Trying to Keep Up

I am slowly working away at my part on GLIP, and though I've gotten a lot done, I will say that I am definitely happy about the extended time that we have to work on this part of the project. I feel so overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done for it. In addition to work for the project, I have a job, student teaching duties, and all my preparations for study abroad in China. I am feeling very overwhelmed, hectic, and crazed, and I think that's a good metaphor for how I sometimes feel in our increasingly technological world.

I feel like today, thanks in large part to the internet and all the technologies we have, we are expected to do a million things at once. I see my students "secretly" texting all the time. They are always connected, always wired in. They are on their phones while listening in class. They are listening to music while they work...my school actually has you sign a "listening contract" that allows you, even encourages you, to do this.

As adults, we are all about multi-tasking too. We send emails from work. We post to our Facebooks and Twitters while we make dinner. We commit the ultimate sin and text while we drive.

I can't help but feel that the demands that are placed on us by technology, technology which is supposed to make our lives easier, cause us to give everything about 50%. Nothing gets our full attention anymore. We don't just concentrate on one thing at a time and give it our best shot. We are jacks of all trades, masters of none in a sense.

Maybe I'm just having trouble becoming a grown up in today's world, or maybe I'm onto something. I don't have any solutions or anything to say other than I find it challenging to live in this place, and I feel that in a lot of ways, technology is actually decreasing, rather than increasing, our quality of life.