Facebook

Facebook has its amazing and its terrible qualities, especially when you come to college. It’s amazing that you can talk to your friends all the time. You can stalk their photos and know exactly what they have been doing. You can video chat with them regularly and you can really hold on to your friendships. But what you may not realize is how much of a distraction Facebook can be. You go on for a minute to check your status, then you see a cool picture and think, hey, let me look at that, and before you know it, two hours have gone by. One of my friends says server crashes are sometimes the best thing that can happen. Another disabled his Facebook during finals. I’ve tried but it only takes a second to get it back. It is a drug, an addiction.

In high school you had Facebook and so did the majority of your friends. But you also didn’t have a huge workload, so going on Facebook each night after school was never that big of a deal. But now you can bring your laptop to the majority of your classes. Now you can talk to your friends during your Biology lecture of 400 students because the professor is not going to care if you’re paying attention at all. During Psychology you can check out what your best friend from home did on their Spring break. Next, instead of studying in the library, you’re using the amazing wireless technology that is found all over campus and you’re making a note about the “Top 10 Things You have Done that you wouldn’t want your Mother to know about”.

Paying little to no attention in classes has become so easy in college primarily because of Facebook and other social networking sites, but also because many of your professors don’t care if you’re paying attention to them. As long as you are not distracting other students or making a scene, they will let you do whatever you would like.

So my word of advice: leave your laptop in your room during class. Use a pen and paper. If you really want your notes to be on your laptop, type them up later after class. It will help you remember the material much better anyways. And try not to live on Facebook. Regulate yourself because it is really addicting. Especially during midterms and finals. Stick to your guns and choose to go on Facebook only when you are done with your class work.