I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~Henry David Thoreau

After reading a selection from Walden by Thoreau in English 11, the sixth period students decided they wanted a challenge. They tried to imagine what it would be like, in today’s society to live without cell phones, iPods, computers and the internet. At first the entire class was going to try to go cell phone/Internet free from Thursday through the weekend. However, once they realized what that truly meant, only two students decided to take the plunge.

Here’s what juniors Brett Sherman and Molly Cross had to say about their experience…

Brett kept track of the days…

Thursday

Don’t really miss anything. I went and found my old turntable and finally found the auto setting on it! Now I can finally listen to three to five albums in a row without having to get up and change it by hand! It is great! I forgot how good some of them were. The Firm, Brothers in Arms, and the Pink Floyd Dancing Days compilation album. All in all though, a pretty relaxing night.

Friday

It appears that Molly is doing as well as I am. She came and talked to me on the bus instead of using her iPod. It was nice, hopefully once the ban is over she will keep coming to talk to me. It still really doesn’t bother me, and I’m not really missing out on anything! I am totally going to do this!

Saturday

Last day! It is really nice, although, I wonder if Lucas or Harry has messaged me? They are going back to college, and I don’t know if they wanted to hang out this weekend? Oh well. Totally worth the extra credit! Chad was mad at me because I still can’t play Black Ops 2 with him. His loss, I really could care less about that game. Anywho, it was nice not having technology, just as I thought it would be! Thanks Mrs. O!

Molly wrote about the whole experience overall…

Our experiment between me and Brett was to go for three days without using computers, phones or iPods. In the beginning of this project it wasn’t too difficult because I was in school for most of the day. Once I got home, for about an hour, I was alright because I had other things to do like read or crochet, but then I got bored. I really wanted to go on my computer. I have the usual like Facebook and YouTube that I use. I like to go on Facebook and check what’s new and I couldn’t help but feel like I was out of it without knowing what was new that day. After some time though, I didn’t really care which was actually nice. As for my phone, I can only text people on it so it’s not very fun. I also don’t have good service so the phone part of this experiment didn’t really matter for me. But man, when I crochet, I love to listen to the television. That was a big drawback for me. Throughout this experience I read some of my favorite books more and I went outside a lot more, even though it was cold! So overall, this experiment was pretty good. Even though sometimes I really wanted to watch television or go on my computer, the extra credit was so worth it! 🙂

What about you? How long could you go without your cell phone? TV? Computer and internet? iPod? Leave your comment below!