Reflection of the Semester in ALES 204

When I first walked into our ALES 204 lecture and heard that we were going to have to create a Twitter account, a blog, and make accounts with many other social media sites (such as Delicious, LinkedIn, etc.), I was quite hesitant. I had always seen Twitter as being used by all kinds of famous people to enhance their career and let people know about their new premieres, show people pictures of what they are doing in their "normal life", or simply just share their exciting news. But over the course of this semester, I have realized that Twitter is a very useful social media tool for people of all status', and I can no longer imagine my life without it - which is the view of many people across the world, as Twitter is now the most commonly used social media tool.

In general, I see Twitter as being the most important social media tool that we have learnt about over this course. This is because Twitter has such a large community and is so readily available. When using Twitter, you can instantly search literally any topic that you can think of or that you are interested in and you can see what people are saying about it from all around the globe. Twitter is an amazing tool that connects the world together in a simple way - which is the main focus of all social media that is created: connection.

Another important skill that we have learnt in this course is how to make a professional Facebook page. I believe that this is important because over time the world has become a lot more reliant on the internet, and social media to get important information about one another. There is now a lack of use of paper copies of anything, and many people prefer to use digital or web based papers and information. Because of this, I believe that future employers will begin to look at online resumes (instead of paper copies), and these online resumes could be complementary to professional Facebook pages. Therefore, what you post on Facebook could be directly related to your employment status. Clara is a classmate in our ALES 204 class, and she has posted an interesting blog post about her professional Facebook profile which is outlining the skills of someone named "Cooking Mama" - this shows how anyone can create anything on the internet, therefore we need to be critical when reading things on the internet.

Overall, we all need to be very careful about what we are posting online in the public domain because, as we have learned, the web never forgets. Once you post something online, it will be out in the public forever. Therefore, we need to be critical when thinking about what we are posting and we need to think about the future of our world when using social media sites. In conclusion, social media is the future of our society and will continue to grow at enormous rates - from which we will be in contant connection and recieve instaneous updates which will have both positive and negative affects on our lives overall.

Figure 1. Sphere of Social Media. Adapted from "Innovative Nurse - The power of social media," Kevin, Innovative Nurse.  Retrieved April 13, 2012, from http://innovativenurse.com/power-social-media-nurseup/. Copyright n/d by Unknown.

Links to my comments on my classmates' blogs:
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
Link 5

Mother-Daughter Relationships

This is my blog post on the choice of my topic. I have chosen to focus on mother-daughter relationships; this relates to my major (human ecology) and has been a focus in one of the human ecology courses that I have taken this semester. This topic is also widely looked at throughout our media culture; for example: Oprah has looked into this topic a few times on her show, and many people are interested in knowing more about it. Loana Valdez was also in this course with me and has posted an interesting article about the use of viagra on later life relationships in her blog - which was also one of the topics that was covered in our human ecology 212 course.

Lefkowitz, Miller, and Fingerman (2009) have explained: mother-daughter relationships are the most emotionally intense relationships within our family; they generally involve the highest level of closeness and conflict (p. 288). This closeness and conflict is animated by varying levels of feelings of solidarity or ambivalence between the mother-daughter dyad. It can be explained that the level of ambivalence within mother-daughter relationships reaches its peak during the years of the daughter’s adolescence, as well as within the later life years of the mother.

From the research that I have found on mother-daughter relationships, the mother-daughter bond has consistently been seen as being a life-long, intimate, and developmentally important relationship (Bojczyk, Lehan, McWey, Melson, & Kaufman, 2011, p. 60). There has also been evidence that there is a lifelong tendency for parents to be more invested in their children’s lives than children are in their parents’ lives (Connidis, 2010, p. 147). This has been demonstrated for many generations through the life course; this is especially true when the daughter reaches adolescence. Conflicts in the parent-child relationship are highest during the stage of early adolescence and tend to decline thereafter; this is because adolescents are striving for autonomy and a realignment of the parent-child relationship towards a more egalitarian relationship (Branje, 2008, p.1628). This level of tension between the mother and daughter can also be explained by the daughter feeling conflicted about her need for her mother and her need for autonomy, and differentiation from her mother; whereas the mother may be feeling that she wants to enjoy a close bond with her daughter as she is grows into adulthood (Herschberg, 2006, p. 60). All of these factors together create the peak of feelings of ambivalence within the mother-daughter relationship during the period of adolescence.

A picture of my mother and I at my grade 12 graduation.

(This is my own photo: taken on May 26, 2010)

References:

Bojczck, K. E., Lehan, T. J., McWey, L. M., Melson, G. F., & Kaufman, D. R. (2011). Mothers’ and Their Adult Daughters’ Perceptions of Their Relationship. Journal of Family Issues, 32(4), 452-481.

Branje, S. T. (2008). Conflict management in mother-daughter interactions in early adolescence. Behaviour, 145(11), 1627-1651.

Connidis, I. A. (2010). Exploring intergenerational relations. In Family ties and aging (pp. 137-152). Thousand Oaks, California: Pine Forge Press.

Hershberg, S. G. (2006). Pathways of Growth in the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Psychoanalytic Inquiry,26(1), 56-69.

Lefkowitz, E. S., & Fingerman, K. L. (2003). Positive and Negative Emotional Feelings and Behaviours in Mother-Daughter Ties in Late Life. Journal of Family Psychology, 17(4), 607-617.