These are the items in the bag that I carry with me on workdays (Monday to Friday).  For reference, I work as an elementary school teacher. It also functions as my purse on these days, and I carry a separate lunch kit. As this bag is the only bag that would contain items specific to work, but with added daily needed and used items, it reflects me both in my professional life and my personal life.

The bag contains my cell phone, wallet, a notebook, my reading glasses in a case, my work keys and whistle on a lanyard, face masks on a lanyard, gum, tissues, Tylenol, lip balm, post-it notes, a pen, a copy of a telephone tree on a piece of paper (yellow) and a little zippered bag containing personal items like floss and hygiene products. On this particular day, there was also a gift card in a sleeve that I had been given the day before as a gift and forgotten about. I do not need or use all the items in this bag daily. Daily use items include my cell phone, my keys on a lanyard, one of the various face masks, and my reading glasses. The other items are used as necessary.

Text and Text Technology

Considering these items as ‘text’ in the Greek origin, they are a creation of a story about what a day in my work life might look like. Thinking of the word ‘text’ in modern usage, in which it is thought of as ‘authority,’ made me think of writing directions or notes for myself in my notebook, or the directions for usage/dosage that appear on the Tylenol bottle, which would be seen as medial advice.

The blue Moleskine notebook is used for me to write notes in pertaining to work – to-do lists, notes from meetings I have attended, and important dates coming up. I know many people like to record such information digitally, however I have always been drawn to writing notes about such things. Some tasks require me to record notes digitally so that they may be shared with other co-workers, but if the notes are just for myself I will usually default to writing them on paper with a pen or pencil.

I am Canadian by birth and live in Canada. While I would not consider myself fully bilingual, but I would say I speak and understand French better than the average Canadian. As all of the items in my bag were purchased in Canada and we have dual national languages (English and French), they have both English and French text on them (the Tylenol, lip balm, post-its, tissues, and the Starbucks gift card).

The lanyard I use for my face masks was made by a student of mine. He used individual letter beads to spell out my last name (J-O-H-N-S-O-N). The lanyard I put my work keys on has ‘www.coquitlam.ca’ printed on it five times. I have had it for at least 15 years, when I worked for the City of Coquitlam. In 2021 we as a western society have come to recognize that a string of letters with ‘www’ in front of them usually is a reference to a website, as ‘www’ stands for ‘world wide web.’ The two keys I have on my lanyard serve two different purposes and have different letters on them. One is labeled ‘IM 38’ in which ‘IM’ stands for ‘internal master’ – a key which opens all internal doors in my school. The other key is labeled ‘SERV 38’ and opens the door to the server room in our school.

I did not include the unfolded paper version of my work ‘phone tree’ as it would reveal personal information of my co-workers names and phone numbers. It on its own tells a full ‘text’ – the names of everyone on staff and how we can communicate by phone with each other in an emergency. It is a text document that infers authority as there are a set of rules to follow (arrows on the flow chart) of who to phone next in line.

The Starbucks gift card was inside a paper sleeve with a hand written note from a co-worker. It reads ‘Thank you so much for taking care of my class while I was away!’ My co-worker became suddenly and unexpectedly ill the week before Christmas and had to take a week off work. I helped cover her class in her absence and helped give her replacement teacher directions. The text implies gratitude by the giver (‘thank you’) and implies I had done something for her as a favour to be deserving of a gift in return.

Digital Technology

My cell phone is the most obvious piece of digital technology in my bag, and it is the item I use most frequently in there. While my work laptop is often in the bag as well, it was not on the day I took the photo. My cell phone acts as a communication device (telephone, text, Facetime with my children, email), an information device (current weather, meeting schedule), and entertainment (social media, Netflix, Spotify music). Anyone who was able to unlock the phone and scroll through my apps and photos would learn a great deal about me as a person (my musical taste, how I spend my free time, what games I like to play, what shows I like to watch on Netflix, how I spend my free time, who I speak to most frequently).

Other items that function as digital technology are items in my wallet and the gift card. My banking and credit cards contain microchips in them that allow ‘tap’ payment. Gift cards and store loyalty cards have a magnetic strip which links to account information.

Narrative

I was a working teacher 15 years ago, and I carried many of the same things in a bag on my workdays (wallet, phone, car keys, notebook, pen, tissues, gum, personal items). I did have a cell phone 15 years ago, but not 25 years ago (I got my first cell phone in 2003). I did not have reading glasses then, and I did not carry a set of school-specific keys as I was a teacher-on-call and went to a different location every day.

I think the contents of my bag are fairly common items that many people would carry in a work bag and don’t really give too many clues as to who I am as a person, until you start exploring things such as the contents of my wallet or phone. If you read my driver’s licence you could discover my weight, height and address. If you scrolled through my camera roll on my phone, you would have an idea of how I like to spend my free time, or the types of inspirational quotes that appeal to me.

If an archeologist was looking at these contents in the future, he/she would likely be able to glean the following things:

– the face masks would be telling about the current time period. Before the COVID pandemic, face masks were not commonly worn or carried in our western society, but now in January of 2021 have become a daily use item for many people

-my job was in education/teaching, as my hand written notes in my notebook would reference terms related to the profession, as does the gift card I received from my co-worker and the phone tree paper

-that I lived in a culture in which English and French were commonly used and spoken, and that I spoke, read and wrote in English