A Day of Disconnection

Week 9 Blog: 

For this week's blog, my class was presented with a challenge that would also serve as a very interesting experiment. The obstacle: attempting to go a day without using communication technology. As much as I hate to admit it, this is a particularly daunting task, not only for the challenge to refrain socially but also based on my dependency on emails for school-related work. However, I did give it a shot and here is what my day looked like.

9:00am- my alarm goes off to wake me up-- which is on my phone. So technically I already messed up, however I did not have another alarm so this was expected and unavoidable. I will admit that I woke to a few texts and responded to one. Not the best start. 

Trying to avoid being tempted to look at my phone every time I heard it go off, I silenced it and for the first time in ages, I actually wore a watch! This allowed me to not count on my phone and actually put it away for extended periods of time. It's amazing (and sad) to realize just how often I reach for it to check messages or send one- it's as though I ALWAYS need to be connected or have an ongoing conversation, even when the topic is unimportant. 

I had to go by the bookstore and the library on my way to class where I quickly printed something. However, this was an assignment that could not be written and again, there wasn't really a way around it. Normally I would have opened other tabs on the computer but I opened the file I needed and got in then got out, rather than wasting time. From noon-4pm I was in classes and usually take notes by hand anyways, so this was not challenging. I slipped up and checked messages during my break on my phone, involving several texts and a missed call from my sister, but I made myself postpone responding. 

Before my 5pm lab I began working on a project on campus that will eventually need to be a powerpoint presentation, but I chose to write out my content first. I did this for the sake of not breaking the rules of the challenge but at the same time this was something that would need to be done on the computer anyways later. It made me realize just how frequent it is for teachers to demand typed work these days. It used to be that you needed to have handwritten work and then there was a time where the students could choose whatever they preferred. But now we are expected to have computers and get our work done that way. Even for short write-ups and trivial assignments. 

When I finally got home that night after being on campus for the entire day, I just wanted to get in bed and watch a show. There is almost always a show on Hulu that I want to watch and if that fails me, my roommate has a Netflix account. I have read that working on the computer/staring at the screen can actually really interrupt your sleep, but after a long day of textbooks and lectures, reading is the last thing I want to do. For the sake of the challenge I read a few pages in a book I have been slowly making my way through since Fall, but found that after just a few pages I was ready to sleep.  On the bright side I got to bed at a far better hour than I normally do, since I always seem to stay awake for several episodes of How I Met Your Mother.

I did check my messages again at home and responded only to the ones that required an answer/seemed important. Overall I was surprised at how well I refrained from using communication technologies but it didn't mean that I wasn't thinking about it a lot. With the exception of the time I was in classes, I felt compelled to grab my phone and see what everyone else was doing. Additionally, because it was my busy class day I did not go to the rec to work out, but had I gone it would have been awful to run or do the elliptical without my music or watching one of the shows on the screen. 

It is hard to remember the days when I did not have my phone in my hand giving me instant connections to family and friends, a calculator to avoid doing math in my head, and updates from my email should I not have access to a computer. And as much as I don't want to admit it, it is incredibly difficult to practice that level of disconnect again.