So today I was sitting at lunch and brainstorming how I was going to set up my outline for my senior project. My senior project is going to be a humorous, self-deprecating, creative nonfiction piece by the way! I was looking through an article that my advisor gave to me that was published in the Atlantic. The article titled "Contemporary Student Life" discusses the stress of college students. Um..Hi, ya think? Authors Fallows and Tierney state that a book written by Craig Brandon claims that America's schools are "alcohol-soaked, saturated, drug-infested campuses." Essentially saying that kids spend more time partying and going on Facebook than actually reading and studying. Yes, we do in fact spend hours on Facebook and a good amount of students take part in binge drinking on the weekends, but is this really what contributes to our stress? I doubt it. Social Media is a huge part of our generation and our incessant use of Twitter, Facebook and other sites is not necessarily such a bad thing. I hope to go into PR and Social Media after I graduate so personally, when I spend my time blogging and tweeting in my spare time I consider myself to be quite productive! We're stressed out from the pressure to find a decent job after we graduate, not from the distractions of social media. I mean granted I probably spend a little more time on Facebook than necessary when I could be doing my homework, but procrastination is a personal problem.
I'm sure my parents spent just as much time procrastinating and binge drinking in their day, they just couldn't get thrown in the slammer as easily for doing it...thanks a lot Lindsay Lohan. But in all seriousness I think the school systems can address more pressing issues than the fact that we procrastinate doing our 10-page Hamlet essay in order to play Call of Duty or get on Facebook. Do you really think if we didn't have Facebook we'd be any more eager to write about the neurotic characters in Shakespeare? Probably not. Social Media has opened up a whole new world for marketing and for social networking giving us that many more options when we graduate. So even though we are the generation who can always be found with our cell phones attached to our hands, maybe we have technology to thank. Maybe in fact, we are more aware because information is constantly flowing and is more easily accessible. You can take the girl out of Facebook but you can't take the Facebook out of the girl, well in my case anyway :)
Here is the link to that article I was talking about..see what you think! Being a student sucks.
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