Month: October 2013

This past weekend for fall break, I traveled to the University of Maryland. As I headed there, I didn’t know what to expect. The school is very different than Middlebury, with over 22,000 students and being located only twenty minutes outside of Washington D.C. Surprisingly, I really liked the school and the atmosphere.The campus was very pretty with all brick buildings and I did not feel like it was too crowded. The sport’s facilities were huge and very nice. When I was younger, I always wanted to go to a school with D1 sport’s teams where the student section was huge and the teams were dominant. As I grew up, I realized that I liked smaller schools better, but it was still nice to be able to see what my old “ideal school” would have been like. One major difference between Maryland and here was the amount of diversity. Forty percent of the student population is non-white and there was a very noticeable difference from the population here at Middlebury. Also the food selection was very different. In the main food court there were places like McDonalds, Sbarro, Auntie Anne’s, Panda Express, and Chick-fil-A. If you took a ten minute walk away from campus, you came to a strip of restaurants and bars. The strip included pizza places, Chipotle, as well as my personal favorite ColdStone. Even though I really enjoyed switching it up a little and eating more mainstream, I am very thankful that Middlebury does not have these options. I enjoy being able to eat meals from the dining hall rather than pay for food and consume an enormous amount of calories every meal. Overall, I really enjoyed my trip and I would love to go back. However, I definitely made the right choice in coming to Middlebury.

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Unfortunately, the timing of my digital media fast was not ideal. This past week was a very tough five days with three exams ranging in economics to spanish. In order to prepare for these exams, I stayed in last weekend. I was really looking forward to going out with my friends on Friday and Saturday night, but unfortunately my sickness didn’t allow it. I haven’t been feeling well the past couple weeks, but with my hectic week, my sickness seemed to progress and get a lot worse. Instead of having a great weekend, I had to lay in my bed for an entire day with no ability to talk to anyone or even watch Netflix. I woke up at 9am on Saturday and had to text my team captain and tell her I didn’t feel well enough to make our softball lift. I texted my friends and my parents to let them know that I wouldn’t be available for 24 hours and turned my phone off at 9:30. I then went back to bed and woke up at 2pm. I woke up and baked brownies and sugar cookies with a few of my friends and then went back to bed at 7. I slept until 9 and turned my phone back on to find 30 text messages and 12 emails waiting for me.

I was actually very surprised at how easy it was for me to not use technology. I would have liked to talk to my friends or watch TV while I was sick and laying in bed, but I did not even find myself tempted to turn my devices on. I think the hardest part about not having my phone was feeling like I was disconnected from everyone. As I mentioned before, the timing for this experiment was not ideal and I realize now that I shouldn’t have left it until last minute. A couple days ago, my great grandmother had heart surgery which failed. She has come to terms with the fact that this is her time to go and was transferred to a hospice house. I am pretty close to my great grandmother and my mom is very close to her. My mom is having a very hard time with the recent events and I felt bad not being able to be there for her. My biggest fear, however, was that I was going to turn on my phone to find out that she had passed away while I was digital media fasting. I would have felt horrible that I was unavailable. Although this is an extreme case, I believe it shows how important digital media is to us today.

Overall, I would say that the digital media fast was easier than I thought, but if I had to sum up the experience in one word I would call it inconvenient.