A Typical Week

Our next project for Writing for Digital Media is creating a location based narrative. We are tasked with finding a physical place and using the digital world to construct a story about that place that visitors would not know without the media component. With that project as a basis for our class discusses, our Austin Kleon prompt for this week asked us to draw a map of our typical week. During my typical week, the only places I travel to are different buildings on UPJ’s campus. In particular, I frequent four buildings, Biddle Hall, Blackington Hall, the Student Union and of course my on-campus townhouse.On the weekends, I might drive to Walmart, which is less than three minutes away, to go grocery shopping. For the most part, I live and travel within a one mile radius of my townhouse.

I am not surprised by how little or how far I travel during a typically week because I don’t really have much else to do but go to class or shopping. In May of this year, I studied abroad in Paris. During that month, the map of my typical week would look a lot different than the one I drew a couple days ago. In Paris, or any big city rather, there are so many places to go and so many possibilities within walking distance or by metro. For me, this was overwhelming because I come from a very rural area where it would take me an hour and half to walk to a Dollar Store.

After our class day ended in Paris, we could go anywhere and do anything. We could hop on the metro, and in minutes be at the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Luxembourg Gardens, malls, bars or any number of cafes. I could not throw a rock in Paris without hitting a cafe or bakery, which was bad for my waistline, but good for my soul. Sometimes my classmates and I would get on the metro, and pick a random stop without knowing anything about where we were going or what we would find. The only places I consistently went was the school, my apartment, and the bakery across the street, everything else was random.

Sometimes I miss the randomness and freedom I had in Paris. Even though I only spent a month in Paris, it took me a while to readjust to life back in America and not being within walking distance of everything I could ever want to do. When looking at the map I drew of my typical week at UPJ, I can see how routine my life has become. Maybe that’s why all this week I haven’t been able to shake the thought of doing something spontaneous. I have had to talk myself out of getting a haircut, tattoo, or ear piercing numerous times this week. Seeing my week laid out as a map, made me want to branch out of that one mile radius and make some type of change.