On Being Made Fun of for Owning AirPods
By Sakshi Venkatraman, Editor-in-Chief
I’ll just come out and say it. I own AirPods. I find it’s better to be forthright about it than have someone catch you sneakily taking them out of your ears in the elevator. Just to be clear, I didn’t buy them myself. They were a Christmas gift, a total surprise. Since getting them, though, I haven’t heard the end of it from my friends. “I see you’re wealthy now,” my roommate quipped when I returned from winter break with them. “Am I interrupting your clout?” another friend asked me when he caught a glimpse. I just stare at the floor, cheeks flushed. I didn’t ask for this lifestyle, for these pods to find their way to me. I’m growing my hair out to mask them. I’ve even considered wearing beanies regularly — gag. I know people who have spent far more money on ugly, vintage headphones. They get zero percent of the sh-t I endure daily. All I want is to listen to music and not be taunted. Or maybe I should just accept my new status as an influencer.
ON THE LIMITATIONS OF CAPS LOCK
By Bela Kirpalani, Deputy Managing Editor
Now, this may have never even crossed your mind, but why in the world does caps lock only work when you press the button before typing? What if I typed something, and then realized it DESERVED TO BE IN ALL CAPS after I typed it? I should be able to select the text and subsequently make it in all caps. With all the technology we have available at our fingertips, why has no one figured out how to fix this inconvenience of mine? Siri, send tweet.
On People Whose Personality Is Tech
By Pamela Jew, Under the Arch Managing Editor
We all know them. They’ve interned for a start-up, they participated in one of those NYU race-to-have-the-best app challenges, or they just spend copious amounts of time at the Leslie eLab to live among the technology. Talking about tech for these people is like bad word vomit — they just can’t quit and you don’t want to digest any of it. Elon Musk is the reincarnation of Christ, coming to save us all on his Tesla chariot. WIRED is the Bible. Github is their diary of sorts. And they just can’t wait to tell you all about it. Because who cares about your day? Only Jeff Bezos’ day matters. Oh, and they do this all while wearing their AirPods.
On the Health Center’s iPads
By Yasmin Gulec, Under the Arch Editor
Technology is great. It grants us access to cool things and allows us to experience the world through a whole new lens (literally, have you seen the three limited edition Leica M lenses?) However, the health center has almost made me become a luddite. Tuesday morning, I hurled myself off my bed, after waking up from a horrible migraine and nausea. Dressing as fast as I could, I stuffed a plastic bag in my pocket and speed walked to the health center, wondering on what cross street I would vomit or faint. Or both. I made it to the health center, my words coming out in heavy breaths, not being able to stand up straight, tears in my eyes and holding my plastic vomit bag. In one of the lowest moments of my semester, I was asked to pay for the urgent care fee and asked to fill out a silly iPad form with information I already provided. While I had a hard time forming sentences, I am almost certain most of the information I provided, haphazardly pressing the keyboard like a drunk lover trying to text her ex in the middle of the night, was a little wrong. So health center, please don’t make students who are in obvious pain fill out a silly iPad form. There is a thin line between using technology to make things easier and using it just to look developed. Also, I don’t think I was born on April 3, 1995, so sorry about the misinformation.
On the Frustrations of Having Two Keyboards
By Melanie Pineda, Opinion Editor
I love being bilingual. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to speak and write to my family in their native tongue and also understand the ever complicated structures of the English language. I pride myself on speaking Spanish — sometimes I do it without even meaning to. That’s not even mentioning how much fun it is to say chismes with my mom in front of the very people we’re talking about. But I, like many other first generation kids, have to struggle with the curse of a double keyboard. My hahaha’s turn to jajaja’s before I can even stop them. Every single “n” becomes an “ñ” and ends up confusing both me and the person I’m speaking to. When texting my parents, most times I have to switch from the English keyboard to the emoji one to the Spanish one. That’s about 10 seconds of my life that I will never get back. If my iPhone is truly supposed to be smart, then why can’t it tell when I’m typing in a different language?
Opinions expressed on the editorial pages are not necessarily those of WSN, and our publication of opinions is not an endorsement of them.
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