fyl? really?

So I'm friends with the majority of the people I went to high school with on Facebook.  I only talk to a few of these people, and I generally ignore their posts and updates.  Today, I went  to my homepage and one of them had posted that her life "sucks." Really?  I remember this girl very well from high school.  She is an only child in a very well-off family.  She has basically had everything handed to her since day one.  Her recent photos are of her and her family in California for the National Championship football game between Alabama and Texas, which costs quite a hefty sum of money.

Curiousity got the best of me, and I decided to find out why this girl's life "sucked."  Maybe she had a death in her family, her dog ran away, her family member lost his job, etc.  Nope.  She and her boyfriend broke up...Now, I realize I don't know all the background information on her relationship, and I can't really relate to her broken heart because I've never had mine broken, but I can think of many situations where people are worse off than her.

I'm sure people in third world countries would be more than willing to switch places with her if the epitome are her life "sucking" is a break up.  It's like when people put up a status asking people to pray for them because they have a test that day.  How about instead of that, you ask people to pray for the people in Haiti or people in other less fortunate situations?  We've become quite self-involved; and I think sometimes we (myself included) forget that we could have it much worse than we do now.

to read or not to read? that is the question.

The other day I was talking to my mom about her class.  She teaches sixth grade at the school I attended, and her class is currently “reading” Where the Red Fern Grows.  (I put reading in quotations because they’re listening to it on tape.  Albeit some of the students read along with the tape and others purely listen.)  She said that listening to the book on tape helped her non-reading students to like the book more and they actually read it this way.  This led me to bring up some of the topics we’ve discussed in my New Media class about how this generation needs more visual and technological things to learn.  She thought that was part of the problem with this generation: they need something waved in front of their faces at all times to keep their attention.  I agreed, but then I posed the same question to her as I did in my last blog entry: are we to stubborn to see the benefits of learning via technology over text? 

When I was in sixth grade, I hated it when teachers made us listen to books on tape.  The majority of the time, I would always read ahead of the tape because it slowed me down.  To this day, I prefer reading from a book over an electronic device.  Do I think my way of reading is better? Of course, but I can see the benefits of books on tape/CD or the Kindle.  Books on tape/CD make it possibly for people who don’t like to read to actually enjoy books.  The Kindle makes it easier for people to have a lot of books but store them in one spot.  What way do you prefer to read?