rls514+millennial+17yr+old+male

Type in the content of your page here Interview with a Millennial By: Andrea Chusin Interview Subject: upper middle-class, high IQ, 17 year old white male, Bolingbrook, IL The very busy young man I interviewed watches tv/movies, reads, hangs out with friends, plays video games, wrestles competitively and takes mixed martial arts classes in his free time. He considers all those activities to be things he does for relaxation, anything outside of school work, including his life-guarding job which he holds during the school year as well. He DVRs his favorite shows like Survivor and Ultimate Fighting Championships, Seinfeld reruns, and HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. He watches a good deal of tv, mostly with his family, but he has access to any adult cable shows and gains a lot of information through the programming he surfs through with the remote control. He watches the news daily. He downloads music and goes to movies with his friends on the weekends. He has been watching R-rated movies for many years now. In the past, a parent or friend’s parent would buy movie tickets for him and his friends. He watched his first R-rated movie with his father when he was 12. He watches horror movies and does not feel that his media usage has desensitized him in anyway. He feels that his media usage has made him more educated and has made his life easier. He enjoyed his Nintendo GameBoy when he was young and his PSP. He says that he used to enjoy online games more than he does now, however, he is still highly involved. He used to play World of Warcraft with his friends and uncle online, also Starcraft. Mostly now, he plays his XBOX 360 games like Fallout 3 which is a role-playing single-player game. He also plays Halo and Call of Duty with his XBOX online with his friends; frequently many of his friends will play on a team together online against some unknown, online opponents at a designated time. He tells me that the site is not filtered and anything can be said between the teammates and opponents. He and his friends do not give out personal information online. His entire family shares one computer which is an HP, not an Apple, which is located in the living room.. He says he doesn’t like Apple computers because he doesn’t like the interface. He believes his computer has a filter on it which his parents installed, beyond just the MacAfee, to filter out inappropriate websites etc. He believes that they check his past history on line regularly, but tells me he doesn’t know for sure. I wonder if he knows how to erase his past history. My interviewee is an avid reader. This year he has read for AP English works such as Beowulf, Prometheus Bound, and The Canterbury Tales. This past summer he read __The Kite Runner__, __Water for Elephants__, __All the King’s Men__, and __Brsinger__. Obviously, he reads at many different levels, and does not feel it necessary to read solely for one purpose or as a labelled audience. He reads children’s books and adult novels, fiction and nonfiction. He enjoys getting his news from both online and print sources. Significant events in this young man’s life include family vacations and his overall experiences in wrestling and martial arts. He states that being successful in school is a significant thing in his life. He presently worries about getting into a good college as well as all the unknowns college has in store for him: living away from his family, what his everday life will be like, what the future may hold for him. My interviewee describes himself as the least involved with technology of all of his friends. However, he checks his e-mail and logs in to his newsy homepage daily. He has a profile in Facebook but only checks it once or twice a week to follow threads of conversations from friends. He has friended his uncle and grandfather and does not have different privacy settings for the two groups, friends and family. He does not visit his favorite authors’ websites, nor does he visit Youtube. He mostly uses the computer for e-mail, downloading music, word processing, searches, Mapquest, and for purchasing tickets online to concerts, the last 3 being to the Warped Tour, Blink182 and Brand New, all punk, alternative bands. He shops at American Eagle and Hollister and on-line at mixed martial arts’ clothing sites. He doesn’t usually visit Ebay or Amazon. He does not blog or follow blog, nor does he twitter. He estimates that he texts 50% of the time he uses his cell phone. He says that calling friends is still the most important way to stay in touch. He takes and sends no pictures or videos on his cell phone and plays his playlist in his car while driving, as well as listens to 890 and 780 AM, radio stations his parents introduced him to. He now listens to NPR, as his uncle does. He listen to virtually no popular music on the radio, but he likes to follow the news daily on the radio, besides just online. He is introduced to music solely through his friends. He owns an IPOD and shares music with his friends so that it will be less expensive. He knows no friends who have experienced cyber bullying or has had any bad experience with digital pictures or videos being sent inappropriately or photoshopped and misused. He does not know of any friends who upload videos from webcameras onto the internet. He has created many Powerpoint presentations throughout his schooling. His high school has one Smart Board, and it is in the Spanish teacher’s room; he says she does not know how to use it. I asked my interview subject to view “Did You Know 3.0“ and he had already seen it in a psychology class last year. When asked to describe how it made him feel in one word, he said, “Awestruck…unbelievable.” He immediately referred to the video in relation to his upcoming college years and wondered aloud if his education would be growing obsolete before he was deeply into his career. He is applying to many colleges presently and expects he will go into biomedical engineering. He expects to have a laptop in college and take notes on his laptop in class.