As an unemployed, soon-to-be college graduate with one foot out the door (senioritis), it’s clear that my life is flooded with responsibilities that just eat away all my free time. But when I find part of the day to take a little time to myself, I lay back in my recliner, crack open a can of Shasta and do what any tech-savvy American loves to do – check my e-mail.
E-mail is a vital tool for communicating and keeping informed with today’s society if only being used for the fundamental messages: chain letters, penis enlargement ads or notices from the bank that my account has been overdrawn for the seventh time this month.
Unfortunately, every so often I find that there are those who feel it acceptable to present me with frivolous information that only serves to waste my precious “free” time. With that I mean e-mails that alert the public to useless, uninteresting information like warranty registration requests or billing notifications. Those that contribute to these wicked acts are responsible for slowly eating away at my personal time (stealing time equates to a weak act of murder in my mind). And of all the culprits at fault, one is our very own University, LMU.
How often do you open your mailbox to find another notification for financial aid or some pointless survey to participate in? Not that I don’t encourage spreading the word that helps students afford tuition, but I’ve never once applied for financial aid during my tenure at school. Yet every other week another e-mail pops into my inbox warning me that I’m close to missing the deadline to receive my check. Why am I getting this?
If I’ve never signed up for financial aid in the past, what makes them think that I’m suddenly going to jump on the bandwagon? Also, does this deadline ever arrive? Every message informs me that my application’s been given another couple of weeks until being turned in as if there is no finite due date. It’s a waste of time – my time.
Then there are those damn, pesky polls and surveys. At the beginning of the semester, the office of Dr. Lane Bove sent out a campus wide e-mail asking – well more like pleading – students to participate in a leadership survey. Alright, I’ll allow someone the chance to get their message out there, but if I don’t respond the first time you call out, please don’t confuse that as an invitation to continue the conversation. Throughout the rest of winter, my inbox would receive a consistent visit from Dr. Bove asking me for my help in the survey. Wasn’t my apathy strong enough the first time for anyone to get the hint I wasn’t interested? Guess not. My beloved “time” continued to evaporate as more and more attention was placed into deleting these abhorrent cries for attention.
What’s worse was that every e-mail I saw regarding these infamous surveys always carried the subject heading: “last chance,” as if implying the messages would soon stop. Not only did my University continue to eat away at my life, it was playing mind games with my fragile, little brain while doing so.
Most things that enter my mailbox I accept with arms wide open, but what I hate most is unnecessary repetitiveness. Sending the same bit of information over and over again, hogging memory and wasting my time is tantamount to murdering me in a weak, prolonged fashion. Although it’s being done in small portions, my life’s being taken from me; I won’t allow for it.
Stop the redundant e-mails and respect one’s free time. It’s important that we all receive undisturbed time to ourselves that allows us to catch up on the important things: watching online clips of amateur backyard wrestling and squirrels riding on water skis.
-Trevor Nelson
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