of styles they like to incorporate into different stories.  We used these programs to break down Edgar Allen Poe’s famous short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.”  By translating words into raw data, not only were the words changed into a form that could be visualized, but the entire meaning of the story was transformed.  While words are abstract, numbers and data are concrete and by looking at a story through the construct of data, the entire meaning of a story can be changed.  

Words can be a form of art; they can be something that needs to be interpreted and digested to understand— and often this varies from person to person.  Numbers rarely will have a different meaning to many different people— there is usually a singular correct answer that people will have to agree on to get to the right answer.  Words of fiction and art can be changed into data without losing its purpose, but I don’t they can be changed to data without losing their meaning.  Art is abstract and free and can be placed inside a box that points to a singular answer.  When art is translated into data, freedom is what is being lost.  Where this relates to “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and all literature for that matter is in the way that the story is studied.  Yes, by creating a data set out of the story we can break down the text in a technical way and visualize it differently, but what we have to be careful of is having a text lose its intended meaning.  Technology in an academic sense is a tool that can be beneficial in many ways, analyzing literature is one of these ways; however, what needs to be cautioned is how far we take it when analyzing: too many tools can take away from the meaning that the author intended and blur the lines between an abstract art form with meaning and a set of data with a concrete correct answer.

There are a few things that immediately come to mind when someone asks me what home is like.  The first is family; the saying “home is where the heart is,” is a statement that I believe to be true– it doesn’t matter the location, as long as I am with the people I love.  Another thing that I think of when I think of home is safety and security.  Home is a place where I can let my guard down.  It is somewhere that I can share my thoughts and opinions without feeling judgement; something that is getting harder and harder to find in this day and age.  The sentiment I get when thinking of home is probably not extremely unique from many of my friends, roommates, and classmates, as many people also share these values, but to me this just solidifies the importance of having a place to call home.  The common theme for everybody is family and love.  This concept of home being where there’s family is visible throughout the book The Glass Castle.  Through all of the relocations, through all of the times her father went back to drinking, through all the times there wasn’t enough food to eat, Jeanette Walls never felt like she was lost because of the love of her parents and siblings.  Although as she got older and started to realize that her parents couldn’t be relied on and decided to move to New York with her sister, the sense of family never went away; not for her, her siblings, or her parents.  When all of the children moved into a New York apartment, her parents followed because they couldn’t bare to be away from their children.  This situation was an unfortunate way to grow up, but is also an important testimony to how big a role family plays in the lives of everybody .

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