For the last few weeks, a friend of mine has been chasing after me to install a new program on my computer. It’s kind of like a role-playing game, or so I’ve been told. I can’t really be sure until I play this hyped up game. So, giving into the peer pressure, I downloaded this game called Second Life the other day. I was quite excited to play it because my friend said that she’d created a unique character – just for me – to use in the Second Life virtual world. But, after I installed it, I discovered that I didn’t have the system requirements to load it.
During a lesson last week at Smith’s School of English Kyobashi, I mentioned my woes to a student during a one point. He immediately responded to my mentioning of the game and confessed that he not only knew what it was but that he was also addicted to it. We made a connection over the game and other computer/internet topics that crept outside of the scheduled class time. However, the student stayed behind for a few extra minutes to offer me some helpful tips on how I might possibly get the program to work. His advice was very much appreciated because I wanted to join my friend in the cyber world.
Today, that same student surprised me by coming into the school with his miniature laptop computer loaded with the Second Life in order to show me what the game is like. He remembered our conversation and asked if I had gotten the game to run on my computer yet. Unfortunately I hadn’t so I was really excited to see a small demonstration of how the game worked on his computer. He showed me what his little character was up to and mentioned that he was trying to buy him some new clothes, which I thought was just hilarious. I love it when I’m able to have these wonderful, mutually beneficial conversations about common interests or life in general with the students. And who knows, perhaps I might even meet him sometime in the future in the “Second Life”!
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