After countless mornings of returning to fraternity houses to search for phones with my best friends, I have always prided myself on the fact that I am never that girl who loses their phone. In fact, I cannot stand losing things. Even though my room would be classified as “organized clutter” I typically always know where everything is, and every possession of mine has its own special place. So imagine my surprise when this past weekend I discover my phone is missing. I immediately use “Find my iPhone” only to discover that the last time it emitted any signal was at 5:35 am and at a location I had definitely not been the night before. All it tells me is that it is somewhere on Culbreth Road. Does this mean it’s at a frat house, my second home the Drama building, or forever lost under a mound of snow??
I quickly set my phone to lost mode believing that as UVa students we are all considerate and honorable enough to return an iphone that is not ours, and it will be returned to me in no time. I feel relieved actually and somewhat rejoice in my newfound freedom of not being tied down to my cell phone. For the rest of the day I am free to be with my friends without any distractions. While other people are constantly checking their Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchats, I am not distracted by any of the social media, feeling fully free to live in the moment and enjoy these last few weekends with my friends.
While the rest of my friends are puzzled by my calmness over losing my phone, I actually feel like I’ve returned to the way I felt all during my semester abroad where I didn’t have access to my cell phone for four months. There is something truly wonderful about having real conversations with people that are uninterrupted by silly snapchats or “OMG that awesome new Lo-fi pic of someone’s meal or a freaking airplane wing!!! Can you believe it?!! Here I am tanning while studying#nofilter #tooblessedtobestressed”. But actually…
Losing my phone is almost like coming full circle and being back in my Semester at Sea carefree lifestyle, where people communicate via post-it notes on doors and all social interactions and invitations occur face to face in person. If I learned anything from Semester at Sea, it would be that the art of real human interaction without any distractions is a completely lost form. I cannot even tell you how many audience members who attend plays cannot even keep their phone off long enough to make it through a 90 minute play without awkward vibrating or ringing interrupting the performance. Even when I’m out to dinner with my best friends, we are all guilty of checking our phone throughout the entire meal, allowing the most insignificant notifications to pull us away from real conversation. We don’t mean to do it, but let’s face it, it’s how we’re trained and what we’re used to. If we’re ever out and something gets awkward we hide our discomfort by checking our phones and the connection we hold with others is then immediately lost.
While second semester of fourth year has been wild and crazy, it has simultaneously proven insanely stressful, what with everyone down to the wire trying to find jobs and prove worthy of their B.A. degree we’re about to receive in just a few months. While everyone keeps trying to hold on to these precious few months we have left, I feel that it is best to follow the advice my acting professor gave me earlier this year. He told me to keep one foot in the door and one foot out the door. While it is important to enjoy these last few months of college, we cannot forget how if we decide that it only gets better from here on out, then it absolutely will. The show goes on, and the uncertainty of the future should excite and invigorate us, not frighten us. I can’t control the fact that my phone is now maybe forever gone, but if anything I should be thankful that losing my phone has brought me back to this mentality of spontaneity and full trust in living in the moment. And that is all I can ask for in these last fleeting months of undergraduate nirvana. I must say I am actually #blessed that I am living this freedom, with absolutely no idea of what will happen next. I am exactly where I need to be.