Media Free Day

For the entire day of October the second I told everyone about my media-free duties. I broadcasted my assignment to all of my suitemates, friends, classmates and co-workers. Each friend had a similar disgusted reaction and everyone always inquired why. When I listed off all the forms of media I was to refrain from, the Internet and text messaging seemed to be the most hideous in the eyes of my friends. I tried to mention my media free day as often as I could to anyone. It offered something to talk about, as well as a distraction from missing all my electronics. I discovered through this experiment that it's not my average day-to-day activities which constantly revolve around media, just, instead, media is so completely unavoidable.

I awoke on October second with an ominous feeling about how the day would turn out. In fact, I was quite dreading it, wondering if I would be able to survive. Maybe it was the horror stories we’d heard in class that made me so nervous, or my believed dependence on media, but I was scared I would crack. The academic portion of my day was a breeze. I made a point of noticing whether there were certain media used in any of my classes, there were not. I made it to 11:30 a.m. until I had the first desire to use the Internet. It happened when I arrived at my work-study job. We often do not have a lot of work to do, and my boss will let us use a computer and the Internet. My boss leaves to go to class at 12:30 p.m. and I man the desk. Her desk has a computer in which I always play solitaire and use facebook, but all of a sudden this was not an option. Staring at the screen saver did not help, so I decided to busy myself. In fact, this media free business helped make me be more productive. I ended up reading the majority of A Doll’s House for my dramatic literature class. Every once in a while though, when the play lagged I would look longingly at the computer and wish I had the option of going online.

On Thursdays, after my communications class, I do not usually retreat back to my job in CSAS, but today, not knowing what else I could do with my time, I went back to chat with my coworkers. I did notice that throughout my media free day, I depended heavily on my human interaction to get me through. Nothing else would have been able to stimulate me or distract me as effectively. Since coming to college television has not been an important part of my daily routine. I tend to watch television in great quantities when I go home to my parent’s house, or sometimes on the weekends. Inevitably cutting television from my routine was not hard, but I did feel bad having to ask my roommate to switch off the television when I came back from work. In high school, if I had downtime, I usually watched television, now I use it as naptime, and so I chose to use part of my afternoon to do just that.

The evening of my media free is where the lines start to blur and I was not sure what was breaking the rules. I figured if I was trying to realistically live my day-to-day life I should not limit myself or become a hermit. I chose my media free day coincidentally the same night as the homecoming bonfire. I decided to go to the fire, but there was one medium there that was unavoidable, music. TU hired a DJ to play music throughout, and I felt entirely guilty the whole time! But I thought that maybe this was all a part of the experiment, to realize how dependent we are upon media. Then on top of that, I decided to attend a dance party put on by the Newman Center, since so many of my friends are involved in their activities. The medium provided there was of course music, again, but it was more about the social interaction complimented by the music.

There were some other line blur-ers on the second of October. I own an Apple computer, and had recently been having some difficulties with the battery and charger. I was supposed to return my old battery and charger to the Apple people, but there was confusion on return labels and such. So I had to call Apple three separate times, as well as call DHL twice about picking up my packages. I spent a total of an hour working on getting this accomplished. I never once had to turn on my computer, but using the phone for that long did feel like some rule breaking. But, it was necessary for me to return those packages to Apple, otherwise they would have fined me. So, just another example of how these media are just part of the fabric of our lives.

Overall, the day was not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. In the evening after the bonfire and the dance party I finished up homework and went to bed around one a.m. Although, I was very tempted when the clock struck midnight to go on and use the Internet, but I decided against that entirely. Turns out the next day when I finally broke my media fast nothing had even happened on facebook, and the hype of returning to my beloved networking site was void of any satisfaction. This was a really neat experience, and I was proud I was able to accomplish it to a certain extent. I know that it would have been much more difficult had I not had all those activities in the evening. I would have sat at home twiddling my thumbs, and bugging my sorority sisters out of boredom. No media for a day was easier than I thought, but I sometimes imagine how no media for a week or a month would feel. An experiment of that magnitude would most likely affect my actions for weeks or months afterwards. But, I don’t think I’m willing to find out!