Communication Studio

Editor's Notes

1. INTRODUCTIONMy topic assigned was “communication” which at first caused a bit of a problem for me. I couldn’t think of something that had drastically changed in regards to going away to University seeing as my communication skills have always been lacking. Instead of limiting myself to what changed recently I decided to address communication differences that have taken place within the last 2 years.
2. LANGUAGEThe first difference I noticed in communication was of course the language. I had spent 8 years in a countries where the first language was not English, my peers were not English, essentially nothing was English. I found myself jumbling up definitions in my head and spitting out directly translated phrases that now I understand aren’t correct or even don’t exist in English.
3. TIME DIFFERENCESThe second thing that started to effect my sense of communication was the difference in time. I had always planned to really work with communicating with my friends in Europe after I transitioned to the U.S. but seeing as it was 6, 7, or 8 hours later it made this difficult!
4. ACCENTThis is something that I still have a struggle with today, if I become overwhelmed with emotion sometimes my English accent will slip out. This is due to my British based schooling system. Unfortunately, I am very aware of when this happens due to a situation the first week of school in the United States. What happened was I was called on to speak during an art critique which I had avoided doing for maybe a week or so and when I finally spoke up I received a wave of attention I was neither expecting or wanted. Since then I have made it a point to adapt to the American English accent which has now become extremely comfortable.
5. HUMOURA huge part of communication is humour, a trait that tends to be different in every country due to culture based reasons. This created a lot of unforeseen complications due to my lack of entertainment for other people and constant awkward situations where I would end up laughing in complete silence.
6. WHATSAPPWhatsapp is an application which allows messaging between international contacts. This has now become so prevalent in my life I forget to message people that don’t have it!
7. DYING PHONEThis slide is the first one that marks the difference between the immediate past and September, 2013. The first thing I noticed that changed in my communication was the battery life of my phone. Either I am using my phone more to contact friends/family or New York is actually making a dent in its duration! My phone will not last a full day even with charging it the entire night before. Due to this fact my level of communication is kept at a minimum.
8. OLD AQUAINTANCESMore old acquaintances have been contacting me due to the entertaining, popular, and more accessible location of NYC. An example of this was last week when an American friend that studied with me at a school in Paris messaged me and told me that he is in New York for a couple of days, this incident was followed by an accident when I bumped into an old friend that studied in Oslo with me and transferred to Eugene Lang after studying in Edinburg for 3 years. These people wouldn’t and haven’t contacted me before I was in New York!
9. LOSS OF COMMUNICATION WITH PARENTSAs said before, I am terrible at communication so this comes as no surprise when I say the level of contact between my parents and I has diminished greatly. This was never a problem before solely based on the fact that I was in constant literal contact with them due to my housing there- now they message me and attempt to Skype with me everyday. My reaction? That’s so sweet I miss them so incredibly much! “x”