The New Internet Psyche Facilitates The Brain of the Busy Grad Student/Parent

As most of you know, my research focus has recently shifted to technology and writing. Although I'm in the middle of updating attendance for my ENG 100 class, adding employees to my English SI section, and creating a survey for all ENG 100 students about my SOWI Project, I'm going to give a brief update of what I just thought about, which is sort of the point of this post. How unclear was that sentence? Hopefully things will begin to clarify a bit here as I go on.

Right now, I'm sitting in the PCS teacher's lounge because I am going to meet, at lunch, with students who are working on a drama that will be performed Friday. This means that I have about two and a half hours to work. I decided that I would begin by sending an important e-mail, then recording attendance for my ENG 100 students, so I opened up Blackboard and Outlook. Out of a course of habit, I also opened Gmail and Facebook. As I deleted Gmail messages, I noticed that there was one I had never responded to concerning my daughter and an activity she is in. I began to respond to the e-mail stating that I couldn't meet at the date requested because I was taking my daughter to the museum. In the midst of this, I thought about whether I wanted to record grades online or offline, so I went of to Blackboard, and made a couple of selections to open the online gradebook. Then, I went back to the e-mail and began to finish, when I realized I might be able to make the meeting depending on the train schedule, so I pulled it up on Google. I then thought about how potentially significant this might be, so I decided to write a blog, link to SOWI, etc, all while still checking that train schedule. (Looks like I can just make that meeting!)

What does this all suggest (other than I have way too much to do)? It means that the Internet is either changing our thinking--immediate gratification; we forget less because we don't have to stray too far from what we are doing to accomplish our to-do list; in a sense, it's nullified the to do list--or facilitating a thinking that was always a bit scatterbrained. (When you have to juggle shoe sizes, college course plans, Introduction to literary theory, and swimming lesson schedules, I don't know that you have a choice to be anything but scatterbrained!)

All and all, it's interesting. Now, back to trying to respond to that e-mail!