Author: Kendra Brace

My Attention Span

My whole life, I’ve always had a relatively shorter attention span. I’ve had difficulty focusing in school, listening to my friends tell me long stories, and often interjecting my own thoughts at inappropriate times. I’m sure that my attention span has only gotten worse as I’ve become more accustomed to digital spaces. Our mobile phones invade our lives and are some of the biggest distractions from our surroundings. It’s become more and more prevalent as the technology got better, and we can now have miniature laptops in our back pockets at all times. Hence why phones are banned in classrooms in New York State. After paying attention to my attention in a digital enviornment, it’s become pretty evident that my attention span has likely shortened as well since I was a kid.

What I Agreed To Attend To

After years of having certain apps to communicate with others, I’m very accustomed to differentiating notifications from either Snapchat or messages, just by hearing the vibrations. These notifications I usually would let myself be attentive to, especially messages, because in my head, “if someone is reaching me on messages, that must mean it’s urgent since they aren’t texting me on Snapchat.” Other buzzes and bings I can usually ignore. I’ve also noticed that if I am reading an article, or shopping online, it’s like I’ve developed a sort of tunnel vision to instinctually block out obnoxious advertisements. Especially the ones that pop up mid-way through an article, it’s like my fingers know how far to scroll before my brain can even evaluate what the ad is. Similarly, if I’m scrolling through Tik Tok, I automatically scroll past ads for the Tik Tok Shop, and livestreams, especially because they’ve been promoted so much more in the past year or two, compared to four or five years ago, where you would have to really search for livestreams and Tik Tok Shop didn’t exist. It’s almost impressive how much of these distractions our brains can block out with enough practice.

What I Disagreed To Attend To

Unfortunately, as good as I am at ignoring some things, I’m just as bad at letting myself get distracted, or sucked into something on my phone or chromebook. During classes especially, I sometimes really need to fight myself not to play games on my chromebook and to really focus on the professor. I always feel terribly disrespectful when I realize I’m not listening, so I try to be extra attentive afterwards. But to follow that, I spend so much effort in trying to make the professor know that I’m listening to them with manual cues like nodding my head and making eye contact, that I’m not actually hearing what they’re saying. It’s very frustrating. Other distractions that aren’t as time consuming for me are my note taking abilities. I am horrible at taking notes and always have been. I’ve made efforts to improve it like color coding and only writing what is important, but when I try to do that digitally, I sometimes get too sucked into the format of my page or the font size, that I fiddle with that too long and miss what the professor said. It’s also become way to easy for me to completely stop doing homework, and just go on my phone or turn on my TV. Which really slows down the process of getting things done in a timely manner, and only adds to my procrastination.

How I’m Trying To Fight Distractions

I’ve been in an ongoing battle of fighting distractions for a while, and looking for the best tools to battle these distractions and get into a more focused mindset. One thing that helps me get homework done, is either separating myself from my phone, and closing extra tabs on my browser, or turning on the “work” feature on my iPhone. This feature only allows some notifications that may be related to what you’re trying to complete, like emails, or it’ll let through important messages from other people, if they chose to force send it through. Both have helped me focus on completing assignments. I’ve also been working towards lengthening my attention span. Rather than endlessly scrolling on Tik Tok, which is all short form content, I’ve been opting to put on a T.V. show, movie, or a youtube video that’s longer than ten minutes. Sometimes this fails me and I go on my phone, but most often it fails me when I realize I wasn’t listening to the show, and was thinking about something else, and I have to rewind a minute or two. But I have noticed that the frequency I’m distracted has decreased from averaging around 5 distractions/10 minutes to about 2 distractions/10 minutes when I’m watching longer form content. I started marking down in a notebook when I watch longer media on March 31, 2026, so I’ve accumulated almost 3 weels of data to pull from. That itself had become a distraction, but it’s more of an allowed distraction. I’ve also found that using a quiet fidget in some of my classes that don’t appeal to me has kept me focused on the professor, and I only put it down to write down the important notes. So in turn, my notes have also improved slightly.

Did My Distractions Impede On My Life?

Doing this project has made the answer to that question very clear. Yes the distractions impeed on my life. I’ve stopped paying attention to the things around me, like the beautiful sky, or the birds singing on my way to class. It’s hard to enjoy those views when you have music playing in your ears and your nose in a screen. It’s also taken away from my education, which is most important. Even if the class is unappealing to me, I should be able to walk out feeling like I learned at least one thing, and there were days where I would walk out wondering why I even drove to class. It somewhat feels like I’ve lost a Cold War to technology and iPhones. But it is eye-opening and I have strategies to improve myself and my mind. I feel so chained to my phone in so many ways I never fully realized before. People can talk to me at any time, even if I don’t really want to talk to them and my family and friends can track my location whenever. There’s always a pressure to post things on social media as well. It feels like there’s no more secracy to my life, even as someone who is very open-book, there doesn’t seem to be much privacy for people anymore. I do think that changing my distractions will help me negotiate my digital expierience, and that I can have a healthier relationship with these distractions. I’m definately going to keep working towards autonomy over my distractions. If all these other tools fail to help me, I could always live off the grid on a small farm and become Amish.

What I transcribed

I unfortunately missed transcribing in the Colored Conventions campaign, so I searched for other projects I could transcribe through. I found projects through the Library of Congress – By The People, and was able to transcribe a page from a campaign that reviewed culinary pages from revolutionary times. The page I transcribed seemed to be from a magazine with instructions on hosting dinners, and how to host efficiently.

What I learned from transcribing

I didn’t know much about digitized documents before before I participated in the transcribe-a-thon. I didn’t realize how many documents were still being worked on in these archives. It’s very interesting to me that some of these websites, like the Library of Congress let anyone transcribe for free, and don’t require and certifications. Even if they go through review after transcription, it’s still intersting to me that they would let any Joe-Schmo do this tedious work. But that may also reflect how few people there are that do it, and how desperate they are for people to help, that they take so much volunteer work. One of my biggest challenges transcribing, specifically this page, was ensuring that I was doing it correctly. Making sure I had line-breaks in the correct spots was also difficult, especially if I was in the zone and just typing away, I had to check back in with myself to make sure I was following all the rules.

What I learned about the history these documents embody

I learned a lot about the manners and etiquette of the time period. It has many more rules than we have for normal dinners today. Especially about making sure dinners aren’t too flashy or too dull for the occasion. I was also surprised by the expectations for the guest to match the home that their visiting, whether they are wealthier, or poorer than the host family. I wasn’t very surprised that the magazined seemed directed towards wome, with language that mentions the readers/hosts husband, considering the traditional patriarchial values of the time period.It was very interesting to read into what is essentially the equivalent of our time’s “Teen Vogue” and to see the reading material available to average people.

How I see things now

I definately have more of an understanding for the value in these projects and campaigns. When we are transcribing, whether it’s an authors work, or a promotional ad, or government papers, we learn so much about the era and the way people lived. Transcribing things from authors is similar to getting an insight into their brain, like when we look at the Walden Manuscripts. It’s like getting to watch the process of someone working. I also liked the page I transcribed because it was somewhat relatable. It reminded me of reading my old babysitters magazines about gardening, and reading the columns that had tips and tricks for them, and it’s somewhat comforting that even hundreds of years ago, people were still writting and reading about daily life advice. Working with these documents helps me feel closer to the time period, and makes the people that lived through it feel more real, and less like fictional stories. It’s a good reminder for how people’s lives used to be and depending on the document you’re working with, it could also be a good reminder for how far we’ve come, and how good we have it today comparably.