Typically, before going to sleep, I’ll spend a good amount of time catching up on social media in bed like any other American my age. Yeah yeah, that malicious blue light is frying my brain and it’s the reason I can’t sleep. But we both know I’m going to scroll on either way. I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember, really, but I can’t help to notice (especially being a college student) that getting out of bed in the morning is a b*tch! My 9AM professors get to see the most exhausted version of myself that even a Venti Cold Brew can’t fix.

It wasn’t until recently that I figured I need a change in my lifestyle, and you probably do too. Look, the last thing I want to do is listen to some fifty-something scientist who won’t use his phone past sunset about why I need to cut it out. But they’re right. I’ve been ‘off the grid’ before when I’ve gone on vacations or camping and yeah, it’s not the best. One thing I can tell you though is that my sleep was AMAZING. So good in fact, that I keep asking myself why I just don’t try and cut off my screen time before I go to sleep.

So in an effort to achieve my new sleeping goals, I’ve started using ‘Night Mode’ on my iPhone which essentially acts as a blue light filter and yes, I know I should just quit the phone before bed cold turkey but baby steps, right? From the first morning I’ve started using this feature, my quality of sleep has improved drastically because I’m able to fall asleep and stay asleep much quicker.

Now comes the hard part, actually getting myself to not use my phone at all before I go to sleep. To be completely honest, I really don’t know how I’m going to be able to get myself to do this one. Believe me, I know how pathetic this sounds; phone usage is just something that has incorporated itself into my lifestyle. If only I could figure out how to un-incorporate it from my life.

Reflection / Self-Evaluation

This essay was honestly more challenging than I expected. I have written papers like these on many occasions in the past, for the exact same purpose- humor in writing. I believe I had thought it would be easier since I was sort of experienced in this area of writing. What made this paper specifically so challenging was having to model it in a way after my original essay of choice. I feel that my style of humor in writing and actual humorous writing is completely different.

Something I found very rewarding was actually being able to employ humor techniques in my paper without much struggle, since I’ve written papers similar to these before. Again, it was challenging to select the right type of humor and where it made the most sense in my paper. I hope this makes sense. 

My essay of choice, You Won’t Believe What This Guy’s Doing (And Not Doing!) on Social Media by Boaz Dvir helped me to imitate how often I should use humor in my sentences or paragraphs. It did not help me with using as many humor techniques as I did, nor inspire the structure or length of my essay. I think Dvir’s essay stuck to a very personal form of writing, which I did use, but lacked other techniques. In other words, I felt like I was having a one-way informal conversation when I was reading his essay. The most beneficial aspects of modeling from his essay were some of his informalities, bold statements, and profanity.

If I had the opportunity to do this assignment again, I think I would chose another essay that was structured a little bit more like an actual paper, and one that chose from a variety of humor techniques. I do not think that Dvir’s essay was bad, or could have been improved upon in a specific way, just that I could have chosen better given the parameters of this assignment.