A Wiki, Wiki-What?

I understand that there are people out there who enjoy contributing to wikis, I have decided that I am not one of them. The idea of this whole wiki for our midterm study guide is completely throwing my whole studying habit for a loop. I don't even know where to begin to start to study and then I started thinking about this whole wiki business and how it is not mandatory that anyone contribute and now the deadline for contributing to it has been moved to just a mere 8 and a half hours before my behind is to be in the chair taking the exam itself. So I am seriously contemplating how it is going to benefit anyone? To be quite honest I am more than a little frustrated with the whole process, not just the deadline but I have no idea what I'm doing and I was in the lecture that discussed it and I went back and tried to follow the steps and I just don't get it. I think that to a certain extent a class just needs to be taught. Technology can't do it all, at least not yet.

Dependency

I wrote earlier about how we have become dependent on our machines to get us through school these days and I found it interesting since my mother didn't even use a computer when she went to school. Another example of just how dependent we are on our technology occurred today as well. My sister has an iPhone and she was out of town with me this weekend for our brother's wedding as well and her cell phone completely went out. She lost all of her numbers and her phone just had a brain fart essentially. I have never seen someone so lost and beside themselves as my 34 year old sister was. She did not even know her own husband's cell phone number, now this is pretty sad if you ask me. She looked at me and said that when she was growing up she knew everyones phone number by heart and could rattle it off at the drop of a dime but now she is so less adequate to do so. I blame our dependency on, once again, our machines....

Foreign Language

I went home for Fall break this past weekend and partially because it was my brother's wedding. All weekend we talked about vows, hair, make-up, tuxes, bridesmaids, etc. Well when Sunday afternoon rolled around and it was time for football finally and I needed to do homework my mom looked at me and said have you done your homework missy? Well my obvious response was, "Crap! I still need to do four more blog entries and contribute to my wiki and I have a four page paper due for my 356 class about my topic for my end of the semester 15 page paper!" She looked at me and said are you speaking a foreign language? I couldn't help but laugh and think about how my mother is 57 years old and she didn't even use a computer when she went to school and I can't get away from the computer to do my school work. I find it interesting to sit back and think about how dependent we have become on these machines...

Geocaching

So I'm a senior here at Purdue and I thought I knew campus pretty well until it was 8:30 in the morning and I was asked to find an engineering building that I had never had a class in before. I was completely lost and confused and felt like a total freshman! I was excited but nervous and completely confused about geocaching. I had gone to lecture on Monday where we were told about it and when Dr. Miller told us about having his arm in a log in some desert, I had no idea what to expect when I showed up to class on Wednesday but I was definitely anxious to see what was going to happen.
Geocaching turned out to be really exciting but I didn't really catch on to what I was doing until I was doing it. If that makes any sense at all? I was part of one of the teams that went out to find clues but I wish I would have volunteered to be on the CIU team because it would have been more fun to pull everything together in the end. Overall I had a really fun experience and I would not mind doing it again!