Technology is taking over. All too often we are distracted by the virtual world to pay attention to the real world. Technology takes our attention away from the present whether through text messages, Facebook notifications or emails.

If you are an avid concert-goer and as anal about getting the best tickets for your favorite act as I am, then you have experienced the horrors of online ticket sales. The drill: tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. You wake up at 9 a.m., turn your computer on by 9:30 and are most likely logged into the Ticketmaster or Live Nation website by 9:45. Waiting patiently, albeit a little nervously, you watch the clock as each minute passes. When 9:59 rolls around, you refresh the website until you are able to access the ticketing page.

Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee. As anyone can attest, see me before my cup of joe and I can only utter something that closely resembles “hello,” let alone hold a decent cheerful conversation. That being said, I also seek out the delicious beverage throughout the day,at lunch, in the afternoon and occasionally after dinner. I have had countless people inform me the amount of coffee I consume on a daily basis is a bad habit.

At the age of 15, Ellaha Sharifi ’14 started a basketball team at her high school in Kabul, Afghanistan equipped with “just a ring” in the center of a court and one basketball. Sharifi was first introduced to the sport during a year in Missouri as a high school foreign exchange student. Although she had always been interested in sports, she explained that she was never given an opportunity to play because she was “just a female.”

As I hit the “submit” button on the ISIS web page at 11:33 am on Monday I was officially registered for my last semester of college. Ever. What am I taking, you might ask? I’ll spare you the dirty details but let’s just say that I have signed up for one too many classes and a little gym class entitled “Beginning Scuba Diving”.

Men. Speedos. Wiggling. That is basically all of the visual content that bombards you as you watch LMFAO’s latest music video, “Sexy and I Know It.” Awkward and uncomfortable are the words I would use to describe how I first felt as I watched it.

I’m guilty. Guilty of logging on. Guilty of wasting time. Guilty of being bored but still looking, scrolling thorough the information I have already seen because I have logged in and logged out ten times within the past hour in an attempt to avoid doing anything. Guilty of complaining.

I stepped onto campus for the first time in nine months on September 1, 2011 at approximately 7:15 p.m. After a crazy nine and a half hour drive, I hurried over to Chapin Auditorium to usher in the Class of 2015 for Orientation 101. There was no easing back into MoHo life. I went from London, to my summer internship, right back to campus in what felt like a blink of an eye.

Technology: Antisocial. Invasion of privacy. Media: Dishonest. Sensational.

We live in a society of ADD children switching from one tab to the next at lightning speed, and we don’t understand what a “search” is unless it is a “google.” We live in a time where phone hacking is real, where the definition of journalism is up in the air.

StoryCorp, a non profit organization founded in 2003 dedicated to the collection of oral history, has collected over 30,000 interviews in an effort to “record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.”