As the beginning of semesters tend to go, my Monday morning of my second semester of college was dramatic. Sometimes, you have your iPhone in the back pocket of your favorite jeans and, sometimes, when you go to the bathroom something happens that results with you caught quite literally with your pants around your ankles and your life submerged in the toilet. By my first class, my cell phone was unresponsive to my touch, though not immune to the power of the Lewis toilet water that possessed it. I think I FaceTimed multiple people, played Womanizer by Britney Spears, and possibly signed up for Apple Music (I’m not entirely sure). My phone, even after 24 hours in a bag of white rice, did not revive. For the first week of this semester, I was entirely off the grid.
I’m an 18-year-old living in the 21st century and my phone is crucial to my existence, whether I like to admit it or not. My privileged life became full of minuscule but constantly accumulating bothers. Without it, I couldn’t text my best friends from home or call my mom when I had a bad day. If I was meeting someone for lunch at Peirce, I had to make plans when both they and I had access to Facebook. If I couldn’t find them once I got there, I asked around or wandered new side until I saw a familiar face. I never knew what time it was and needed my roommate to wake me up in the mornings because I didn’t have an alarm. When I called my sister to ask for details on how I could get a new phone, I borrowed someone else’s, and when she didn’t pick up, I told her to email me. These are trivial inconveniences and my life did not become intolerably difficult. Everything just became a little harder.
It wore on me as the week went on; I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. There were challenges where I did not expect there to be, and it was extremely annoying. I was struggling to adjust to another semester at school and the not having a phone added more weight to my week.
This was complicated by the fact that I felt so stupid that I even was that effected by my lack of technology. I would find myself getting aggravated about it and then would become more irritated that I was unhappy in the first place. As I said, everything was just a little harder.
As with all things, there’s more to this than just my various complaints. Part of me really liked being off the grid, no worrying about who was texting me and why because literally nobody could contact me. Having a phone again, it feels slightly superfluous. I really just wanted to text my mom or be able to find friends at dinner. Snapchat feels oddly unnecessary now. But that’s not my point either.
Basically, be careful friends. As the semester begins, don’t be foolish. Recognize that some things will go wrong and that if it makes your life more difficult, do not underestimate it. Allow yourself to feel bad because you lost your favorite pen or your computer’s battery is shot, and then move on. It’s the ideal balance between acknowledging that your day sucks and believing that tomorrow will be better. Sometimes you don’t have a phone for a week, it’s unfortunate, and you have to spend one day buried in your blankets. And then, always, you get up the next the next morning.
Image Credit: Bobby TBD, My iBroke, Garry Jenkin on Flickr