Before this week, I was not very familiar with the extreme amount of work that went into taking care of material objects at the beginning of the industrial era. In particular, I found the reading by Susan Strasser to be quite interesting. I especially liked her detailed explanations of the specific processes of caring for and repairing objects, and also the various sources that she looked at for evidence, including books and household manuals, housekeeping magazines, advertisements, and journals/diaries. Our discussion of how repair has declined in many forms over the past several decades also stood out to me. The aspect of technological advancement, the ease of ordering new things, and the way that modern ads have made people desire the new and regard the old as useless all have been relevant in my own life at some point. For example, about 8 years ago, my iPhone screen had a few small cracks in it that most likely could have been repaired. However, this iPhone model was several years old at the time, and, largely due to recent ads that emphasized the superior features and advancements of the newest model compared to the earlier ones, my parents just decided to buy me a new iPhone of the newest model, instead of worrying about going through the “repair” process of the older iPhone. In this situation, my parents were definitely drawn in by the ads, and they had the same belief that many of us today have – that going through the process of repair would be pointless and more of an inconvenience, and it would be easier and better to just get a new phone, even though the old one was still fully functional and the screen probably could have been replaced without the need to buy an entirely new phone. Overall, this week made me more aware of the importance of not losing complete sight of processes of repair in order to help us see and understand the world better – there is often a level of ingenuity needed for repairs, and our generation seems to overly prioritize convenience over things that demand more time and effort, leading to our neglect and disregard for those who do the repair and other “dirty work.”