My family was actually technology challenged. My parents didn’t even get an answering machine until I went off to college- just in case they missed my call.

I remember making some sort of clip art stuff on an Apple computer in 8th grade. Basically, we got an image and put some text under it and it printed out in dots. I was so high tech!

My first endeavor with technology ownership was actually a word processor. It looked like a typewriter but had a floppy drive so I could save my papers. I could see 3 lines of text at a time while I was working AND it had spell check. This was my senior year. I was rockin’ on with my bad self. Why would I spent so much money on a computer when I had this little genius invention?

I was one of the first classes at Sam Houston State (eat ‘em up kats!) to get an email address as part of enrollment. My reaction: What am I going to do with this?

My first computer was given to me my senior year. It was an all-in-one job monitor/computer from Compaq. It had a built in 14k modem and 36MB hard drive (or something like that). I was awesome. I’d spend 2 hours dialing in to the internet on campus just to really do nothing but look around.

My first cell phone was circa 1997 and was a flip that weighed like 10 lbs. I never had a pager but both of my younger siblings did. They also had cell phones in high school, too. I had pay phones.

I remember having to wait for the new MLA handbook to come out before I could finish a research paper because no one knew how to reference websites. I think that was Junior year of college.

I actually had someone ask me last week at a conference if I was Generation Y. I wanted to hug her. I mean, I had knob turning TV’s with antennae on the roof growing up. But hey- if she thought I was that young, who am I to let her think otherwise?