After school ended and the long summer set in, I became afflicted with “Empty Inbox Syndrome.” The symptoms included periods of loneliness, restlessness and a constant need to refresh my inbox over and over again because I refused to believe that I had no mail (read in the AOL voice for best effect).
Fast-forward to the school year, where Empty Inbox Syndrome became a thing of the past. I was just getting used to feeling popular again when another problem arose: my emails required immediate attention and response. I’ve received class emails 30 minutes before lecture, 3 p.m. reminders for 3 p.m. meetings and emails at 4:57 p.m. advertising 5 p.m. events.
The unspoken expectations of those emails are huge: did the senders expect me to check my email, stop what I was doing and get to McTrib in a minute? Three minutes? Even though I live on South Campus and walk like an Olympic race walker, my attendance would’ve meant I saw the emails as soon as they materialized in my inbox. I’m pointedly avoiding the only other explanation: people think Medill students just live in McTrib.
I saw these emails as indicators of a drastic shift in how I was to use this form of digital communication. I’d always seen emails as letters, meaning that I’d answer them in a timely fashion, but not as soon as I saw them. If I wanted to get in touch with someone urgently, I’d call or text him or her. But suddenly, I was expected to be email-active on a different level, checking, writing and responding with unprecedented speed.
Logistically speaking, email can become yet another quick-reply form of communication akin to texting and instant messaging. Northwestern provides campus-wide Wi-Fi and most students have various gadgets and gizmos that allow them to retrieve mail on the run. However, those are merely issues of technological capacity.
I’m more concerned about our human limits. Do we have the mental capacity to deal with another reply-ASAP form of communication? I don’t think so. In this fast-paced world, we already have high expectations of each and every mode of communication we engage in. We’re to respond instantly to texts, pick up the phone when it rings and like our friends’ photos on Instagram the minute we see them. There’s only so much we can do instantly and we can’t afford to add emails to the list.
This new email culture also places unfair expectations on email users who don’t have 24/7 access. Why should someone without wireless Internet be excluded from the inbox festivities just because they weren’t connected for those brief few minutes? Why do so many people pull out their phones after a lecture to check their texts, Snapchats and emails? Why has the fear of missing an email become so real that I can’t leave my phone charging in my room, just a short distance away from my side?
For sanity’s sake, we need to be wiser when deciding how we communicate. The same way there’s a time and place for everything, there’s a definite form of communication to use for each and every situation. Email needs to remain the one sacred platform where it’s okay not to respond as quickly as your fingers can move in the biting Chicago wind.