Walk, text, and chew gum.

Most people have trouble doing two things at once, like walking and talking or walking and chewing gum. Now everyone can walk and text. Do you really believe that? I saw two students walk head-on into each other while walking and texting. I saw a professor fall off of a curb while walking and texting, yes flat on his face and no he was not a young person. Last week I saw a student walk into a light pole while walking and looking at his phone. Hello, we are not made to do more than one thing at a time. Multi-tasking does not exist. It is serial tasking, and we are not good at it. Before class, I see an entire row of students all on their phones, and I wonder if are they texting each other. One day I asked a couple of guys that were busy on their phones if they noticed the drop-dead gorgeous young lady sitting between them. OMG! They had not even looked at her. I don’t understand. Smartphones and texting seem to be destroying the art of conversation and personal interconnections. What is next? Meeting in virtual reality with an avatar? I wonder where all this is leading? Of course, we have a president whose primary method of communication is tweeting. Not every student is consumed with electronic media. I received a very nice, handwritten thank you note from a student this week, thanking me for being her professor. It is things like this that make a professor’s year.