Unplug!

Once upon a time on college campuses across the country, cable did not exist in the residence halls. Television viewing was a shared experience in the common lounge. VCR’s weren’t on the scene yet, so we gathered to go to the movies or to watch movies together on TV. 

Long before cell phones, students walked across campus talking to each other. Plans were made, and we stuck to them. We did not call each other to confirm the meeting from 150 feet away. And most of all, we appeared socially available and not completely embroiled in a seemingly one-sided conversation with an unknown face on the other side of a cell phone. We talked to “home” once a week from a pay phone in our residence halls with very little privacy. Voice mail? Answering machines? No, people just called back later  to talk in person.

Can you imagine there being no laptops, desktops, Blackberries, Ipods or Palm Pilots? Ask your parents how they typed term papers. (And they’re not even that old!) Anyone in college until the early 1980’s probably clunked away on a typewriter with onion paper, carbon paper and white out!

E-mail, you ask? Long ago, people wrote letters, used stamps, and went to mailboxes to send and receive mail. Waiting by the mailbox (mine was number 387) was a daily ritual. IM was nowhere in sight; chatting with four, five, maybe even seven people simultaneously was only possible by being together in the same place at the same time.

Once, there was no www.anything! Research was done via books, magazines and microfilm. And we did that research in the library by using a card catalog and notepaper and carrying volumes to tables to read through them. We asked for help from a real person—a librarian. We did not Ask Jeeves or Google! 

Of course, modern technology has so many incredible advantages. But can all of this technology jeopardize your ability to communicate with people? Are you more likely to e-mail professors about problems than go to their offices to talk? Sure, it’s safer to IM your best friend from home instead of walking to breakfast alone. No doubt, it’s fun to call your friends from high school on your cell phone.

But here’s the trade-off: E-mailing your professor instead of going for a visit makes it less personal, and there’s less of a chance to just chat or discuss an issue. When you skip breakfast and IM your best friend from home or choose to walk to class with a cell phone glued to your ear, you lose chances to personally interact.

So think about unplugging for a day! Yes, unplug! No cell phone, no IM, no e-mail, no Internet. Why, you ask? There’s no single answer. You’ll just have to try it and see where the unplugging experience takes you.

Once upon a time, when I was a freshman, my parents drove me to my campus from Connecticut, helped me set up, and then we said our goodbyes. There was nothing else to do but walk around, watch people move in and wait to meet my roommate. So that’s what I did. And then the introductions, conversations and friendship building began! Those friends I made in my first few days at college are among my closest friends today, 25 years later. We are linked. We are connected. And it all happened without technology!

Lisa Guarneri Bauer is coordinator of academic support programming and disability support services at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.

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