It's finally autumn, the leaves are turning brown and drying up, the days are beginning to become sufferably darker, and school is finally back in full swing for everyone, except me.
Right. I'm finally out of school for good. Well, until I decide to go to school again for whatever reason I suppose. For now, I'm just going to shoot the breeze and get gain some worthwhile work experience in the work field.
In regards to the school year starting for everyone now, and me finally contributing to society; I've been feeling extremely old lately. Okay, being 22 years of age isn't technically considered
old according to today's life expectancies (although it would be the case four centuries ago), but I can't help but sense distinct generation gaps between people/things that I see nowadays.
Perhaps this will be a new segment for my blog, perhaps not. We'll see how it pans out. If anything, they'll be short little blurbs about how I feel old and such.
Now that I'm back from college and living at home with my parents to save up on some cash, I've adopted the role of becoming the third parent for my kid brother. My parents for as long as I can remember worked alternating shifts (i.e my mom would work during the day and my dad would work during the night) ensuring that at least one parent could be at home to watch me and my siblings. It was rough on them since they weren't able to spend any kind of quality time together, but they did manage to sparingly resort to getting a babysitter to take care of us. Nowadays with the economy in its rut, my parents are lucky enough to find work, and unfortunately have been both working during the day. This is where I come in...
Like I said, I've sort of become the third parent for my kid brother, which is fine. Based on circumstances at home while I was younger, I ended up having to mature at a younger age. I assumed a lot of responsibilities around the household to alleviate some of the stress from my parents whenever they were home. In short, I probably didn't get to experience that
normal childhood depicted in such families during the 1950s; like a
Leave it to Beaver kind of childhood (hmm then again, does anyone have a childhood like that anymore?) Regardless, assuming this new role as third parent is nothing new for me. Having a ten year gap between me and my younger brother makes me seem like a responsible role model anyway. Assuming responsibility finally makes you an adult; a contributing member who can be respected every now and then. I like respect.
But then you have to look at the former part of assuming responsibility: it makes you an adult. Right. I'm not a kid anymore. And seriously, that sucks in sense. Gone is my free time to play video games, watch that new episode of South Park three times in the same week, eat food out of boredom, etc. Since graduating and entering the workplace for the long haul now, I'm finally gaining some perspective on how old I feel. I kind of had a gut feeling while I was still in college when I began to meet people born in the 1990s (You don't remember Sesame Street?, *shakes head*).
Before Cookie Monster started eating cookies in moderation and Elmo's World didn't take up 3/4 of the show, Sesame Street was kick ass. Do people even remember Oscar?
When school started for my kid brother in early September (yay he's finally in Jr. High), they provided some of the normal housekeeping documentation for my parents (ahem..me) to fill out for him: the stupid yellow emergency card with contact information/medical information, school lunch money programs, school photo information, yearbook buying, blah blah blah. It was weird filling them out for him since I remember filling these out myself when I was in elementary school; then again, I'm no normal child. Okay. Normal routine as always...until his first day of school. Oh? It was alright for him; went smooth as planned. But he did come home with a few notices from the school as well as his teachers.
Aside from the normal notices that inform me about class requirements/conduct, there was one that triggered my attention immediately. In this technologically-dependent society nowadays, kids today are being introduced to computers at younger and younger ages. As a 7th grader, my brother is finally taking computer-centered class which apparently requires me to provide him with a 1-2GB flash drive for the semester. Luckily I had leftover flash drives from college to simply pawn off to my brother for his class, but when did we get so technologically demanding for school? For seventh grade, I remember only needing several binders, a few folders, and MAYBE some colored pencils/markers for coloring those "cool" maps for Geography class. Aside from that, I didn't need much more of anything else. Flash drives, really?
This is probably where my old age comes into play. I only remember using computers to play Math Blaster or Oregon Trail in elementary school, and in junior high I was fidgeting around with Dino Park Tycoon while procrastinating my typing test. Since graduating high school, floppy disks were still widely being used; I always submitted a floppy drive of my summer reports for my honors english classes. We've really come a loong way in terms of technological advancement just in the last decade alone. I'm technically still considered fairly young, but it's just mind-blowing to me is all. Just call me old-fashioned with my 3 1/2" floppy drive, and 128mb flash drive. On the other hand, it's probably worse for people like my parents who can't really grasp the new technology either. My mom for the longest time would refrain from touching our old IBM Pentium 2 computer since she didn't want to completely blow her brain by seeing what it could do.
Of course people nowadays only remember the Roller Coaster Park Tycoon franchise, but back in the day, Dino Park Tycoon ruled the day...the prehistoric day (eh that was lame).
In addition to the notice about the flash drive, there was a notice from the school about the implementation of how progress reports would be sent to parents. Of course back in the day our only choice was to receive progree reports/report cards by means of snail mail. We would actually be able to stand a chance to hide our bad grades from our parents by somehow getting to the mailbox before they would. I admit, I've been guilty of doing that sometimes, but who really cares about progress reports, right? Now my brother's school has opted for providing progress reports by means of a parent's email address. I guess there's no real way to hide one's grades now.
The strategy to move from paper progress reports to email ones is an interesting one at that. Aside from the entire technological standpoint, it
DOES offer an immediate guide as to how one's child is doing in school for various classes, and with parents getting less time with their kids nowadays, it's a good thing. On the flip side, the postal service is losing out on the services they provide by mailing out those progress reports every 5-10 weeks. Right, they're probably only making so much from each individual mailing, but when there's millions and millions of American children in school receiving these each quarterly card marking, it definitely adds up. Then again, if you flip it around again, the school is saving a bit of money on mailing costs, so we're at a stalemate there.
Overall, it has been a little bit of a time perspective shock for me with these school notices since I could never fathom people getting email-forwarded report cards and seventh graders requiring flash drives for daily work. Paper report cards? Floppy drives? That was so 2002...
