I Need my People…NOW.

I just caught myself saying, “This email just takes so long!”  Sure, university email does take a little longer than typical email, but I didn’t always email.  I wrote letters to friends and such, but I have grown so accustomed to instant communication provided by email, text messages, cell phones and instant messaging.  How on Earth did we ever coordinate meeting somewhere without cell phones and text messaging.  Now there are instant messages and email you can take with you?!  Don’t get me wrong, I still love rotary style phones, but I love communicating – and instantly.  I need to communicate to my people.  I feel lost if my laptop isn’t with me or my cell phone dies (which in its old age of 2 years, it does quite frequently at this point).

Wow.  I now understand the theory behind Google’s ‘conversation’ style email.  My students email me in an instant message style of emailing.  We will snap brief, sometimes broken sentences back and forth within a few minutes.  Links, abbreviations and everything except formal letter format clutter our conversation.  Don’t get me wrong, we of this generation do have the ability to write formal correspondence, but where appropriate, we save time.

Off to check on that email I sent 5 minutes ago…