It was spring break junior year and all of my friends were loading up the car to head out of town. From the porch, I watched as they crammed the last of their bags into the trunk of the car. Sadly, none of my luggage was included in that smorgasbord of handbags. I wouldn’t be taking off anytime soon due to that the fact a researched paper was looming over my head. Due the next day, the deadline had already been extended two times and I only had myself to blame.
Wanting to go, I had to turn down the offer to ride with because I’d have to stay home to write my paper seeing as my laptop couldn’t hold a charge for more than a millisecond. Saddened, I saw them off and headed back inside to make myself a sandwich and eat my sorrow away.
I walked into my room, sat down at my desk and there it was, staring me in the face: a yellow legal pad…
After the triple-decker pb&j and one too many glasses of sweet tea, I moseyed on up to my room to churn out the seven pages I’d been neglecting for far too long. I walked into my room, sat down at my desk and there it was, staring me in the face: a yellow legal pad and pen.
It was at that moment in life that I never been more ashamed of myself, nor felt so utterly dumb. How far had I come as person to forget that a research paper could be written with such simple tools? How could I have been so oblivious to a technology that, up until the advent of the typewriter, had been the only way to write any paper to begin with?
It got me thinking about how I lived my life, not in a crazy existentialist kind of way, but in more of a practical kind of way. How reliant on technology had I become that I instantly assumed that if I didn’t have my laptop, then I couldn’t possibly do a research paper? So, I began to think that maybe I wasn’t the only one who had experienced this problem. Maybe I wasn’t the only one beginning to somewhat lose grasp on some of life’s simpler pleasures.
I thought to myself how weird it was to think of a world without Google, Microsoft Word and four gigabytes of RAM at my fingertips.
Everything I seem to do these days is somehow involved with a computer or dependent on the Internet. Sitting there looking at that pen and paper, I thought to myself how weird it was to think of a world without Google, Microsoft Word and four gigabytes of RAM at my fingertips. How could I have forgotten that this was our life not even less than twenty years ago?
Like I said, maybe it was a lapse in judgment, a slip of logic or, most likely, my own inherent stupidity, but either way it thought me something. This somewhat humorous occurrence taught me that despite going to a technological advanced university, life’s problems can sometimes be answered with some of the simplest solutions and I will never forget that.
Actually, who am I kidding? There’s a reason we don’t typewriters and fountain pens anymore. I love technology. I bought a new battery straight away and will continue typing every paper from here on out. I didn’t choose to go to Tech because I wanted to live like it was 1932. It’s going to take more than one measly paper to teach me a lesson.