Hey guys! My name is Megan Frink and I’m a junior psychology major in Arts & Sciences. I love Cornell and couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else! My brother is joining me here this year as a freshman, but I probably won’t be seeing him too often as he is an engineer and I try to avoid the Engineering Quad as much as possible. I’m in Kappa Delta where I am living this fall. This semester I’ll be a second year Psych 101 TA. I’ll also be working again as a research assistant in the Social Psych Research Lab in Uris, where I will usually be most of this semester.
In between running participants in the psych studies over in Uris, I know that I always find myself texting friends. Though I could technically make a few calls and actually talk on the phone, I never do. I’m always texting. When I stopped to think about it, texting is just so much more efficient. I’m usually running around the lab finishing up with one set of participants and preparing for the next group to come in. If I chose to make a phone call it’s practically impossible to organize papers and write down lab notes while juggling the phone to my ear and carrying on a conversation. Texting allows me the great ability of multi-tasking. I can accomplish so many things while just stopping for the brief moment to read and respond to a quick text. Also, if other research assistants are running their studies and I’m standing in the same room making copies, I don’t feel as obnoxious if I am just texting as opposed to gabbing away. I’ve found that another great wonder of texting is that when I’m out of service (as I often seem to be in Uris), that the odds are way greater that a text will come through as opposed to a call. It is much harder to keep a phone call going when your service bars keep jumping. A text might take an extra minute or two, but I always seem to receive it.
I think that texting is both a form of synchronous and asynchronous discussion forums. I know that sometimes I’ll have texting conversations with my friends when we respond to texts back and forth as instantaneously as possible, almost like IMs. While at other times I might send a text and not receive an answer for a couple of hours. Regardless, I feel that texting is definitely more efficient. It cuts through all the small talk and gets right to the point, which is important when you’re in your research lab and probably shouldn’t be on your phone at all.
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Hey Megan. As a fellow texting enthusiast, I agree wholeheartedly with your claim that texts are more efficient than calls. What rings most true for me is that texting is best when you need to be quick or quiet. When I want to catch up with someone, I call and talk to them. But when I need quick information, or when I’m doing other things, a text is considerably more manageable than a call. I found this especially true when I discovered the mass text. I have a large group of friends at home and this summer I found it easier to send one text to ten people asking if any plans were in the works than to call everybody one by one to see what was going on. I disagree with your assertion about synchronicity, though. I think that texts, while sometimes exchanged very quickly, are always asynchronous because they aren’t exactly in real time. Otherwise, I completely agree with your post.
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