As graduation approaches, I am reminding myself how much I will miss my fellow classmates and the moments we shared together. And I am getting more and more excited about reunions when we will catch up on one another's life stories. Or not?
With both my close friends and distant acquaintances on social networks, will our reunions ever be as eventful as I imagined?
On Facebook, the graduating classes of 2009 and 2008 are just a mouse click away from me. I follow them as they travel to Istanbul and London. I know who entered a serious relationship and who separated with her boyfriend. I know what kind of job they got and how passionate they are about it.
Similarly, I will know all about the changes my class of 2010 will be going through soon.
But I used to fantasize that, in ten or fifteen years, when we meet at Mount Holyoke again, I wouldn't know any of that. I was expecting to not recognize some faces and to jump with surprise when hearing about weddings and adventurous trips. I hoped to experience the same stories my mother used to tell me about her meetings with former classmates.
But my generation's story is quite different.
Technology, a 2008 article in the Scientific American argued, has led to this generational divide. "On one side are high school and college students whose lives virtually revolve around social-networking sites and blogs. On the other side are their parents, for whom recollection of the past often remains locked in fading memories or, at best, in books, photographs and videos," wrote Daniel J. Solove.
The social networking enthusiast I am, I will be sad to empty my drawer of fading photographs. I hope that, in ten years, when my class reunites on campus, I will encounter some unexpected changes and pleasant surprises.
Photo Credit: kirikiri