Self, Social Media Feeds, and Sororities
A personal narrative
I consider myself a hodgepodge of several cultures: the southern manners and values with which I was raised, the liberal education I have received from growing up in Massachusetts, and coming from a family with a culturally hairy past. My mother’s mother at a very young age fled Germany during WWII and immigrated to Argentina; to this day, we’re unsure whether she came from a Nazi-sympathizing family or a Jewish family. In turn, I don’t fully know where I come from. My father’s side comes from a line of English and Irish immigrants, a family I can trace back several generations. Presently, I am a college student in Boston, trying to find my place in the big bad world.
My media habits are typical of any millennial- I am able to spend hours binge-watching documentaries or TV series, I’m nearly constantly concerned about my Instagram presence, and each day I update my friends and family about my experiences via Snapchat. My interests in feminism and graphic design make me someone constantly hungry for more information — whether it’s TED talks, browsing Lynda.com for new courses, or listening to the latest NPR podcast. I communicate with others mostly digitally, but I also recognize the power of spending hours just talking face-to-face.
A community I belong to is my sorority. We position ourselves as a feminist, inclusive society for professional women to help each other blossom into professional badasses and future She-E-O’s. This community is meaningful to me because it is made up of so many women I surround myself with on a daily basis. We lift each other up and help each other when we experience a hardship or frustration, and celebrate our victories. We take actions to make our community increasingly inclusive by holding diversity talks during our recruitment weeks, and as a result we’ve developed into a wonderfully diverse group of women. Being at Emerson College, all of us study media. In our facebook group, we often share media that inspires us, frustrates us, makes us happy or sad or angry. We use the lens of being a feminist society to share relevant media with each other and to criticize and break down media in a feminist way.
This personal narrative was written at the 2016 Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change. It exists as part of a digital publication which explores how personal stories and human connections can enable us and others to be more inclusive, responsive, and understanding of migrants and the socio-political-cultural impacts of migration.
