Achieving Perspective

My Junior year of college is well on in its way, and I’ve found that I’ve come to a slight bump in the road. I keep blaming it on the fact that I’ve now officially been in school for more than 16 years (including preschool) and forcing myself to pull through these last 2 years (not including grad school) is proving to be more difficult than it should be. I’ve talked to my sister and several other people who have now moved on to the “real world” and they can all relate to my current situation of complete lack of motivation. My sister reported to me that at one point she had two papers two on one day and she managed to pull a 36-hour stretch of sleepless writing (with the addition of a few crazy outbursts and the occasional extra large latte mixed with red bull). I’m proud to say that this has not happened to me yet, but unfortunately I am finding it hard to get more than 6 hours of sleep every night. And while I would love to admit that it was because I was doing homework, I cannot lie to you. I am an addict.

Hi. My name is Becky. And I am addicted to StumbleUpon.

I fear that if I tell you about the amazing features of StumbleUpon that I will make you curious enough to seek out this jewel and will turn you in to the Stumble Junkie that I am. I already have several friends who I have lost to this curse. My best friend’s computer recently died and when ever we talk, she always tells me of her longing for Stumbling. My roommates now know that when I am on my computer, there is a 90% chance that I am binging on information.

Pictures of cute puppies? Sure. Cool ways to tie your shoe laces? Of course. A video game where Obama fights pigs wearing lipstick? Why not.

The basic idea of StumbleUpon is that you download this program on to your computer and a StumbleUpon bar appears on your internet browser. On this bar, there is a “Stumble” button that will take you to a random web page that has something to do with an area of interest to you (when you register, you pick from a large list of random activities, things, place, animals, etc) so that they can generate these web sites. If you find a web page that you really like and you want to share it with others, just click “I like it” and that web page will be added to the database.

Here are some recent finds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRpD4wjIkQ4 – My personal favorite
http://foodporndaily.com/
http://www.theglobalintelligencer.com/december07/chrisjordan.php
http://faltu.tv/tricks-illusions/491-how-to-turn-water-into-marbles.html
http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/ – this website isn’t working that well, but when it starts working again, its very cool – you can see the most recent video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

StumbleUpon is one of the few things I can spend hours doing and never get bored. The only other thing on this list is sleeping (which I am now doing less of thanks to this wonderful disaster of a program).

CAUTION:
If you have an important presentation, an exam, a baptism, surgery, dinner with the president, any sort of previous engagement, I’m warning you now that you will not get anything done. You will lose track of time, do poorly in classes and lose a few friends. It takes great restraint of which I have none.

Be careful. The Internet is an addictive and interesting place.