1. Drayenko Marin
Professor Myers
English 1302
February 2, 2012
Multitasking Way of Living.
Within the last few years or so, multitasking has become, we could say, an important
“issue”, or factor in today’s society, this has to do mostly with teenage students. Multitasking in
today’s world is related in every possible way to technology, which has become such an
important thing in our lives that most of us are dependent on it to live, or at least “enjoy” life. In
today’s world, we are multitasking everywhere, all the time, whether it is when we are eating,
while listening to music, and talking to a friend, or sitting in the computer, while skypping,
tweeting, and looking at pictures of a friend on facebook. We multitask all the time probably,
without realizing it.
Multitasking can be defined as performing a variety of different or related things at the
same time. This way we can save up time by doing things much faster than we would normally
do them. The actual issue it brings is that nowadays multitasking has become strongly related to
the internet and social networking, which is basically the same thing. I can put myself as an
example of multitasking, because I do it almost all the time; I can be tweeting, reading my
facebook, talking to my mom and even listening to music, all at the same time, but I am actually
accomplishing nothing in my life, looking at it with a greater perspective, by doing that.
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2. The article “Multitasking State of Mind”, written by Joanne Cavanaugh Simpson, talks
about how technology has become a distraction for students instead of a tool that could be
something more useful to the benefit of our society. It discusses how most of today’s students
have let technology interfere with their way of living, causing them to become lazy, less
interested in life, and less focused on what surrounds them.
Throughout this article we get really good examples that support the idea that Cavanaugh
is trying to share; Cavanaugh explains that he feels as if he was just another website that students
take a look around for 1 minute, 45 seconds, and then get bored. At the start of the article he tells
us a situation that he went through as professor. Cavanaugh received an email from a student a
week after the semester was over! “Though this student had missed a few classes, she cited no
health or family crisis, when I got the final grade roster; I realized she wasn’t even registered for
my fall writing course” (Cavanaugh). This situation totally shows how students have become lost
in reality, I dare to say, and also a little overconfident toward a professor. Cavanaugh says that
communication seems to be suffering from all of this. “Students send fragmented e-mails that
border rudeness. Others request final grade adjustments as though they were disgruntled
consumers” (Cavanaugh). I have to agree when he says that, respect has, in some way, been lost
toward professor, and not only have them but people in general.
Cavanaugh also talks about how students seem less interested toward everything and how
hard it has become to engage with them to what it is the professors are trying to teach because
they have zoned out from reality. Cavanaugh explains how it is “technologies fault” that we
(students) have become too accustomed to get things easy and fast via the internet, and that we
have become more aggressive and less tolerant toward people. Cavanaugh talks as if we are
letting technology overpower us and let it control us.
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3. What I could say that is a plus about the article is that Cavanaugh is not against
technology, he also takes a look at the good side too. He says that not all students are in the same
state, of course. To quote him: “Hopkins students are smart - they use computers to design
everything from heart surgery devices to engineering prototypes that can extract every ounce of
ketchup from a bottle” (Cavanaugh).
I think that is a positive thing too, because let’s agree with him, if technology was used
by everyone the “right” way, we would be even more advanced that we are today. No doubt
about that.
In my eyes, the main idea this article is to try to convey the students, teenagers and all of
those that have been affected by technology and multitasking, that we (I include myself in this)
have become way too dependent on the technological things and multitasking, to the point that if
they are not doing it 24/7 we feel as if we are dead no matter what we’re doing.
As I said before, Cavanaugh argues that technology has made students too dependent on
technology, which we should all agree on, and this causes us to be ruder and less tolerant toward
people and everything in life. We procrastinate almost all the time, and end up losing sleep and
being tired every day, due to leaving everything for the last moment, this causes stress in our
minds and in our bodies too. I have to totally agree with this, because I have done it a lot of times
during the last semester. I have convinced myself that I am going to do things with anticipation,
so that I can be more relaxed during the day, but when the time comes, it’s not so easy having so
many things to do such as: tweeting, texting, watching videos on YouTube, etc.
Convincing yourself that it is better if you do thing with anticipation and time to it the
best way possible, is something you have to work on by yourself and convince you that if you do
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4. things this way, and dedicate them the time it requires, at the end you will be actually rewarding
yourself. You will have your own time to enjoy yourself without worrying about something that
you have to do, because you already did it. So why not take the first step and put school as our
first priority to start with.
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5. Works Cited
Cavanaugh, Joanne. “Multitasking State of Mind.” Johns Hopkins Magazine. N.P. Sep. 2006.
Web. 2 Feb 2012.
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