Had an interesting discussion with my student teacher the other day.  I was reading an article on-line about how millennials suffer from something called “Sunday Scaries”.  The writer continues to explain how these young people get to Sunday and begin to realize that tomorrow is going to be Monday and it’s back to work.  It’s not that they don’t like their work, but apparently they stress about not being perfect at their jobs and about how much time they wasted over the weekend.

I asked my student teacher if she considered herself a millennial, and yes, while she falls into the category based on birthdate, she didn’t feel like she had the same issues. Her take on it was that perhaps, technology was to blame.  Because you see, technology is the ultimate time suck and its siren song is a powerful one.

Let me see what you think.  Weekends look like this for me.  Saturday is “catch-up” day.  Clean the house, laundry, do the shopping, wash the car, get the hair done, etc.  That leaves Sunday.  For me this means maybe church, resting, seeing family or whatever I want to do.  I can do many things on a Sunday.  Unless I get caught in the time suck that is technology.  It’s so easy to get caught up on social media or emails and half the day is gone.  Then I bemoan the fact that I didn’t have any time to myself over the weekend.  Imagine if I were into video games or binging Netflix.  What you intend to be only 30 minutes quickly turns into 3 hours that you’ll never get back.  It reminds us that where technology is involved, you’re never really in control.

Just like the stories of the sirens calling sailors to their deaths on the rocky shores, the siren also isolates, calling us to only focus on the screen and not those around us.  I made the mistake a couple of weeks ago of letting my 5th graders bring their chrome books to work on a project.  I assumed that they would know how to collaborate and merely use the Chromebook as a tool.  Silly me.  They immediately isolate, doing their own thing, creating things that look really cool but that are really unnecessary, communicating not face to face but through Google.  Their friend is sitting right beside them, but rather than looking at them and talking about things, they type it into the Google Slides (sometimes changing someone else’s work without asking) and get sucked into creating pretty presentations.  They then began to “argue” over Google by changing each others writing and ideas.  This is what happens when you assume I guess.  The next day, we began by TALKING to each other first, brainstorming and deciding which direction they wanted to go, experimenting with actual instruments instead of cool pictures of instruments and THEN they used the Chromebook as a tool to record their ideas.  Who knew?

But that’s the lure of the siren.  There are so many words, so many pretty pictures, so many ways to be in control and manipulate things.  And the next thing you know, three hours are gone.  Somehow being lost in a conversation doesn’t feel like as much of a waste as being lost in the cloud.

Research is the worst however.  All in the name of learning, of course.  Why are barns red?  Let’s ask Siri!  How far is it between where we are and where we’re going?  Google it!  And don’t even get me on Ancestry.  I don’t even miss the amount of money they suck out of my account each month so I can drop into the rabbit hole that is my family history.  I’m pretty sure I’ve missed whole days during breaks, hoping that I’m related to royalty or at the very least some deranged criminal.  I really need some excitement in my life.

So back to the point at the beginning.  Don’t people realize that this is just life?  You get two days off, you do what you can to catch up and enjoy some unstructured time and like a grown-up, you get up on Monday morning and begin the routine again.  You can’t hide under your blanket and it’s no reason to become angsty.  It’s life.  And it’s not that I’m old and/or out of touch with my feelings, and it’s not that I don’t value my free time as much as anyone else and it’s not that I don’t like what I do so it doesn’t matter.  I just learned very early on that I had to get up, put on my big girl pants and get moving.  I will have to admit that it was a bit easier for me being pre-technology, but needing to pay rent and put food on the table and gas in the car was pretty good incentive to get over myself and deal with whatever choices I made over the weekend.  And if for some reason I get stuck in the time suck, I own it, berate myself a little and get my butt up in the morning, knowing that the tempting siren may have won this time, but next time….

 

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