When I was a sophomore in high school I had the pleasure of traveling to Costa Rica and Panama with a group of friends and classmates. The ten day trip was planned out day by day with activities from river rafting to a ten mile hike through the Costa Rica jungle. I left my family, my home, and most importantly all of my electronic devices for an adventure. When I came home it felt like the world had changed; my ex-boyfriend and I were officially over (after not being able to discuss things after I broke up with him right before I left), NSync had broken up, and there was a new hip song with the lyrics “this shit is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s”. At the time I thought that I had missed out on so much, but looking back on it, those experiences I had in South America were much more valuable, interesting, and fulfilling than my ex-boyfriend and a song that faded out as fast as it came on the scene. Even though I learned the lesson of distancing myself from my devices, I still find myself refreshing my Facebook, and checking my text messages. I think, for myself personally, I do this because most of my friends and family is back in California with my twin sister who sees them every day. A few of my friends and I are in an ongoing group text with my twin that I always get information about our extended group of friends from, which is something I am always checking or asking for updates. I rely on that group text to always know what is going on with the friends of my friends. There is a constant joke with my friends that I am so behind on the times and late to new information because I live in Nebraska where life is simple. For me I don’t necessarily have a fear of missing out, because I am always missing out being in Nebraska. On the other hand if I know a bunch of my friends are going to an event, I’m always asking them to send me pictures or I am checking out their Instagram page to feel more included. It’s not that I have a FOMO because I’m not being included because I physically can’t be there. At times I do feel like I want to turn it all off and enjoy my surroundings which I do. The downside to this is once I turn my phone back on I’m greeted by a list of notifications. Sometimes the notifications are simply my mom saying hi, but other times I’m getting invitations to do something, and because I didn’t answer right away the invitation no longer stands because the event time had passed.
On side note to end this post, I’m sitting in class right now multitasking and I opened up the Yahoo homepage to see that Joan Rivers has died. Checking on information and refreshing pages has become a lifestyle, but you sure do get to information much faster.
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PaigeCreighton University Archives
December 2017
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