I first encountered the Kerrytown 
neighborhood when I came to Ann 
Arbor for freshman orientation in 
July of 2018. My partner had driven 
me up to Michigan, and we found a 
current student to stay with for the 
night. The house was a mustard 
color with large curvy windows, 
as if it were inspired by a funhouse. 
It had a huge attic and was shaped 
like no other home I’d ever seen. 
Many of the rooms looked like they 
were closets or huge study spaces 
renovated into bedrooms. Our room 
for the night had a twin sized bed 
with hundreds of theatre posters 
lining on the wall. We had to squish 
together in that bed so as not to 
fall off, and the Ann Arbor air was 
muggy — we immediately wet the 
bed with our sweat, but it was kind 
of fun. It was a little adventure — 

coming to a new town and staying 
in an eclectic house, in an odd little 
room. 
In the morning, I stepped outside 
onto the porch to take a deep breath 
of the Michigan air. A college 
student on a bike flew past while a 
girl in a co-op across the street was 
swinging on a swing. I found the 
scene exhilarating: seeing so much 
commotion in one neighborhood. 
The people who surrounded me at 
that moment seemed grounded, and 
that they might take me in and give 
me a cup of tea. They seemed like the 
kind of people who would take me to 
Burning Man and help me home if I 
found myself in a K-Hole. Although 
the connection was immediate, I 
had no idea that Kerrytown would 
be my home for the next three years 
of my college career.
As a theatre major myself, it was 
natural to live in a house with other 
theatre majors for my sophomore 

year of college. The entire theatre 
department seemed to live in 
Kerrytown, and thus my residence 
began. We moved into the big artsy 
house that I had always longed for: 
there was a huge attic and a very 
spacious basement, perfect for 
playing beer pong or setting up a 
little lounge area. My friends and 
I lived it up in our little residential 
neighborhood. Bands played at 
houses on the weekend, people used 
chalk to draw on the street and yard 
sales with blaring music frequented 
our lawns. It was a happy, wonderful 
environment, and it barely ever 
registered with me that I could be 
living elsewhere, that there was an 
entire other region of campus with 
its own distinct culture.
I came to South Campus for the 

S T A T E M E N T

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, April 20, 2022 — 7

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

VALERIJA MALASHEVICH
Statement Columnist

DRAKE GEORGE
Statement Correspondent

Kerrytown versus South Campus: 

Home is where the vibe is

You might just be surprised: 
Locking my phone away for 
three days

I hate my phone. I hate that I 
can’t resist looking at it every time 
it beeps, and I hate how the empty 
seconds of my life are filled with 
screen time. I’m not doing anything 
worthwhile on it — just cluelessly 
scrolling through digital voids that 
are meaningless to me. When I’m on 
my phone, I miss out on everything 
important, I think. 
So in the midst of my anti-phone 
spite, my roommate and I devised a 
plan to put our phones away, all day. 
From 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., we agreed we 
couldn’t have them on our person. 
That meant no Apple Watch, no 
music on the way to class and 
absolutely no way to tune out the 
rest of the world. 
I already carry a virtually 
bare-bones phone on me anyway: 
my Snapchat best friends list is 
empty, my Facebook has long been 
deactivated, Twitter is gone and my 
daily screen time hovers around the 
three or four hour mark. Still, I can’t 
seem to shake its grasp, or the way I 
cling to it when an ad interrupts my 
movie, or my instilled reliance on 
Google-knowing.
One morning, I placed my phone 
into a cranny in my bedroom and I 
headed off to my classes.
It 
was, 
initially, 
less 
than 
pleasant. The walk to my first class 
was boring, but I realized that I paid 
more attention to my surroundings 
(and even enjoyed them more) when 
I didn’t have an AirPod blaring in my 
ear. Uninvited noises became hard 
to ignore, as drills hammered into 
the ground down State Street and 
I became more attuned to the flux 
of cars swirling around me. Yet, I 
was blissfully aware of the more 
mundane things we often take 
for granted, like the synchronized 
melodies of birds in the Diag and the 
chalk sidewalk doodles that sprang 
up overnight.

My 11:30 a.m. class came and 
went generally unaffected, mostly 
because I still insist on taking paper 
notes. Around 1 p.m. I headed off 
to the Modern Languages Building 
to meet with my friend before our 
psychology exam.
Uh-oh. Once I shut my laptop, I 
had no way of constantly updating 
my friend on where I was, nor 
could 
she 
track 
my 
location 
through Find My iPhone. Instead, 
I puttered around the MLB for 
what seemed like five or so minutes, 
and then hesitantly pulled out my 
iPad to send a text. It was wonky 
and inconvenient — my thumbs 
struggling to stretch across the 
oversized screen. But, alas, the job 
was done and I found her. 
I returned home by sunset, and 
my evening was spent lazing on 
the couch with an open textbook 
next to me. Yet, I felt anxious at the 
thought of the clock striking nine 
— I didn’t want my phone, did I? I 
know I didn’t need it, at least not 
then and there. My work for the 
day had been completed, my eyelids 
were struggling to hold their weight 
and I felt no pressing urge to invite 
a technological nuisance back into 
my life. 
In the absence of instant 
gratification, I instead spent 
a whole day immersed in 
my own reality. No 
more 
worrying 
about 
unwanted 
emails 
showing 
up at an 

unfriendly moment, or checking 
the time every two minutes on my 
way to class as I fret showing up 
late. I was in control of everything, 
from what I felt to what I focused 
on. It was intoxicating but it was 
short-lived, and I felt like I had 
failed to test the boundaries of my 
limits: naturally, I extended my 
experiment by three more days.
(Officially) Day 1
9:02 a.m. Just arrived at my first 
class of the day, and when I go to 
open Canvas, I get prompted to send 
a Duo notification. Great. That’s 
fine, I didn’t need to access Canvas 
anyway.
9:56 a.m. Walking across the 
Diag with no headphones is f**king 
weird. Voter registration people 
please don’t come up to me, I am 
busy dissociating.
12:35 p.m. I heard a ring so I 
picked up my phone and it was 
actually a really important phone 
call about my apartment. Please 
don’t hate me, I put it away right 
after — I swear. 
2:13 p.m. So no one was gonna tell 
me it’s literally pouring outside? It’s 
a good thing I carry my umbrella any 

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

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