If you are anything like me, most of your communication is done through a computer or on a phone screen. I did not grow up with Facebook or texting. As a matter of fact, I remember sitting in class my freshman or sophmore year of college and listening to one of our TA's talk about this new online community that most of the college students were joining. At this point I still had the T-9 feature set up on my flip phone and people were lucky to get anything from me other than an "I'm on my way." At that point in my life snail mail was still in style. Buying a stamp was not like stepping into a foreign country. I find it comical that a lot of young people nowadays aren't even sure how to use the post office. I was in there the other day and saw a girl step up to the counter. She looked about 17, and had just rolled on out of the bed and into the line. The conversation with the post office clerk went a little something like this:
Girl: Is this where I buy the stamps?
Clerk: Well you can buy them here, yes.
Girl: Ok, how do I get them?
Clerk: Um, do you need one or multiple stamps?
Girl: I don't know, how many of them can I?
How many of them can I... I'm quite sure this conversation would have gone better with a little more knowledge of the postal system and maybe a bit more pracitice with face to face communication. The point being, if we aren't careful we will start to lose our communication skills! I am not removing myself from the danger here. There have been plenty of times that I have written out notes longhand (with a pen or pencil on a piece of paper) and immediately wondered why spell check or autocorrect wasn't working. How in the world was I supposed to know how to spell the word without automatic assistance? It has even gotten to the point of laziness that I just let my fingers punch somewhere close to the letters I am looking for on my phone and I know that autofill is going to do the work for me. Bam, hewol becomes hello.
People, this is not okay. We can't let ourselves forget the trusty manual labor of the number two pencil! Sometimes I will be in a conversation with someone face to face and all I want is an emoji to show them my true emotion! Or, have you ever caught yourself wondering if it is actually acceptable to use shortened "text talk" in a letter or resume? Kidding, that was totally a joke. The art of handwriting is a beautiful thing. It might not be a bad practice to sit down and write a letter once a week. To take notes in a notebook, or journal our thoughts on paper in the evenings. To keep that dictionary handy in case this whole magical spell check system crashes one day. In a digital world, let's dare to keep the old school way of communication alive.
