When a phone, a computer and a pen aren’t enough to communicate, you’re part of a technological transformation.
For many students, a life without Internet would be incomprehensible; a tragedy perhaps equal to being forced to watch all three “High School Musical” movies in succession.
The Internet is something students utilize nearly every hour of every day, whether for research purposes or simply getting in touch with faculty and friends. But even before its onset, people held the desire for communicating and spreading information.
“The bulk of my family communicated with Christmas cards,” explained Robert Eberhardt, a 77-year-old Marquette alumnus. Eberhardt said each year his family would put together an aesthetically pleasing Christmas newsletter, which offered a prime opportunity for sharing exciting news, juicy gossip and the details of how their children were going to grow up and save the world.
Today, communication among friends and family is done with greater ease.
“(The Internet) markedly expanded my communications with friends, family and former high school classmates,” Eberhardt said. “Perhaps 95 percent of the people I am now contacting were not in my loop prior to the Internet. It is a phenomenal development.”
William Starr, an assistant professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, also acknowledged a change in communication habits. He explains that before e-mail existed, many students would visit him during his office hours. Now, Starr said, more students are opting out of one-on-one communication.
Linda Brown, a University of Wisconsin-Madison alumna and mother of two Marquette students, said she believes students keep a nice balance between interpersonal communication and the Internet.
“I think this generation talks more to their professors than I used to,” Brown said. “I have been really impressed by the faculty-student connection at Marquette.”
She also acknowledged the added difficulty of trying to keep in touch with her sisters before the Internet.
“Long distance calls were really expensive, so I did not call out-of-town family members much at all,” Brown said. “We wrote long letters.”
It also took students remarkable lengths just to register for classes. “I am not a runner, nor have I ever been a runner, but I remember running during registration week.”
Brown, along with her classmates, literally walked from building to building to register for each class separately.
“By the time you got to the third or fourth building, you invariably had a conflict,” she explained. “So you had to go back to the first two classes you had just registered for and make a change.”
With the great ease of registration that CheckMarq has given students, most likely one would say that watching “High School Musical” hardly sounds bad in comparison to losing all of the Internet’s benefits. It has made communication an easier task, and a world without it would be a challenging place for a student of today — although receiving a letter via pigeon could be rather exciting in comparison to e-mails.