How We Absorb Information

I get incredibly tired of the same complaints and concerns about attention spans in the younger generations. People are constantly commenting that younger people are too easily distracted and not able to focus all their energy on one thing for an extended amount of time. My dad often calls this a "fast food" culture meaning our expectations about how quickly we should get things has gone up and not in a good way. Here's how a "young person" sees this phenomenon:

I can see how this particular subject might be upsetting to older generations. Radical change is often something viewed with apprehension, and I will be the first one to say that change for the sake of change will do little good. However, this is an evolution. New technology has made it possible to get more information than ever and at a faster rate than could have ever been predicted. In about five minutes I can check up on my friends' lives on Facebook, catch up on celebrity gossip on twitter, check world news headlines from The New York Times, and send a text to my mom about dinner tonight. Give me another ten minutes, and I can explain to you what the Higgs Boson particle is and why it matters.

I think what is so concerning about having everything at your fingertips is the idea that you may be exposed to a lot of information, but you are not absorbing any of it. This is a valid point.The information we have obtained a week ago may be getting shoved aside for the massive amount of new information we've consumed since then.

I don't see this as a problem necessarily, though. The benefit of having all this information coming at us is that we are exposed to so many things. Something is bound to catch your attention and motivate you to explore further. For example, I am an English major, but I find astronomy absolutely fascinating. I will watch any television show or documentary made about the stars or the universe. I read books explaining how we're all made of stardust and how everything is connected despite the universe being so large and getting bigger every second. The internet has been a great source for me to delve deeper into this subject. I can watch YouTube videos or TED talks about it any time I want and at my own pace. In the end, the democratization of information is what is the best thing about the internet age, and I don't think we'd want to give that up for anything.

My First Presidential Election

This is the first presidential election that I am eligible to vote in. I missed the 2008 election by only three months! This time around, I am completely ready and excited that I will finally get to cast my vote.

Election season can be infuriating at times. I'm not sure that there is any other instance in which people react the way they do about politics. People can get downright mean. Amidst all the bickering and name-calling, you can sometimes find valid arguments and logical reasoning. Underneath all the animosity (deep, deep down underneath), people simply care. I think that's what causes politics to get so heated. People genuinely care about their government. I try to keep that in mind when I find myself frustrated with people who hold different opinions than my own.

As a relatively new voter, I have tried very hard to keep an open mind about everything. I differ pretty radically from the majority of people in Oklahoma, and instead of getting annoyed by this fact, I've tried to use it as an opportunity to see where people are coming from. My parents are fairly conservative Republicans and I truly value their opinion. However, after many conversations and lots of questions, my views have not altered much.

Today I came across an article online from The New Yorker that does a fairly good job of reflecting my own personal opinions about our two candidates. I'm so frustrated with the lack of progress our country has shown. On social issues, I am appalled by how we still treat each other. It seems, at times, that the rest of the Western world has gotten over these archaic social problems that we are still wrestling with. I often think that my generation will talk about our parents' homophobia like our parents talk about their parents' racism.

J.K. Rowling was recently on the Daily Show, and I've always admired her. I was pleasantly surprised to see that aside from being a spectacular writer, she seems to be socially and politically aware. She made very intriguing points about her government as compared to ours and I would strongly urge you to take the time to watch her interview online.

  

I really enjoyed the last debate, and I look forward to the one tonight. Everybody, regardless of their political views should take the time to watch.

The Gray Area

People like little boxes. They like to categorize, label, simplify.

The public education system is designed to expose students to a variety of subjects. You are required to take math even if you couldn't solve for x to save your life. You are required to take English even if you find the idea of reading Pride and Prejudice to be boring at best. You take classes in history, science, health, and even physical education. All with the idea that as you learn more you will tend toward certain subjects more than others. But what if that doesn't happen?

After graduation from high school, you have to begin to think about specializing in something. You have to begin thinking about what major you will chose. Generally, those majors are split in two between the math and sciences and the liberal arts majors. There are majors that straddle the line and are considered "soft sciences," but generally people think of themselves as either right-brained or left-brained. The world tends to be categorized into "the analytical" and "the creative."

The closer I get to graduating from college, the more I tire of this false dichotomy. I am an English major, so we generally get categorized under "the creative" types. However, I am actually a very analytical person. I did well in math and science classes, and I'm very organized. I think there also tends to be the belief that math and science classes are harder than literature or humanities. For me, it's just the opposite. I am very good at researching and reading critical analysis in preparation for writing essays, but when it comes to the creative aspect of actually sitting down and writing, I tend to struggle. I thrived in my linguistics class because it was essentially a scientific class. There were rules you memorized and applied to language, and I loved seeing language in such concrete ways.

Even in the sciences, analytical people have to have a spark of creativity. They have to be able to think outside the box in order to discover new things. Breakthroughs come from thinking creatively, not necessarily from staring at facts all day.