No matter how naïve I find myself, reading student papers always rings bells. They may be alarm bells of my own obsolescence or the tintinnabulation of a new era dawning. Either way, they scare me. Having spent many, many days concentrating on reading papers to the detriment of daily life, I have been submerged into a world that is foreign to me. Yes, I am used to students texting in class, and I know when their laptops are open for “taking notes” that university wi-fi networks are freely available for surfing the net. I know they are only paying half-attention. I may be old, but I’m not completely stupid. Well, not all students do this, but the practice is ubiquitous enough to be considered normative. Their world is a realm of electronic information. The old ways are passing.

I recently learned that footnoting is dead. Already-in-the-tomb-four-days dead. An art that my mediocre high school drilled into every student in English class is no longer even remembered. I even had good students report to me that the campus writing center housed no one who even ever used the Chicago Manual of Style, although some of them had heard of it. In mythology class, any book is referred to as a “novel” or “story” with no regard paid to its actual genre. For those weaned on electronic reading, the old distinctions no longer apply. The Internet is full of information, and many young people can’t discern the wheat from the chaff. Raise your hand if you know what “chaff” is. I didn’t think so.

Seeing all of this in the context of a mythology course is fascinating. Many students refer to the days when gods and monsters actually existed. It is as if the Creationists have won without a struggle. The concept of religion, as reflected in the fiction of mythology, no longer fits the paradigm. Reality is electronic, and paper is fiction. Bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells! At least as I get shelved with dusty books, I will be in a familiar environment with gods, monsters, and dinosaurs. This is the world I was born into and which will not long survive the passing of my generation.