It’s 1:30 p.m. and students are rushing to grab lunch in the Marketplace before their next class. The register drawer won’t open and the line is not moving. Out of frustration, students grimace at the workers and express frustration in their voices when speaking to friends or the person preparing their food.
I am one of those workers. That day, my station was understaffed and at times, I was working the station by myself. Imagine restocking and making sandwiches for over 15 people in line while occasionally ringing people up. I was stressed but working at my full capacity to prepare everyone’s food quickly and efficiently. Seeing the angry faces in line only served to stress me out even further. Had the students been patient and empathetic, they would have seen the whole picture.
In our generation, patience is a lost art, obscured by modern technology. The tools that technology has provided us with to accomplish tasks faster have made our generation forget the importance of slowing down to reflect on our actions and to truly comprehend our surroundings. Patience is strongly connected to empathy. A 2010 University of Michigan study reveals that empathy levels among college students have dropped almost 40 percent in the 20 to 30 years prior. This decline in empathy has been researched by several universities, which attributed the increased use of technology as a factor contributing to the loss of human empathy.
Technology has dampened our human empathy by providing our generation the ability to spend more time communicating through technology. However, our emotional intelligence and soft skills can only be developed and improved upon through face-to-face conversations. Additionally, we have begun to treat people similarly to how we treat technology when it fails. When our phone freezes or our laptop crashes, our first response is to direct anger and frustration at the device. The device feels no emotions, so this anger pointed at the device is fairly harmless. But when we apply this same reaction to humans, we hurt people.
The art of mastering patience and empathy is difficult to learn but it’s a useful skill set that can be applied in all areas of our lives. There are some practical steps to take to become proficient in these two soft skills. Spend more time interacting with other people outside of technology to build up your emotional intelligence. Impatience occurs when we zone in on our waiting time.
Thus, self-distraction is one path to achieving patience; distract yourself the next time you’re in line waiting for your purchase by stepping into the shoes of the person behind the counter. Being patient not only helps us strengthen our relationships with people, it also can be used as a tool of learning through the relatively mild suffering of unplugging and focusing on one thing for a short duration.
If we don’t learn how to be patient and empathetic now, we are reinforcing our generation’s poor habit of not engaging with people, which leads to a colder, more detached world. Becoming cognizant of our level of patience and empathy is a powerful tool in directing us toward choices and actions that bring us students closer together.
Sarah Tucker is a senior majoring in business administration.