We went to university in the dinosaur era, hence misfit.

Eyes wide open and jaw dropped are common expressions I received from the young generation when I informed them that I received my undergraduate degree in times when there were no personal laptops and smartphones available. More precisely, we are the pen-and-paper generation.

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The next question that comes to young people’s minds: how exactly do you manage to learn, do your assignments on a word document or present on PowerPoint? For them, the lack of availability of tools provided by a computer means no education.
To explain, I have to go back to the handwritten transparency stories. That involved great handwriting, drawing on bundles of A4 plastic sheets projected in a Lecture Theatre, and original voice and eye contact. Remember, we are from the dinosaur era, so pre-recording was no option for us.
Unlike now, we physically needed to visit the library and borrow books to look for the material we wanted to place in that transparency. Also, we don’t have a google search option, so google was our seniors and teachers who were there for us to navigate.
Instead of saving document files on a computer, we had real handwritten files that needed to be protected for one’s year-end examination. Here, I must emphasize that we also had the copy-and-paste option primarily provided by the bundle of good friends. Fortunately, some of them were excellent at saving notebooks from year-old seniors. Moreover, they were happy to share the work by putting the notebook in the middle of a desk so other colleagues could download their fastest handwriting speed into their files.
The smart phone generation is brilliant; sometimes, we feel we are a misfit and don’t know anything substantial. But the old school was constructed on actual human interaction and trust. Hence, we can bring a sense of community and humanity to the world table.

The smart phone generation

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