Utility
Preparing for my experiment When I told my friends I wasn't going to have my phone for a week, they were concerned. “Is that safe?" one asked. "I think you should at least carry your phone around with you at all times, just don’t use it,” suggested another. “Why don’t you just turn it on airplane mode?” asked another. I was most worried about not being able to use my phone as a navigation tool. I had an iPhone before I had my driver’s license, so I've always had the comfort of knowing where I was and how to get where I needed to go. My initial thought was, “Oh, no problem. I can just pull up the map before I get rid of my phone and screenshot the directions.” I forgot that no cellular data for a week also meant no phone at all.
Finally, at 6:30 a.m., I was awakened to the sound of a rainforest, but somehow I found myself still not fully believing it was 6:30 a.m. My computer said it was, the oven clock in my kitchen said it was, but I could not get myself to believe the time without seeing it on my phone. The rest of my day went pretty much as expected: complicated. I decided to walk instead of taking the bus because I didn't have my bus-tracker app. I couldn’t deposit the money I earned babysitting without my Venmo app. I tried to order an Uber from my computer, but couldn’t log in because I needed to enter the verification code that was texted to my phone. I went to bed hoping I would sleep better and trust that my computer would wake me up on time. But the worry seeped in and once again, I was up almost every hour checking the time. When I woke up the next morning, I had to check three different clocks and ask my roommate what time it was before I believed it.
The experiment The night before my experiment began, I realized that no iPhone meant no alarm clock. I hadn’t used an actual alarm clock since I was a freshman in high school, and at that point, I still had my parents to rely on if I didn’t wake up on time. Finding a new way to wake up turned out to be more complicated than I anticipated. I had to be up at 6:30 a.m. for a 7 a.m. workout class. I found an alarm app that I could download on my MacBook, but after doing more research, I realized I needed a “helper application” to keep the alarm on. I was so worried the alarm wouldn’t work that I was up almost every hour to check the time. The Home Issue
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