Sam Merrin's Hobbies
Sam Merrin does not have nearly as many hobbies as she has interests, but since many of her hobbies do not take her away from her home, she finds them easier to pursue than her many varied interests. Some of her favorite hobbies are blogging and answering questions on forums. As a teacher and former PR Associate, Sam Merrin is very interested in people: how they think, what they feel, and why they come to certain conclusions. Beyond getting to know people and finding out what lies beneath their surfaces, Sam Merrin loves helping people, and she feels that through forming connections with people on blogs and sharing advice and information, she is doing her part to improve society.
So far, Sam Merrin is the author of two blogs, one on WordPress, titled “Stories from Life” and one on Blogger, called “Sam Merrin’s Musings,” through which she has formed many personal connections. On her blogs, Sam Merrin focuses her posts on her life as a teacher, her trips to Europe, and her crush on Bill, a teacher at another school in the district. From time to time, she also comments on news involving teachers and schools and posts funny comics and awe-inspiring photographs and photo galleries. While Sam Merrin’s blogs may not be life-changing reads like so many of the internet’s other information-based blogs, she still feels she is reaching out to people and doing what she can to form meaningful human connections in a world where man-machine interface is of higher value.
As much as Sam Merrin enjoys blogging, she takes pleasure in posting on forums much more. She is an avid participant on Yahoo! Answers, and her answers are frequently chosen as the best. She sets aside time every week for her newest addiction and regularly gets caught up in answering queries and reading a variety of popular questions and “The Best of Answers.” Sam Merrin feels Yahoo! Answers is not only a useful tool for finding obscure information fast, but for helping people on a human level. The forum allows individuals to lend their years of personal experience to their answers and give their advice and opinions on a variety of subjects, from family and relationships to society and culture. Sam Merrin has found the forum to be an extremely useful source for finding answers to any number of questions she can think up, such as the typical weather conditions in countries she has never been to (but will be traveling to), the world’s great restaurants and hang outs, the cultural differences between Americans and Europeans, how to reformat her hard drive, and the names of obscure films, novels, artists, or authors she cannot remember. What she loves most about the forum is knowing the questions are neither asked nor answered by a computer, but that an individual is behind every one, and Sam Merrin answers each question in detail with that in mind and with the intention of doing all that she can to assist them. Part of her current job is to help young people succeed and that is how she looks at Yahoo! Answers, another way to help people succeed, whether it is in finding a way to remember more or how to choose a career. Sam Merrin loves that the website is able to combine human interaction and the pooling of knowledge into one forum, but most of all, she loves giving each question her personal attention and knowing she is helping people do things: from learning how to dance to helping their child get over their fear of the dentist.