Electronics

I used to be a writer. Not a day would go by that I didn’t at least fill in a handful of pages in my journal, write an hour or so on one of the big projects, or (an some people call this cheating,) working with students to whom I am teaching writing skills. Then my daughter thought I needed to join the 20^th century. She says eventually I might even be ready for the 21^st century. So she gave me a nook loaded with 60 books and a gift card for probably another 30 books. And an ipod touch loaded with enough music that I think I could go a month without listening to any song twice as well as a few dozen games and other apps. And a portable video player and the offer of the loan of any of her several hundred videos. And a new cell phone with unlimited texting and web access. I think I may have written a word or two since our Yuletide party.

Oh, she also gave me a couple new journals and several pens. I think they’re still in the back of my car. With the amount of entertainment technology now in my pocket, and the amount of time I spent playing with it all, I now see why there is so much of a decline in old fashioned reading and writing and math skills in the students I tutor. When I speak with a kid the first time, I give them the rules. Number two, no electronics. Phones off. Not on silent. OFF. I don’t even let them use a calculator. I insist they learn to add and subtract, something most high school students can’t do. Eventually I even teach the need to have basic multiplication fact memorized. By basic, I mean up to 13 times 13. Nothing I wasn’t forced to have memorized by the time I was eleven, yet most college students I work with haven’t got a clue how to do without electronics. But now that I am addicted to so many little toys, I was telling myself that I may have to loosen up a little.

But them I remembered how much I haven’t written in the past month. Nope. Not giving my students any slack. I am going to have to stop giving myself so much slack as well.

Starting tomorrow.