The other day, a friend was telling me a story about how she had helped someone move to college in a new city years ago. According to her, the move was awful and they nearly starved to death because, being in a new city, they didnât have the phone numbers for any pizza delivery. While I admired her dedication to nutrition, I was confused. âWhy didnât you just Google it on your phone?â Well, because it was 2003 and smart phones didnât exist.
This got me thinking about how things have changed for the collegiate population in the last decade. When I first started my post-secondary career in â03, there was a strict ban on using electronic sources: we had to go to the library and sift through stacks of dusty journals to find a tidbit of info for a paper. Wikipedia wasnât a thing yet, and there was no YouTube or Facebook.
Was I a perfect student without these modern miracles of distraction at my fingertips? Of course not. Students are incredibly adaptable creatures, and will always find a way to put things off to the last minute. So donât beat yourself up too much if you spent three hours Facebook-stalking your third grade crush instead of studying for that quiz last nightâyouâre simply participating in the long and distinguished tradition of the academic elite.
