Lesson from the Roman Empire

"We receive hundreds of emails each week, we study on computers (likely with earphones in our ears), some of us have fully computerized notes, we navigate with our GPS, communicate with Skype, and do just about everything on smartphones. What do you think of all this technology in a vet student’s life? Making things easier or more complicated? Do you prefer to communicate and study electronically or would you be much happier unplugged?"

Oneal Peters
Colorado State University, '13

Tap tap tap. This is the noise of vet school. Facebook flashes by on the screen of a classmate sitting in front of me, no doubt updating her status from sitting in Equine Medicine and Surgery to sitting in Bovine Herd Medicine, I guess it’s pretty big news. To the left of her someone is taking actual notes during class on their laptop, adding to the already text happy power point slides that the professor is reading to us. I shouldn’t criticize; I am watching all this while I peer over my own computer screen. This is the new look of vet school.

About sixty percent of my classmates take electronic notes. The other forty percent spend money each month purchasing their paper notes, print outs of the power point presentations that will be given by the course professor. As long as you have a working computer, taking electronic notes saves you about $100 per semester since electronic notes are free.

I have experimented with written notes and electronic notes. Both versions have their downfalls and benefits. Electronic notes are easier to keep track of, lighter and everything is in one place. My problem is the distraction. While I don’t have Facebook to tempt me during lecture, email certainly does, and when faced with the thirty plus emails I get a day, it’s nice to be able to reply to these during class so I don’t have to face an obese inbox when I get home at night. Of course, answering emails is not a good use of class time, but even when I had written notes I’d often find myself daydreaming anyway, so I guess it’s a double-sided sword either way you look at it.

When I think about the influence electronic devices have on the world, my brother and sister spring into my mind. Both my siblings are younger than I am, one who just escaped the teenage years by turning twenty, and one who is stuck in the land of sweet sixteen and high school drama. They can often be found listening to their iPods, checking Facebook on their phones and you have to make sure they don’t have ear buds in when talking to them if you want a response. I have often wondered if this is all a good thing, and the only answer I have been able to come up with goes back to a motto from Roman times: Everything in moderation.

This motto applies not only to my young siblings but to vet school as well. Progress is inevitable, but we do not have to walk blinding into this new world. We can all make the choice of whether to let technology overtake our lives, or not. It all begins with the simple decision of how to balance electronic communication with personal communication.

Over the last year, I began to feel like I was losing that balance. Most of my communication was via text messages or email, at night I would spend time with my Mac rather than with my husband and animals. My phone would notify me of every email that came through, and my cell had a myriad of beeps to indicate whether I had a voice mail, text, email or phone call. I began to feel like I was drowning. And then I realized something very simple. We all survived quite well without all this technology at one point in time, and so I decided to make a change in that direction. Over winter holiday, I turned email notification off on my phone, set up an automatic reply on my email indicating that I was on a media free holiday and would only be checking my email sporadically and made an effort only to turn on my computer every four days or so. People could still call me if they needed me, and I made sure the tasks I needed to complete were taken care of.

The experience was liberating. Once school began again, I did accept that I’d check my email more regularly, but that I wouldn’t let it take over my life once I got home from school. My email notifications on my phone are still set to off and I am making an effort to call people more instead of text.

The point is that we can easily let the convenience of technology take over our lives, but we also can choose not to. Every one of us has different needs and it will be a personal balance for each person, but it is essential that we at least examine how much technology we’ll allow ourselves to be tempted by, and if we are dissatisfied with the amount we have in our lives, we have the power and will to change.