Turn it off, just for the moment

It is a sad day when a 55-minute class involves much more than attempting to stay awake and taking notes. \nInstead of merely listening to the monotone drone of whichever professor is unlucky enough to have me at that moment, I am on my Palm Pilot checking the status of my Phillip Morris stock upon which I am depending to pay off college loans. \nWith a lifestyle that involves much more than daily college curriculums, I spend time scheduling interviews and hopeful career possibilities in a memory bank that is already filled to the brim.\nWhen I was in high school, my biggest worry was what homework I had to do. Today, my life is now multitasking mayhem that requires me to do many things simultaneously making it possible to focus on 30 tasks that seem mandatory but make it impossible to be active in any particular moment. \nInstead of focusing on the most immediate task, something always has to be done in preparation for the day ahead. This phenomenon of multitasking has found its way everywhere from the Wall Street traders who busily trade from four laptops while trying to vacation with their families in the Keys to average college students like me who in a shrinking job market just want to have a chance.\nMultitasking has also found its way to the courts, where in New York it is now illegal to drive and talk on cellular phones. This legislature, if it ever travels as far as the Midwest, will force more use of the Stadium Express and Nike Airs in an attempt to keep up with appointments while going to and from class, work and other obligations.\nIn the lifestyle where there is always more to do and where little is rarely done, a vacation is no longer a vacation. Thanks to modern technology like cellular phones and digital planners, one can do anything almost anywhere. I can be in biology and planning spring break in the Caribbean. I can walk from Ballantine Hall to the Kelley School of Business and have checked e-mail, spoken to my mother and set up an interview in Indianapolis all in a matter of five minutes. \nIt has been easy to dive into the game of doing everything at each moment rather than being where I am and doing what is there. Instead, I can be everywhere and it is with this capability that life seems to slip into a routine of plans rather than moments.\nIn this lifestyle, I am never mentally present where I physically am and I have begun to realize with grades slipping while my outside life becomes in sync that there need to be moments without Palms or AT&T Wireless. \nBeing connected to the world, especially during times of crisis, is an invaluable resource. But before you know it, you have your whole future planned but no memories of moments. \n This is a sad, sad state for a junior in college and for a society whose members should have lifetimes composed of memories and moments rather than planners and Palms.\n Could it be possible that for those of us entrenched in multitasking the time has come to slow down, turn the Palm Pilots off and at least learn to sit through a lecture with no technology other than the overhead projector? \n The importance of being in a moment far supercedes any stock trades that will mean nothing when the game of life is over, I conclude that it is time to take a walk through a park, listen to lectures and mute the cellular phones, so that life as it is on location, not a million miles away, can be truly lived. \nIsn't that what life is all about?