Druids and Mennonites

A poem about my ignorant university professors; several of them hate technology and take pride in their rejection of it.

Professors are such druids, mennonites;

Laptops shunned, scrutinized.

Wasteful, wasteful paper is somehow better.

I can be just as distracted in your lecture with this notebook 

As I can with an iPhone.

Mennonites!,

Never visiting a website unless it is necessary.

How did it become so glorious and wise, to avoid innovation and progress?

Granted, it has its evils, but it has made so much possible.

Professors blindly imitating the pioneer writers,

Following a fad just as much as us young whipper-snappers 

With our new-fangled fashions and music.

You try to disguise your frustration, impatience 

Toward something new to your generation

As some kind of higher road

And we are made to feel guilty.

Scrawled in a bathroom stall outside the lecture theatre:

“To gain something you’ve never had

You must do something you’ve never done.”

Author's Note

A poem about my ignorant university professors; several of them hate technology and take pride in their rejection of it.

One of my professors spent a third of our two-hour lecture bad-mouthing technology, especially laptops and cell phones in class.

Another professor said that he takes pride in rejecting computers, saying he never visits a website that he doesn't absolutely have to visit.

I personally think these two professors were being quite immature and I wrote this poem during the former's lecture. Most of the time technology is more of an aid than a threat. Research is much easier with technology and so is taking notes. Computers have made so many things possible or at least easier. While shunning technology seems kind of romantic and charming, like a camping trip with only the essentials, in most situations this philosophy is pretty impractical. To not only ban laptops for taking notes but also lecture the class on the evils of technology is ignorant to me and that lecture really pissed me off. Thus, this poem.