Last August, I began my pursuit of my Master of Business Administration degree. It seems like just yesterday that this journey began. Here I am today, on May 29th, with just barely over two months left until I will be a graduate and done with college. With this, I am enrolled in three classes this summer, one of which is my elective, New Media/Technology in Sport. With my career of digital marketing quickly approaching, I'm eager to absorb as much as I can from this class, as it will be significant experience in the real world of this career path. In this class, our first assignment, a blog, is to go one day without various forms of technology, ranging from texting to social media to podcasts. This is the story of how my day went...
For my 24-hour period, I began by evaluating exactly what I had to go without. Obviously, being a student and a part-time worker, there were some things I could not afford to deprive myself of. I decided that I need access to email and D2L. While I know some classmates completely took internet out of the picture, I allowed myself some access in these regards. That would be a whole different story. Not to mention, with graduation quickly approaching, I'm applying for jobs, daily, so I allowed myself access to job search websites. I don't prefer to put that on the back burner, so I spent quite a bit of time occupying myself with that.
I began my 24-hour period when I went to bed on Tuesday night. Yeah, yeah... I definitely made it a little easier on myself by knocking out about 8 hours right away with sleep. I made sure to put in my warning to those I text daily (one person - the girlfriend). Lucky for me, she's a nurse, so she worked 12p-12a on the day of my deprivation. That definitely helped since she never texts during work (I planned what day I was doing this around these things; I took the easy way out). The next morning, I realized how difficult this was going to be. I noticed within minutes of waking up how habitual social media and technology is in my routine. Every morning I check my notifications, texts, and catch up on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Taking a broad perspective of it, I'm not really sure why I do this. There's a lot of things on these social media sites that I really don't care about; it's more just a habit that I glance at them. I actually had to stop myself from opening these apps, but I managed to do so.
From 10:00am-12:25pm, I have class in Beacom, so that helped alleviate some of the temptations. However, it shed some light on how much I browse the internet during class. Needless to say, I definitely could be paying more attention in class sometimes. Successful 12 hours thus far. Following class, I had a phone interview at 3:00pm, so I was able to occupy myself by preparing for that for the next two and half hours. However, I had to cheat once, as I looked up the company and my interviewers on LinkedIn. I considered it relevant and helpful to the interview, so I didn't feel too terrible about that minor cheating. The interview ended around 4:00pm and my next scheduled activity wasn't until I worked at 9:00pm. These next five hours were going to be telling of how I was doing.
In order to kill an hour and a half before dinner, I made myself go to the Wellness Center and get a workout in. That and showering kept me busy until 5:30pm. Usually I hate cooking and prefer making quick things. However, with time to kill, I thawed some chicken and cooked that up with some pasta. Even in the passing time of their cooking, I noticed myself wanting to check Twitter or Facebook while I waited. I made sure to leave my phone in my room though to avoid the temptation. Cooking and eating took me until about 6:15pm... only 2:45 left to kill (It's terrible that I'm talking about having to kill time just because I can't go on social media). Just goes to show how much these meaningless things have come to mean to us.
I had gotten to sleep a little late the previous night, and having to bartender from 9:00pm-2:30am, I knew I was too tired to make it without some struggle. With that, I took a nap from 6:00pm-7:30pm. After waking up, I showered and browsed through some job postings before 9:00pm rolled around. On Wednesday's, I bartender at The Varsity in Vermillion (We have $1.50 taps on Wednesday nights, so come in... tips are appreciated ha). Because Vermillion summers can be scarce, nights can get long. However, some of my friends that live in Vermillion during the summer texted me asking if I was working (Yeah, I had to look at it - I caved). Knowing they wouldn't come down unless they knew I was working, and needing to occupy my night with customers and entertainment, I gave in and replied with a quick, "Ya." One word in 24 hours. Overall, I guess I'll take that. The night rolled on and I made it. This morning, Thursday, I was able to catch up on everything I missed in texts, Snapchats, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Like I mentioned, all meaningless, but we're so used to checking it that I did it mindlessly.
In the end, it was quite the interesting experience. You don't realize how much you use social media, or depend on it, until you can't use it. It's like they say, "You don't know what you got until it's gone." That's real. It shows you how connected we feel we need to be. The last time I went without these luxuries was in 2012 when I went to Cancun on Spring Break. However, I went with 27 other friends (all my closest friends) and, not by choice, I didn't have access to texting or apps because we were in Mexico. However, going one day without these items, in this example, seemed much more difficult than going seven days then. It's much more difficult when you know you can do it, but have to stop yourself vs. when you don't have a choice. It also made it easier because I was never more than 5 minutes from my friends in Cancun. However, on Wednesday, I didn't know what my friends were doing or where they were unless I called them. It's odd though how much of an inconvenience that seems to be in comparison to texting. Sometimes we want a one sentence conversation and that's the convenience factor that texting provides. I don't want to call my friend just to ask a simple question and then hang up; funny how that works. Overall though, it was something that was interesting to experience; you really gain some insight in to how our culture has changed due to the technology we have access to at our fingertips.
First blog ever done... maybe this will continue after this class, but I wouldn't count on it.
