A Day Without My Blackberry

Not having a cell phone for a day? Yeah, it stinks but it’s manageable, right? Not if you have Blackberry. I only recently acquired a Blackberry. I got one free in a buy two Blackberry deal because my Dad needed one for work. I figured it would be helpful for those days my Hebrew professor liked to email us about five minutes before class to say she wouldn’t be able to make it. Yes, the Blackberry messenger aspect seemed cool, unnecessary but cool.

Seeing as we have to write a blog post a week, I’ve been having a little trouble coming up with new ideas. So the other day my Blackberry was exploding with Facebook updates and text messages wishing me a happy 20^th birthday. While I greatly appreciated all the love, I wondered what it would be like to go a day without all the emails and BBM’s. The next day I woke up, unplugged my phone from its charger and put it in my desk drawer and vowed not to look at it until the next morning.

At first, it wasn’t so bad. I checked my email once before I left my dorm and didn’t have to worry about it until later. I was forced to actually pay attention in theory class rather than hope for some outside contact. Then lunchtime rolled around. Because I couldn’t

text my friends to see who was free for lunch, I just went to the Commons hoping I would run into someone to sit with. I didn’t. I sat alone, awkward as ever, and ate my lunch as fast as I could. Then I went back to my room, my fingers itching to check for text messages, so I checked my email instead. Again. I was surprised to find an urgent email from my Dad asking frantically why I wasn’t responding to his BBM’s and phone calls. Apparently he needed to book my ticket home for Thanksgiving as soon as possible and needed to talk to me. After that moderate bump in the road, I did some homework and started to get ready for Chorale practice. I realized that I didn’t know if we were having an earlier practice than usual because we have a concert coming up. I couldn’t text anyone about it so I checked to see if anyone was on Facebook. No one was so I went to the DoYo early just to be safe. I ended up waiting there for an unnecessary extra 45 minutes.

These are only some of the obstacles I faced without my Blackberry but I think they exemplify the difficulty of my day. Cell phones may be good for keeping in touch with people, but having yours with you at all times can lead to things like addiction, car accidents, and sleep loss. Also, the actual device itself can cause radiation due to the magnetism of the technology. In terms of phones like Blackberrys, iPhones, and Droids, because of all the applications, multitasking can prove harmful to your ability to concentrate on a sole task and lead to decreasing test scores.

So try putting down your Blackberry for a day. I’m embarrassed to say how hard it was for me to get along without constantly checking my Facebook but I think I learned that maybe all these social networks are not healthy for a hardworking college student. Everyone should try a day without constant emails, texts, Facebook updates and Twitter posts and see how crucial these things are to our lives in current society.