New Perspectives

Blog 2 – we have been asked to read through three other students’ blogs and talk about how this informed any new perspectives.  It has been great reading all the blogs that have been submitted and it has shown me that each individual has a different contextual lens; and these lenses are influenced by the life each individual has lived to date, upbringing, families, field of employment, life experience and so on. 

The first blog that gave me a new perspective is ‘Armed Robbery on Armaguard cash van’ written by Michele Whillock and can be found http://mwhillock80.wordpress.com/ 

This blog is about an attempted robbery of an armaguard van which staff at a café across the road were filming on their phones.  The first thing I thought of was how brave the staff sounded in the film and how clever to think quick and start filming, getting the number plate and calling the police.  If I was in that situation I would like to think I would do the same but I wonder if the fear of getting spotted and potentially shot would take over and make me want to stay out of it.  When reading Michele’s blog and watching the file I didn’t think of the media influences on this story and I completely agree with Michele’s views on how the media can shape their story to give us the perception that they want us to have and not give us the complete facts so we can come to our own conclusions. 

The next blog that caught my attention was by Steph Willis which can be found http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/blog/index.php?courseid=2039&blogpage=1 

This one caught my attention because such a simple thing like a girl sitting on the side of a road can still bring in so many different peoples perspectives.  It is sad to say that I believe there would be a lot of people today that would just drive past that girl and either not even consider what might be going on; or have a negative perception (ie she is drunk, on drugs) and do nothing.  I never would have considered that the girl could be running away from ‘people from the past’ because I personally have not had any experiences with ghosts.  So my perception would have been very far from the actual reality of the situation.  Very interesting read and made me want to get to the end and find out why the girl was sitting on the side of the road; and shocked me with the reasoning. 

The third blog that caught my interest was by Jake Campbell which can be found http://contextuallens.blogspot.com.au/ 

This blog was a story about Jake’s trip to Fiji and an injury that turned ugly with infection. Reading through this blog I found myself thinking about what I would have done if it was me and initially thinking that Jake was a silly young boy for not getting the graze properly attended to earlier.  Then I remembered about my trip to Cambodia when I was younger and the completely different lives they have in other countries.  Initially, in Cambodia I found myself shocked by how much poverty there was and I was put off by the beggars in the street but the longer I stayed the more I got used to it and my lens of the country changed.  I stopped seeing the poverty and started seeing how amazing and happy the people of Cambodia are with nothing; I also started to get used to living the way they lived and not the way we do in Australia so perhaps if I was to get a graze when I was there I might have left it longer than I would have in Australia because the availability of medical attention would not have been as prevalent.  Very glad the story had a happy ending and Jake has a fully functional leg!