No “Smart”phones allowed
I accept the challenge Kimiecat! I too have been trying to unplug more and more (generally unsuccessfully). In fact, I read Kimiecat’s blog on unplugging a mere few minutes after deleting Facebook from my smartphone. It’s amazing to me that I find unplugging a challenge, since I was very slow to get on the technological band wagon to begin with, and truth be told, have had an internal war every time I accepted a new bit of technology.
But, this challenge has become a necessary one. I start back into my weekly night class at UWO and have challenged myself to use my smartphone as a text and talk phone at least 90% of the time, while using the data feature less than 10% of the time (I can’t give up the data feature for work reasons, even though I wish I could). I feel that my smartphone might be making me dumber since, like so many others, I can’t seem to keep my hands off of it. You see, I struggled with my French course last year; yes, it was a brutal course, I was working full time, managing a household and raising two young children as a single mother, but I think I wouldn’t have struggled as much with my night class if I hadn’t of relied on my smartphone to aid in most of my procrastinating (did I just admit that?).
All summer, I continuously questioned why I had such a hard time last year, after all I was a mature student when I took the pre-requisite 5 years before, so that couldn’t be it. My oldest was the same age as my youngest is now when I took the first course as well, so that couldn’t be it. I wasn’t working full time, but I was working multiple jobs, so I didn’t think that was it either. The only two things that are different now are that I’m a single mom, and I use a smartphone. I have eased into my role as a single mom and things are running fairly smoothly on that front, which leaves the dreaded smartphone – that which holds the answer to almost any question, but seems to be leaving me dumb.
So, my challenge – or experiment, is to see if my study habits and retention improve with less use of my smartphone, thus freeing me from the land of dumb and becoming an intelligent human being once again.
The only problem now is having to admit that I’m dumb if I still struggle with my course sans smartphone. Hmmmmm! Bonne Chance!
No Smartphone with this girl!
