February92002

I am the girl in the short skirt and the long jacket...Thank you and Goodnight
(oh wait, I was going to write an entry today)

So this has been an incredibly crazy week for no real reason inparticular. I've just been all over the place and have now agreed to be a tutor for my Communication and Media Comm majors because I don't have enough time for everything I have to do as it is...I thought I'd add one more thing onto the pile. AC said it best "You haven't been back at college for a month yet and you need a vacation." Yes...yes I do. A real vacation without a home study course or Parkside. Okay, I take that back...Parkside (for once) would actually provide sanity at this point.

But until that happens, (which wont be till May) I have this journal. And you all have it too.

So this has been an Entry-In-Waiting for a while now, and today I feel is the day to write it. It's about the absolute marvel of Away Messages and Profiles on AIM. And you should all be nodding your heads in agreement.

Come on...it is quite possibly the best invention for college kind! It acts as an answering machine, a telephone, a mass e-mail, message board and as close as you can get to a human person without actually being there.

I swear that I talk to Chris more over IM than I do in class, at the office or on the phone...and Chris lives approx. 2 minutes away from me BY FOOT. But it's so much easier than picking up the phone and what not. If I need him, I leave him a message. If I need to leave information for him, I put it in my profile or away message.

But it's like that with EVERYONE too. If I wonder what Jill's up to, I don't need to write an e-mail, I just check her info and chances are, I know if she's out running or shopping or with Ryan, as the case usually is. If Aimee wants to ask me something or vise versa...god forbid one of us should get off our ass and walk across the hall. Nope! We IM each other.

AIM has made it easier to communicate without actually communicating to a specific person. If someone's got a sad song on their profile, they're SAD or they just really like the song. They don't have to tell you they're sad, you know.

And there's also the sheer joy of coming back from class and seeing that someone has left you a message. Away messages have done for IMing what the answering machine has done for phone calls. Come on, how many times have you called someone because you WANT to get their machine. You don't want to talk to them, but you want to leave a message or at least try to show that you WERE trying to get a hold of them. Thus, the Away Message. It's a way of saying "Hi, I'm thinking about you, but I don't have time to talk. But I wish I could"

Maybe that sounds mean to some of you, but think about it, half the time you have an away message up, you're not just sitting at the computer, you're somewhere involved in something or you about to be. You don't always have TIME to talk like you wish you could, but leaving someone a message at least says you care. Or maybe they are the ones who are never online to talk to you.

You gotta love the messages. So leave 'em.