So my
name’s Taylor, and about ten months ago (September 14th, 2012, to be exact), I
was accepted into medical school at the Texas Tech School of Medicine. I was so
excited I may have cried a little. About six months ago, I joined a Facebook
page for the Texas Tech School of Medicine Class of 2016. And my excitement
disappeared faster than a dad at a dance recital.
The people posting to this Facebook page were the most annoying people I had ever seen! I’m spending the next four years with these kids? This is the problem with meeting people on the Internet before you meet them in person. You develop opinions about them based on three or four comments on a public forum.
Take for example Jessica* (name has been changed- God forbid my future classmates stumble upon this post), who posted the most obnoxious and annoying questions on our page. Which textbook edition should we use? What are the professor’s office hours like? Where will I park during the year? And all I could think was “Really, Jessica? It’s February! Why do you need to know where you’ll be parking next August?” It was so irritating! I couldn’t handle her questions, and she had me worried that my entire med school class would drive me as crazy as she did.
But when I met Jessica at welcome weekend, I actually enjoyed her company. (It helped that she bought a few of my drinks). She wasn’t the annoying gunner I thought she was going to be, but it was still hard to get that image of her out of my head. To this day, anytime I see that Jessica has posted on our Facebook page, I groan.
Then there is this boy Drew* who was as awful in person as he was over the Internet. This kid got into a fight (and I do mean fight) with current medical students over what textbooks to use. All I wanted to say was, “I’m sorry Drew, have you been in medical school before? No? Then shut up!” Instead I closed my computer down and avoided him like the plague at welcome week. In fact, any time I saw Drew, he was relatively alone.
Did this guy completely alienate himself from the group before he’d even met any of them in person?
And if Drew could do that in five comments, could I?
The people posting to this Facebook page were the most annoying people I had ever seen! I’m spending the next four years with these kids? This is the problem with meeting people on the Internet before you meet them in person. You develop opinions about them based on three or four comments on a public forum.
Take for example Jessica* (name has been changed- God forbid my future classmates stumble upon this post), who posted the most obnoxious and annoying questions on our page. Which textbook edition should we use? What are the professor’s office hours like? Where will I park during the year? And all I could think was “Really, Jessica? It’s February! Why do you need to know where you’ll be parking next August?” It was so irritating! I couldn’t handle her questions, and she had me worried that my entire med school class would drive me as crazy as she did.
But when I met Jessica at welcome weekend, I actually enjoyed her company. (It helped that she bought a few of my drinks). She wasn’t the annoying gunner I thought she was going to be, but it was still hard to get that image of her out of my head. To this day, anytime I see that Jessica has posted on our Facebook page, I groan.
Then there is this boy Drew* who was as awful in person as he was over the Internet. This kid got into a fight (and I do mean fight) with current medical students over what textbooks to use. All I wanted to say was, “I’m sorry Drew, have you been in medical school before? No? Then shut up!” Instead I closed my computer down and avoided him like the plague at welcome week. In fact, any time I saw Drew, he was relatively alone.
Did this guy completely alienate himself from the group before he’d even met any of them in person?
And if Drew could do that in five comments, could I?
Guest Blogger: Taylor Warmoth
Poor Drew*. Sounds like its not a facebook problem, but a Drew* issue. Great thoughts on meeting people online first vs in person. Hope your peers are more fun than they may be perceived online.
ReplyDelete