Thursday, January 24, 2008

As a 31 year old...

When I think of how long 10 years is, it doesn't seem that long away. However, I then think about what I was like as an 11 year old and how different I am as a 21 year old, and I realize how drastic my life has changed since then. My life is going to be completely different in 10 years, and I have no idea where I will be or what I will be doing. All I do know is...it is going to be big.

When I get out of college, I want to take a year off and live out west as a medic in a national park or do medical missions in a third world country. After that I would like to go to MUSC and get my Physicians' Assistant degree. Therefore, in 10 years I will hopefully be established in a PA job at a hospital saving up money to travel. I would like to have a husband, 2 or 3 children, and 2 dogs. I don't know if I want to stay in South Carolina, but wherever I live needs to be near the mountains. My ultimate goal is to live in other third world countries to help others. I have always had a passion for internationally making a difference. I just don't know what age I will be there and whether or not I will have a family before or after I go.

To be honest, I usually hate answering questions of where I will be in 10 years. I am a sole believer that what I am supposed to do in life will all fall into place at the right time. I have always been a "go with the flow" kind of person, so planning out my years and painting a picture of me as a 31 year old really contradicts who I am. Instead of concentrating on where I'll be and who I'll be with and what I'll be doing, I would rather concentrate on what I think is the most important thing in life, and that is who I am. I want to be someone who is confident and strong in my faith, someone who unconditionally loves others, and most of all, I want to be a person who makes a difference in others lives.

So when I am 31 years old, I picture myself looking back at the past 10 years and thinking, "I wouldn't change a thing."

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Web 2.0...Becoming More than Just a Machine

After watching the YouTube video "The Machine is Us/ing us," I realized how much and how rapidly the internet has become such a vital part of our lives as humankind. It is actually slightly alarming to think of how dependent our culture is on technology and internet access. This title alone shows us that something we were capable of creating is now vital for the creation of every day tasks, business transactions, medical treatments, and life in general. Even though the web is a product of our intelligence and creativity, it seems like we are teaching it to have a mind of its own...and that is scary.
This new, technologically advanced web can extremely influence one who is ready to enter the workforce. For example, being technologically literate in our generation will further one's career from the very start because of the growing demand of new technologies and the ill-educated business owners of older generations. These older populations in the workforce were not given the opportunity to learn how to work with certain technologies, therefore they turn to our generation for help. Those ready to dive in to their careers have the advantage of doing extensive research on different businesses and jobs of interest, a luxury that was not possible in the past. A negative influence could possibly be caused by the most popular sites today: Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. Questionable pictures and messages on profiles from the college years come back to haunt certain young adults when and increasing amount of corporations and businesses are checking facebook stats before hiring.
Web 2.0 has not only changed for people ready to get a job; it has changed the current workforce as a whole. New technologies have taken work to an entirely different level, with more access to information, more advertising to the global community, and more services and actions made possible only because of these machines that we've made. Is this a positive or a negative aspect of life? It depends on who you ask. I believe that every fire starts with a flame, and at the rate our world is going, every technological advance is just pouring on the gasoline. We need to go back to the pre-internet, pre-cellphone, pre-digital days and rethink what life was like. The phrase, "we will have to rethink everything" shows that as time passes, we have let our works, ideas, privacy, morals, and work ethic gradually slide down as we adjust to the next new thing.

But no one wants to rethink everything, because no one has time for that.

We'd rather a machine do our thinking for us.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Intro blog

My name is Casey Tucker and I am from Greenville, SC. I have lived there my whole life with my parents, 1 brother, 1 sister and my dog, Buddy. I'm a junior at Clemson and my major is Preprofessional Health Science. I want to take a year off after college before I go to graduate school and either teach English or provide medical care in a third world country or be a medic in Colorado through Americorps. I would then like to go to Physician's Assistant school at MUSC. My hobbies include the outdoors, hiking, camping, rock climbing, music, and hanging out with friends. I spent this past summer in Africa doing mission work and plan on going back as soon as I get a chance. My email is caseyt@clemson.edu if anyone needs anything for class!