Blog 2

The Digital Age Downside:

Humans cannot conduct their entire lives from laptops, so why has that become the expectation?

I was a happy and optimistic person. I count my blessings in a gratitude journal, have impeccable manners, dislike saying swear words, and am not above saying “love you” to my parents before hanging up. 

This pleasantly peachy attitude took her dying breath on September of 2012.

A former friend mercilessly tortured her until she finally met the abyss.

Submitting to Internet dependence murdered my happiness.

When college demanded that I submit my every work to a place as mysterious and unreliable as the World Wide Web I was wary. Now, after experiencing the hell that is D2L, Microsoft Outlook and Online Job applications, the online experience heartlessly mocks every hope I have and kicks the crap out of my good intentions.

The web and I have an abusive relationship, and now am expected to marry this monster. These three stories are my plea for divorce from an internet-drenched existence.

I love many things, but are obsessed with two: Learning everything about every animal ever in existence, and office supplies.





I hope to one day be a zookeeper with a basement full of new notebooks, erasers, glue sticks & Pilot pens. 

I happen to be moving back home next semester and needed one of the many jobs available due to the large number of stores opening in my area.

To get this aspiration’s pedal to the metal, naturally I would apply to Petco and Staples, right?

You should know that both of these companies provide ONLY online applications, and when they aren’t hiring, they don’t let you apply.

When I was a 14 year-old job-virgin and filled out my application for an opening at Petco, this was just dandy. It was a bummer that the position was filled by another applicant, but everything was still dandy. Now I'm experienced, knowledgeable, and am required to with hold all those great new values for an unbeknownst time when they decide is right, if I make it in time to apply at all.

Fast forward to 2 weeks ago on a Thursday night, filling out an application for the new Staples in town. A careful 2 ½ hours in, the internet cuts out for some ridiculously unfortunate random-ass reason. I realized I had hit my wi-fi button, fixed the problem, and scrambled to get signed back in to see if it’d saved anything. Now imagine me drawing a blank on what username and password I used.  

Immediately I started to cry.

To this day, I don't know my beloved Suzy's birthday.

Now I am 19 years old and have three years of experience working with exotic animals at a zoo. The cashiers that check me out at petco still go to my High School and have never had a job before. When I was reduced to asking a question about a guinea pig's estimated age, each employee answered way differently then the last. Staple’s sends me emails entitled “Did you forget about us?” and it hurts like salt in an emotional wound.

 I am a bitter young woman.

While Staples may sarcastically mock me through my Microsoft Outlook inbox, my “Sent Items” folder has the spirit of a prankster and targets contacts that are too important to mess with. Say I send an email from home one day, and the next I connect to Starbuck’s wi-fi. My goofy-little-goose Outlook searches out an email to resend on that second day: but the sneaky bastard resends only to my professors, and only at completely random times. It has provoked responses from 3 of my 4 professors who wonder why I want to hand in the same essay or take the same quiz twice.  The mystery of Internet connection is my least favorite mystery.

My mom was a “non-trad” student for a couple semesters.

In 1995, you printed your essay with your name at the top and the date right below it. The ink dries onto the pearly, creaseless paper, and as you brim with pride, you turn to your little two-year old (who’s features are so cute, you believe she’s so full of heavenly light that any poop or mucus is merely the spillage of her Godliness.) and you say, “Oh, Sara. Life is so wonderful.”

The paper is physically offered and received; proof that your work has been accounted for and your timeliness is noted.

Circa 1995. Glorious Baby Me next to a patriotic pretty llama with my patriotic pregnant Mama.
I guess people loved the country more than they do now, if style is any indication...

In 2012, college essays and tests worth points of unfathomable amounts are submitted to a “drop box” on a website named like an 80’s boy band.  Trying to navigate hell is preferable to navigating D2L. Relying on this website for every grade-determining event I’m paying to be subjected to has made me tear up more than any cruddy ex-boyfriend has. There are so many uncertain variables in submitting assignments online, and I’ve been tripped up by every one of them.

Do you have an internet connection?

Are you sure the drop box closes when you think it does?

Is your internet connection fast enough to submit your assignment before the drop box closes?

Does your essay comply with that rubric that everyone saw? The one in the invisible file under one of the 36 misleading tabs on the courses code-name page?

Did you press submit after successfully uploading?

I abhor D2L. I do.