At 6:05 a.m. my alarm alerted me that it was time to roll out of bed and get ready for water polo practice. I reached for my phone and went through the routine motions to silence the loud buzzing, but this time, something was different. My alarm continued to blare and in my comatose state I could not comprehend why the alarm continued to yell at me.
Then it hit me. It was not my phone screeching at me, but the alarm clock I had set the night before. Today was the first day of my week without a cellphone, which meant goodbye to the alarm on my iPhone.
After a rocky and confusing morning, living without my cellphone proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated. As I went about my first day of classes I realized how much planning life required without a phone in my pocket.
As I walked toward the W.E. James Building for my first class of the semester it suddenly hit me: I had no idea where that class was. Usually I would whip out my phone and within seconds my course schedule would become visible on my cellphone screen showing me exactly where, when and what my class was. Problem solved. Sadly, this was not the case.
Unable to pull up my schedule, I figured I would just go to the third floor where most of my journalism courses were and hopefully I’d find my class.
After spending 10 minutes sitting in the wrong class, I finally wandered into the correct classroom 15 minutes after class was scheduled to start.
As my stomach started to growl around noon, I realized making lunch plans is difficult without a means of connectivity. Typically, I would take five seconds and send a quick text to my roommates to see if they wanted to get lunch. However, with no way of contacting them, grabbing Brisco’s and heading back to my apartment seemed like the best decision. Thankfully it was pretzel bread day so this scenario actually played out in my favor.
Throughout the day I was surprised at just how many times I instinctively reached into my pocket for my phone only to find it was empty.
As day one sans cellphone came to a close, I thought to myself, “Well Raine, it can only get easier from here.”
Once again, I was wrong. Day two proved to be even more challenging that the first.
Read the full story about my week without a cellphone in the spring issue of Pursuit magazine coming out Feb. 23.
