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April 20, 2022 - Image 7

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Michigan Daily

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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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