January 12, 2004
8:30 I am rudely awakened by a phone
call from a telemarketer. When I’m fully awake,
I can think of many clever strategies for dealing with
them, but I am tired. I just hang up.
9:45 My alarm clock goes off. I get
up and take a hot shower. As I write my journal in retrospect,
that’s a privilege. I also take the almighty medical
wonders that keep me whole. I get breakfast from the
fridge. Both of my roommates are already up and using
their computers to check e-mail.
11:00 I walk to class. The professor
uses a piano to teach Renaissance music theory—modes
and hexachords and whatnot. Then the class sings from
photocopied manuscripts, accompanied by viola.
12:30 I buy a hot chocolate using
my debit card—magic!—and the hot chocolate
is made with an espresso machine. I go to another class.
3:45 I go to the music office, where
every staff member is using a computer and surrounded
by various technological implements (microphones, CDs
and burners, etc.). I use the music department’s
photocopier to get my music organized for a voice lesson.
I need collated copies for my accompanist, my teacher
and myself, as well as for the judges who will be hearing
me in Juries in a couple of weeks. In my voice lesson,
I am accompanied by a piano (of course), the crown of
man’s technological achievements. . . .
4:15 I head to the Pulse to photocopy
a few hundred pages of readings for a class. I have
some trouble with original misfeeds, which makes the
process rather a pain. It’s hard to keep all the
paper in order. I make double-sided copies, of course,
to save what trees I can. I berate myself later, however,
for forgetting to ask for recycled paper. I pay for
my copies with my debit card. I catch the Marguerite
[shuttle] back to my dorm.
5:00 I switch the lights on and go
at once to check my e-mail. I send one group e-mail
to the Chamber Chorale, the choir with which I sing.
Then I settle in to read for a long time.
7:00 I eat a snack dinner, using the
fridge and the microwave.
10:00 My roommate emerges from the
bedroom, where she’s been crouched in front of
her computer for hours. I ask her to model for me while
I take photos of her hands and feet. She makes a marvelous
foot model. I like using the manual setting on my camera,
so that I can adjust everything myself—aperture,
shutter speed, focus, etc. are all under my control.
After our photo shoot, she puts on the Beatles—on
her computer, not her CD player.
11:00 I talk on the phone with my
husband, who is in Alaska. He uses a cell phone rather
than a land line, because it’s cheaper. I use
a land line, though, because my cell phones are both
inoperative at the moment.
12:30 I check my e-mail one last time,
crawl into bed and set my alarm clock. My roommate uses
her lamp to read, which keeps me awake, though I don’t
tell her. She can’t do anything about it anyway.
January 13, 2004
10:00 My alarm clock goes off and
I reset it. It goes off a total of four times, loudly,
before I get up.
10:30 I get up, shower and take my
pills. I get breakfast from the fridge.
11:00 My roommate’s alarm goes
off once, quietly, for a few seconds. She gets up. We
both check e-mail on our own computers—my 1999
Apple iBook, her big old PC. I send a message to my
dad.
11:45 I ride the Marguerite across
campus. Much quicker and warmer than walking.
12:00 I get off at the music department
and go to Chamber Chorale rehearsal, which is led with
the aid of a piano (a technological marvel in my mind).
1:00 A friend rides his bike beside
me as I walk across campus to my next class. Another
biker, on his cell phone, nearly hits my friend.
1:15 In Photography, we learn how
to develop our first negatives. I spend several hours
learning the messy and confusing process, which is essentially
the same as it has always been. What an oddly physical
procedure.
3:30 I am late to my next class, in
which I take notes by hand. We use photocopied readings.
5:30 I arrive home and make a snack—food
from the fridge, hot cocoa using a hot pot. I also turn
on the lights so I can read. My suitemate works on her
computer, using several programs at once for research,
writing and communication. She’s working on her
thesis.
8:00 I talk on the phone with my husband.
8:30 I check my e-mail and take some
time to respond to e-mails from friends.
9:00 My suitemate puts on her dinner
and offers to share it with me. She uses a rice cooker
and I use the stovetop to steam vegetables. As we eat,
my roommate asks me about the music I’m studying
(Medieval/Renaissance European music), so I play some
CDs of early music (with ancient or reconstructed instruments)
for her on my CD player/alarm clock and explain early
musicology. I wash the dishes by hand after dinner.
12:00 My roommate comes home and plays
MP3s of choral music on her computer. She searches for
more music on her computer (that she never finds) and
checks e-mail while I go to bed. We both use small reading
lamps until we turn the lights out.
January 14, 2004
9:00 My alarm clock goes off. I shower
and take my pills. I get breakfast from the fridge.
My roommate wakes up later and checks her e-mail.
10:45 I am lucky enough to catch the
Marguerite again. Almost everyone on the bus is using
a cell phone.
10:50 I make my breakfast, hastily
snatched earlier, in the music department staff kitchen.
I use the microwave and the instant hot water tap (for
instant oatmeal). Because I have time left over, I make
coffee for the staff with the coffeemaker, and flavor
my own mug of java with processed white sugar and milk
from the fridge.
11:00 In my early music class, the
TA uses a piano to teach us cadences, and then plays
an LP of a performance of early music. We use photocopied
handouts from a computer-printed original, which I find
especially interesting because we are discussing the
common practices—and mistakes—of scribes
who copied music during the 14th century.
12:30 I go to the bookstore to return
some books I won’t need for the quarter. Apparently
there is some problem because when I bought the books,
I wrote a check instead of using my check card. A check
card is apparently preferable now. The cashier makes
the return anyway, and gives me cash back. I then go
to the history building to buy a course reader (my teacher
ordered it from an independent printer to save us $$).
I pay with cash, which is something I almost never do.
Plastic is my life.
1:15 In my next class, students all
around me are covered in electronic devices. I feel
positively Luddite because I am carrying nothing requiring
batteries. MP3 players and CD players are everywhere,
as are cell phones (many with their own holsters or
pockets). I see one PDA. A student is taking notes on
his laptop, though the most of us write by hand. During
lecture, a cell phone vibrates next to me.
3:30 I check in and out of the library
using my student ID card with its magnetic strip. I
check out a video to view for class in the same manner.
It is due back in three hours, so I have to watch it
right away. I convince the librarian to let me take
it home and watch it (so I can eat popcorn).
3:45 I work online to take care of
random business. I check e-mail and send a couple of
quick responses. I donate to charity, starving-student
style, by clicking on www.thehungersite.com.
I visit a cartoon website, www.homestarrunner.com,
to see the latest episodes (who needs TV when you can
have cartoons on command?). I try to register for a
problematic class on Stanford’s administrative
website, Axess, though, sadly, without success. There
has apparently been some goof in the registrar’s
office. Finally, I search for cheap plane tickets to
visit a friend in Florida next month. I call her on
the phone while I search for flights that don’t
run overnight. My roommate is present while I do all
these things—she is typing a paper on her computer.
4:30 I microwave popcorn. I view the
video, The Sheik, on my roommate’s TV/VCR.
It is an old black and white silent film, and the print
is fairly poor. It has a modern one-man soundtrack,
however, including anachronistic modernist computer
music that totally disrespects the film’s tone.
I denounce the dastardly composer throughout the viewing
and am often tempted to turn off the soundtrack. When
I’m done with the movie, it’s dark, so I
turn the lights on.
6:30 I return the video, once again
using my ID card to get in and out of the library.
7:00 I make dinner while my two roommates
and I watch one of the DVD documentaries on The
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. We watch it
on my TV/DVD, which is in our common room (as opposed
to my roommate’s, which is in our bedroom). Watching
a brand-new release, all about the latest filmmaking
technology, strikes me as funny, since I just watched
an early silent film. I use the toaster and the stove
to cook dinner (chili and cheesy English muffins). I
also use cheese, butter, and milk from the fridge. Kelly
is baking cookies while I sit and eat, using the electric
mixer and the oven. She makes smashing chocolate chip
cookies and we all eat them, some more cooked than others.
8:00 I disconnect my laptop from the
network and bring it out to the common room, so I can
work comfortably on the couch. I use it to transcribe
music—I listen to a CD, in short bursts, then
write the notes I hear on a computer music notation
program. In this instance, I am transcribing my father’s
improvisational piano music, for which he pays me. After
completing most of the transcription, I listened to
another CD (of my own compositions) on my computer.
My suitemate asked for a copy of the CD, so I gave her
a burned one without a label. I had to write on it with
a Sharpie.
11:00 I try to fix my computer—it’s
been acting troublesome. I can’t get it to talk
to my printer. It seems to be lacking memory, so I purge
many of the largest files I can find, and all the data
I no longer need. I looked at many pictures for the
last time on my screen and then threw them away. Looking
at jpegs made me want to look at real photos, so I pulled
out some pictures from my summer trip to Europe and
sorted them. While I did this, my suitemate was (unbeknownst
to me) viewing and sorting photos from her digital camera
on her computer.
11:30 I talk to my husband on the
phone again.
January 15th, 2004
1:00 I reconnect my computer to the
network and check my e-mail again before bed. I read
with the lamp on for a while before sleeping.
8:30-11:59 My alarm clock tries in
vain to wake me and I repeatedly ignore it. My poor
roommate gets up to turn it off herself once. Her alarm
doesn’t go off until 10.
12:15 I finally get up and shower
and take my pills. I get breakfast from the fridge and
toast it in the toaster.
1:15 In photography, we learn to make
prints from our developed negatives. Again, it is a
startlingly manual process; I know more about the inner
workings of a computer than the magic that makes my
print appear in the developing solution. The technology
involved is ridiculously simple and very different from
what I usually think of as technology. I use an analog
clock to time all my processes, but I often lose track
of the number of minutes that have passed. People around
me are timing their chemistry using their digital watches
or cell phones as stopwatches.
3:15 The next class is discussion-oriented,
but we do view some video clips to start the discussion
going. They are, again, black and white silent films
with modern synthesized soundtracks. The prints are,
sadly, very poor. Our TA has technical difficulties
with the projection system, as usual.
5:10 I return home and spend time
on my computer. I send e-mails to friends to set up
meetings [and] to teachers and administrators about
the trouble with Axess, and tried to purge my inbox
by either answering or taking care of everything in
it. Miserable failure—there are far too many to
deal with today. Last year I received well over 100
e-mails each day; this year, I’m down to about
40. I tried to register for the problematic class on
Axess again, although once more with no success. I made
donations again through thehungersite.com, though one
of their partner charities was apparently having server
problems, and each time I tried to make my customary
daily donation my browser crashed. So I gave up on that
and took care of some quick calls—I left a message
for a friend across the country, I renewed a prescription
over the phone, and I contacted a charity with which
I’m involved to change my payment options (they
were billing a credit card I planned to cancel). Then
I paid some bills online.
6:15 I listen to a CD while I purge
our fridge and freezer of rotten stuff. It seems that
our fridge is too cold—the things in the back
are frozen—but the freezer is too warm—the
Popsicles are soft. What’s a gourmet to do? Oh,
well. I reheat leftovers for dinner with the microwave.
6:50 My roommate and I drive to Chamber
Chorale rehearsal, listening to the radio, which is
very fuzzy. Apparently it wasn’t working right.
My roommate’s car is badly in need of repair (as
is mine, incidentally, or else we would have been in
it), but we have neither time nor money to take care
of either car. Apparently her cell phone is broken,
too.
7:00 Chorale rehearsal, with the use
of the piano once again. What an instrument! We also
have a look at images on our director’s laptop,
as a group, to decide on a pattern for part of our uniform.
9:30 My friends from Chorale have
a customary gathering at Tresidder. We get our various
foodstuffs (coffee, burritos, pizza, etc.) and sit on
the couches in the newly remodeled TV viewing area.
CSI is playing, but it distracts us and grosses
us out, so we turn off the TV immediately above our
heads (three others continue to play for those who were
watching and simultaneously working on their laptops
or talking on their cell phones). Since we couldn’t
totally ignore the TVs, we ended up talking about TV
shows—particularly Survivor, a sort of
reaction to the American middle- and upper-class technological
dependence common in our day. On an unrelated note,
at one point in our conversation, an astrophysicist
friend of mine said, “Science is the answer. That’s
just it. Science is THE answer.” We could have
argued about that all night, but fortunately we didn’t.
12:00 We drive home again. I get a
snack from the fridge, turn out the lights in the common
room and check my e-mail. I send a couple of brief replies.
My roommate does the same. Just before I go to bed,
I remember that I need to write a proposal to turn in
the next morning. With a groan, I do so on my laptop.
My roommate checks her e-mail and browses the web. We
both go to bed without reading. |
