My iPod's name is Bessie. She wears a bright orange cover and in-ear headphones from Apple, and engraved on her back in neat little letters is the sentence, "Extraordinary how potent music is."
There's a term for people like me. I'm a Poddict – someone addicted to his iPod – and I'm not the only one. There are more than a few Poddicts at Princeton. You can see them at Dillon Gym, transfixed by music as they struggle through those last 10 minutes on the elliptical or in the atrium in Firestone, letting their pets catch the soft overhead light as they return their heavy eyes back to the open book in front of them. The one thing all Poddicts share in common though, regardless of where they are, is the fact that when our iPods have us, we're completely disconnected from the world.
Let me give you an example. I lived in Manhattan this summer and took my iPod with me everywhere I went. Without it, I don't know how I could have survived. New York can be so loud without the sugary sound of Ben Folds' piano or the sharp twang of Eric Clapton's guitar. In the subway especially, having something to drown out the rattling of steel columns zooming past can really help bring you down after a long night.
But being completely unplugged from the world can be dangerous. One late night on the 1 train, I sat down next to a raving lunatic who kept thumping something that looked like Bible against the wall above our heads. Yet the only thing I heard was the Green Day song I was listening to at the time, "Warning".
I guess as much as my iPod has helped me in the past, I've noticed I use Bessie less and less at Princeton. I might not even be a Poddict anymore. The thing is, it's not like I've lost interest in Bessie (she's still the best mp3 player on the planet) and it's not as if I don't have the time for her anymore. Like most, I spend at least an hour every week walking from class to dorm to dining hall. And though I don't live in Forbes, I personally think the University should follow Duke's example and give every Forbesian an iPod if they don't have a bike.
The reason I don't use Bessie as often is that I've come to realize that things are so much more interesting when I'm not stuffed into my own little world of indie rock, top 40 and a little bit of everything else. It's a good thing to walk around and smile at people you don't know, even if they won't smile back, because we're all going to this awesome school together. I like the feeling I get that the person I meet today might do something as cliché as finding the cure for cancer 10 years from now. We don't all become investment bankers right?
So being a Princeton student, I'm starting a Recovering Poddicts for Reconnection club. Just like in AA, which you don't have to be an alcoholic to join, you don't even need to have had an iPod to join RPR.
All you need is a desire to be a little more friendly, a little more connected to the Princeton community. We will sit around in a circle talking about our experiences of being unplugged and we can all stand up and say, "My name's _________, and I want to reconnect."
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