Laptops

I did an internship this past summer and one of the responsibilities I had was to take detailed minutes at various meetings. On occasion, I couldn’t find a laptop to use and therefore took the notes by hand (no big deal, that’s how I take notes in school). Yet, it was sure nice and convenient to take the minutes when I had access to a laptop!

If I owned a nice portable laptop, I would probably take it to school for taking notes. I’ve noticed many of my peers doing this, yet I also notice the use of facebook, pinterest, etc. during lecture.  How one decides to take advantage of their education (which we pay good money for) is up to each individual. The only problem I have with people doing other things on their laptops during class is that it can be distracting for others.

For example, the other day my husband came home from school and said, “In one of my classes a girl in front of me was pinning clothing items on pinterest. I’ve never been interested in fashion but for some reason I couldn’t stop staring at her laptop and seeing everything she was pinning!”   I had a good laugh because my husband really doesn’t care about fashion, let alone pinterest, yet in class it was still a distraction for him.

Life is Precious

I’m currently taking a university course called Adult Development and Aging. For the class I just read a book called “Life with Big Al (Early Alzheimer’s)”. The book is real journal entries from a woman who took care of her husband who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at age 52. This book had way more of an influence on me than I had anticipated! Through this woman’s diary, you could really see what she was experiencing as she saw and dealt with the decay of her dear husband, as well as feel what she was experiencing as if you were experiencing it too. My grandmother died from this disease as well so this is a topic that is close to my heart, but it was much different to see if from the perspective of the spouse. The book made me ponder upon how precious life is and how we really need to treasure every moment with our loved ones. Mostly, this book helped me be grateful for my own husband and made me want to appreciate every moment we have together in this life, because our time together is a gift.

Good, Better, Best

Media…there’s no doubt that is plays a large role in our current society. Is the current media good or bad, or somewhere in the middle? Based on content I’m sure we can all come up with an opinion, based on our criteria. Besides classifying content into categories of bad or good, I think there are other aspects of media to look at.

When placed with a number of options, my husband likes to ask the question of what is “good, better, and best”, and then try to choose the best option. I think time is a precious resource we have and there are certainly “good, better, and best” ways to use our time. Now back to media. As for myself, I’ll call/text a good friend, watch an occasional movie, use my email for communication, and stay connected with friends on facebook. These can all be good uses of our time but I’m sure there are times when perhaps it would be better to do our homework instead of watching TV. Yet, what is the best thing we can do with our time? Now this is simply my opinion (from a religious standpoint) that the best things we should do in this life is to love God and love our fellow man (Matt 2:37-39). How we do this comes in many forms, and I believe one way we can manifest this by serving others (Mosiah 2:17). With this in mind, we can see another dimension in how to judge media. Questions we can ask are: Regardless of content, is this media a good, better, or best use of time? Overall, is the majority of my media usage devoted to the best use of my time? Perhaps watching TV shows or pinteresting (with content that is certainly not “bad”) if we devote too much time to it (and you be the judge), could leave us losing out on wonderful experiences to fill our time with the “best” or most important things in life.

 I believe media has given us an opportunity to expand our abilities to serve God, help others, and expand our knowledge.  I feel it is also important to pay attention to how we’re using the media that perhaps (with the use of media or not) we can find the “best” uses of time.