Idle Tuesday - Phone-Free Zone

I went to what they called a “progressive graduate school”.

It was low residency, meaning that every semester I would ride a train for 14 hours to a city with no chain restaurants, with the college an additional 15 miles outside of that town. Once there, I’d have to check in, sometimes at two in the morning, in a remodeled horse stable where the dorm rooms were about the same size as a horse paddock. I’d spent the next 11 days waking up at 7am, getting breakfast, and then attending seminars and group meetings, then lunch followed by structured research time on our research papers and creative theses, then dinner, then evening mandatory group activities until 9pm.

It was a program that took pride in, and still takes pride in how many marriages they had broken up over the course of their MFA program. Outside of one advisor that I admired, it was my private Hell.

Food? Everyone was vegan, save a few vegetarian and omnivore outliers like myself, and meals were always an opportunity to be shamed and proselytized by militant vegans in their natural environment.

Music? It was like the punk movement’s “no entry if you have a record contract”, but 1000x whinier music. At least half the campus had brought an acoustic guitar, a scribbled notebook of half-assed protest folk songs, a bottle of Yellowtail, and a half-pound of weed. Each.

Films? If it premiered at a venue that held more than 40 people, it was shit and deserved derision and was probably derivative of something that came out last year at a film festival/slam poetry jam/drum circle.

Culture? I don’t think they approved of any culture that didn’t have sub- or counter- as a prefix.

Television? I have never heard this phrase so many times in an 11-day period: Oh. I/We don’t own a television.

I say all of this because I want you to understand that I’m not of that mindset when I say the following.

I don’t own a smartphone.

Hell, I don’t even have a cellphone/mobile. But I have a good reason.

It’s not that I don’t want one, but at the same time, I wonder what I’d be giving up by having one. Suddenly, people would be able to get a hold of me wherever I am, send a text, and if I see it, I’ll be expected to reply immediately, or I’m being an asshole. If I’m busy and not able to get back to them for a few hours, I have to explain why. Also, text conversations are generally archived, and you never want to get into an argument with a friend who has your entire conversation history for the last 5 years in their back pocket.

Friend: No, I never said anything like that.
Other Friend: Yes, you did!
Friend: No, I didn’t!
Other Friend: ||enters subject into search box, finds a text from 4 years ago|| Ha! You did!

Seriously, the look on their face was like they expected that to happen.

Also, if I get a smartphone, suddenly my job will override everything in my life. At orientation, we were told that if, while commuting to work, we were to get in an accident, our first call, text, or e-mail should be to the school to inform them we weren’t coming in that day. THEN we could call an ambulance.

It was only for the adjunct instructors. Yes, this is the state of higher education in the US.

Also I’d be terrified of this all the time:

Also don’t want to wade into the Apple/Android/Google feud. Because I don’t want to become a cultist.

But most of all? I want my “me time”. I want time to disconnect, shut out the world for a little while, and not have to worry about interruptions or spontaneous input on whatever it is I’m doing. I want the ability to have a convincing illusion that I can be alone for however long I need, for conversations to have a natural end, and to have an extra $100 in my budget every month.

Also with no smartphone it’s harder for guys to send me random, unwanted pictures of their junk.

God, I wish that was a joke.