TRANSCRIPT 2.4.5

Tessa discusses how she chooses technologies for communication.

Tessa: When deciding how to contact someone in terms of particularly whether to call them or text them, I think it comes down to mobiles being sort of a very integral part of the way that we talk to our friends at the moment. And the choice between calling them or texting them depends largely on sort of what you actually want from that exchange. If you just literally need to ask a question, sometimes it's just so much easier to be able to use a text and just go, "What's this person's number?" rather than have to call them and like "Hi, how are you?…small talk…"Really just need this, thanks, bye." And it's almost, I feel almost ruder doing that than going, "Yeah, so I don't really care, I just want this," and I just feel sort of mean just calling sometimes and asking them just for that, whereas when you text them it's kind of expected. But at the same time, sometimes you find yourself falling into the trap of not knowing how to quite start your message off. It's like, "Drat, I want this person's number, but I feel I should have some kind of small talk within my text just to make it feel like you know, I am not just using you."

But no, text is great because, well, you can use it in class; it's particularly useful if you are trying to organize something, you just go back and forth very quickly, very cheaply, that's definitely a factor as well, and the call cost can be quite high whereas text generally kind of less, there's all kinds of crazy deals and how many thousands you can get per month with particular call plans and stuff. But I find also like using things like e-mail as well, that's how, I generally communicate with I would say school friends whom I don't see as often. It could be hard to kind of call them and be like, "Hi, what are you doing?" and just randomly chat for a while if you haven't spoken to them in ages. But if I can send them an e-mail and even if I sort of do it while I am doing my assignment or something, even if you are crazy busy, then at least you can still kind of keep in contact like that. I'm a big fan of the e-mail…checking it 100 times a day.

Also making plans, it's much easier to drop an e-mail than to have to call. It's less confronting and it means you can do it at midnight if you suddenly realize, "Ah, this is not going to work, my assignment is totally not going to be in." You can send an e-mail or you can just ask a question about something that I might be doing at 12:00 and if I am not going onto campus perhaps the next day, it's particularly useful to be able to e-mail them as well. Some of our tutors that we have occasionally, we will have their mobile phone numbers…we have what is called a scenario group and that's like your core tutorial group. And some of the scenario group facilitators will give you their mobiles, so you can text them any particular queries or worries or let them know that you are running late, which is great. And also I find that it's really useful doing that because you are running up and down between hospital and you know, on campus, off campus, and yeah it's so much more convenient to be able to use those sort of means that don't require you to be operating within business hours.