With a class full of communication technology students, we're probably going to get a lot of communication-technology junkies. It certainly doesn't seem like a representative sample of college students as a whole.
I failed right off the bat Thursday, in part because I forgot about it, so I decided to give it another go on Friday (today). I have to say, I found myself having to make a lot of exceptions...
Alarm clock: I have to be able to wake up for class! But I used an old flip phone that doesn't make calls or send texts; it's essentially just a digital clock now, and it has an alarm function. I don't own a working analog alarm clock.
Email: I allowed myself to check email periodically because I have to check it for work. It's not like the example student who missed texts about picking up shifts. In journalism, you don't get your hours in advance. I'm a photo stringer for The Bellingham Herald and I usually get my assignments on Thursdays or Fridays. I have to read them in a timely manner and get a hold of the picture editor if I have questions. This time, it's a good thing I did because he gave me a tricky assignment and it turned out to be at the same time as the other assignment he gave me. What if I hadn't seen that and pointed it out?
Phone: I had to call someone to set something up for a photo assignment Saturday morning. I just got the assignment and it wouldn't have worked to call him the morning of the shoot.
Also, I took a call from my mother. Again, I don't think this is the same thing as the reading discussed; I don't have helicopter parents at all. My mom lives in Minnesota and I see her about once a year for maybe a week total. We usually talk on the phone once a week or so, but it's been a while longer than that and I hadn't been able to pick up the last time she called. She's been sick and I wanted to see how she was doing. I'm pretty protective of my mom. I would have made other family members wait, but I didn't even question whether to make an exception for her.
Homework: I needed to finish an assignment for a class in which I built a site about a topic (something the professor is trying out in lieu of making us write papers, design posters or give presentations). Like work, schoolwork is a legitimate allowance.
As a news junkie, I found the hardest part of this assignment was not checking the news. I don't really agree with the assignment's distinction between magazines/newspapers and books, though. Why can I read a book but not a newspaper? Aren't they both forms of communication technology, each new at some point in history? Keeping up with the news is a huge part of my life, not just as a citizen but because I'm a journalist. Not being allowed to check it was frustrating. I did read two articles -- one by the Washington Post and one by The Western Front -- before I decided it was probably a stretch to make an exception for reading the news. But I'll definitely be catching up tomorrow.
I have gone without communication technology for more than a day before, on camping trips and the like. It's really nice. But I find it much easier to go four days without technology during a scheduled vacation than to randomly go one weekday without it when I haven't had a chance to tell everyone (my editor, for example) that I'll be incommunicado. I'll turn off my radio for a day and keep my earbuds out on the way to campus. Fine. But I'd rather shut everything off and curl up with a book when I know I'm not missing anything. When you plan ahead, you can go much more all-out with your tune-out, and it becomes much more effective.
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