For this linking assignment, I have chosen to examine the similarities and differences between my response to “What’s in your Bag” and Melissa Santo’s response. You can link to Melissa’s assignment here and my assignment here. 

To begin, Melissa is clearly more creative than me. She beautifully spelled out her name using the contents of her everyday purse; whereas I (not a very creative person) literally dumped out my gym bag, made sure you could see everything and snapped a photo. Does this speak to our personality differences? As I read Melissa’s reflection, she hypothesizes that the reason she spells her name is to give us a visual. Perhaps Melissa is tired of people spelling her name incorrectly and wanted to lead with this visual. 

Similar to me, Melissa identifies a number of text technologies present in her purse: Covid vaccination receipts, grocery receipts and even birthday card invitations. However, what Melissa did differently that resonated with me was recognizing that we live in a “multilerate, global, corporate economy”; Melissa identifies the local and global brands found in her purse which allowed me to recognize that my gym bag doesn’t have any local products and I need to remedy this problem. 

I really appreciated the opportunity to have a glimpse inside Melissa’s purse to begin to understand her as a person; she is a mother, wife, passionate traveler with some dietary restrictions.