What I learned from being without a phone

Have you ever thought about giving away your phone for a while? Probably not. And I can tell you why: because we rely on it so much.

It wakes us up in the morning, we check the weather with it and take a look at all the texts we could have missed during the night before even getting out of bed.

But that’s only possible if you have your phone or at least know where it is. I can tell you that getting up and having lost it the night before is the worst feeling ever. You neither know where it is by now nor who might have it. Losing it on campus is one story, losing it somewhere off is an entire different one.

How did people communicate before cell phones and FB chat?

The first thought I had was “Oh no problem, I’ll just open the find my iPhone app.” Turns out to only be a thing as long as your phone is online. Mine wasn’t, so the great idea turned out to be not quite so good anymore.

Still, I had to go to class and while trying to listen to the lecture (which of course I did not end up doing) I started contacting all kinds of people on Facebook (felt very weird) who could’ve seen my phone.

Lunch time came around the corner and I still didn’t have my phone back and therefore neither my Wake ID that was attached to it. Plenty of Pit swipes on the card, but none with me. The only solution was to contact my friend so she could swipe me in. ‘Just text her real quick and see if she’s free’, was my first thought. But without my phone, I had to get the computer out, log into facebook and send her a message. Then I had to wait till she saw it. That’s actually a struggle when you don’t want to walk around with a computer in your hands but otherwise you wouldn’t know when you get a response. Because no phone = no notifications about messages.

Turned out she was free after class, so we agreed on meeting in front of the dining hall. Before I left the room and my computer, I made sure she knew exactly where we are going to meet though. So, I walked there and waited for several minutes (honestly didn’t know for how long because I had no watch) but I was kind of worried I already missed her or that she forgot we would meet at the main entrance and not the side entrance.

Awkwardly searching for my friend

So, when I was just sitting there without being able to scroll through social media, I started wondering how people could communicate without a phone that well only a couple years ago? Like what if you were in the wrong spot? What if you couldn’t be on time? Did people just leave or started looking for each other? I am surprised that I’ve never heard any stories like that from older friends or parents. They seemed to had it figured out.

However, there is one good thing about being phoneless: You actually start noticing what’s going on around you. When you walk across campus, you see so many people you know and if you don’t know them yet, you start saying hi to strangers because you can’t pretend you have to look something up on your phone right at that moment you walk by them.

Won’t be able to lose my phone in this big, new case

And yes, I ended up getting my phone back and was really, really happy about that, but I still learned one important lesson: you don’t need your phone 24/7 to make sure you’re always up-to-date. Because while you are afraid of missing texts, pictures or news, in the end you are missing out on the real life that’s going on around you. So, at least once in a while, leave the phone in the bag or in the room and see what happens.