(And, yes, I do like cheese with my whine!) Okay, it's time to vent. My 21-year-old son is home from college for the weekend. He comes in my office to ask me a question.
"Do you know any websites, where I can get information about citing sources", he asked.
Thinking back to when I was in college I say, "I had this wonderful book, which I consulted for almost every paper, but it will take me some time to figure out where it is".
On second thought, I am sitting at my computer and figure there's got to be sources online to help answer this question. So, I pull up my browser and type "MLA bibliography" in the search box. I click on the first source that shows up on the page, and it takes me to EasyBib. (I already don't like the sound of this.) When the page opens up, what do I see? A video tutorial, of course! I am such a visual learner, I could spend a whole week watching how-to videos on YouTube!
"Well, how cool is this", I say sarcastically, as I hit the play button. "Pull up a stool and we'll watch this five minute video".
As we watch the video. My memory flashes back to the days of stacks of index cards, receiving graded reports back only to find points deducted in my bibliography section of the paper for a semi-colon where a colon should have been or because something was underlined where it should have been italicized. Not to mention having to take my stack of cards and spread them out just to make sure they were in alphabetical order as I transcribed them into my computer. Then there was the forgotten one. The one sentence that I got from a source and forgot to get the citations from it! That perfect transitional sentence! UGH!
All he has to do is choose the type of source he wants to cite from a list. Then a window pops up where he enters the prompted data into fields. Push a button and PRESTO! It translates all of them, puts them in alphabetical order and even spits them out into a MS Word document.
So, off he goes in total bliss. I can hear him throughout the afternoon exclaiming from the other room to himself, "OMG, this is so awesome"! And all of his woes about term papers on Facebook now turned to "Chris is acing these term papers!" Yada, yada, yada. (Gee, thanks mom.)
Perhaps his generation takes it for granted how easy life is with all this technology. But then again, perhaps mine did, and we didn't know how hard our parents had it either. At any rate, we choose to work hard for our goals. My college career took me as long to attain as my twelve years in grade school. Yes, twelve long years to get my degree. Looking back, it was worth it.
Joanne
