A week without ... a laptop

On an ordinary Wednesday, I was sitting in a lecture hall, minding my own business, when suddenly the girl in front of me drove a stake through my heart. Not literally, of course. But as she took out a MacBook and turned it on with a "ding," my heart burst with longing. My own laptop was sequestered away in a drawer in my desk, inaccessible for four more days because I had given it up for a week on an assignment for The Daily Princetonian. At that moment, I missed it too much to bear.

Actually, scratch that. I'm lying. When I first received my assignment to give up my laptop for a week, I thought it would be impossible. I thought that I would literally feel physical pain whenever I saw somebody else indulging in the luxury of a laptop. So when my classmate turned hers on, I tried desperately to feel the longing that I thought I should. I thought it would make a good, dramatic opening for my article. Dramatic, yes, but true? No. I was perfectly content without my MacBook.

The truth is that giving up my laptop for a week was not only easy, but in a way, enjoyable. I cut out distractions, was still able to do my work and even did some exploring. According to the terms of my assignment, I was allowed to use any computer other than my own. This meant frequent trips to clusters, particularly since it was the first week of classes.

Of course, not having my laptop meant not only having to walk to use the internet, but also not having access to my iTunes, camera software and documents on my hard drive. Unfortunately, this all hit me the night before I was to give up my laptop. I was up late on Saturday frantically uploading pictures, downloading podcasts, updating my iPod and loading random documents onto my JumpDrive.

I must admit that at that point, I was cursing the 'Prince' for making me give up a comfortable luxury when I had more important things to worry about, like the beginning of spring semester classes. I was just as furious the next morning, when I had to trek outside just to check my e-mail.

I live in Blair, and, though there's a printer just below my room, the closest computer cluster is in Joline. Of course, that's not far, but in last week's subfreezing weather, just having to go outside was enough to irk me. I had no choice but to brave the cold, however, and the basement of Joline became my second home for the week.

At first, I found the Joline cluster stuffy and depressing. I warmed to it surprisingly quickly, though, and found that it really wasn't that bad. I was worried I'd have to use the grumpy old Dells (which would be devastating for a Mac addict like me), but Joline has a lovely new iMac. I discovered that since you have to log on to the computer with your netid, you can set up your own preferences and have them come up each time you sign in to any cluster Mac; it was almost like having my own computer.

The Joline cluster, where I am now, is remarkably quiet. I've found that if anyone comes in, it's only to print something or to quickly check e-mail. I've never had to wait for "my" iMac, and since it's so quiet, I can concentrate on my work even more easily than I can my room. Some of the other clusters that I've explored were more crowded, though I still never had to wait for a computer. The kiosks in Frist are often occupied, but even then the wait is minimal since people only use them to check e-mail.

At the beginning of the week, I had printed off a list of clusters from the OIT website, and tracking them down actually turned into some rather enjoyable sightseeing. I have a class in Fine Hall, and I read that there is a cluster with Macs on the fourth floor of Jadwin, so I went on a mini-adventure to find it. Along the way, I discovered a totally different world from the ivory-tower Princeton I know. Jadwin Hall actually has blackboards lining the hallways, like in "Good Will Hunting." Little art-history-major me felt just a bit out of place with integral signs and pi symbols galore looking at me as I walked down the hallway, but it was mostly exciting: I could feel the math and science genius in the air.

I thought that having to go to places like Jadwin to track down computers would take up too much time, but I actually found that I had more free time this week. Not having my laptop cut out my primary tool of procrastination, so free time in my room was spent as it should be — reading and doing homework. I didn't waste any time on youtube.com. I felt light and free, not droned out from useless time-killing.

Now that it's finally time to take my MacBook out of its drawer, I'm actually not that excited. I'll miss my cluster haunts, and I'm worried that I'll go back to wasting time. I wouldn't want to give up my laptop permanently, but if I really had to, I'd survive. It might be harder if everyone at Princeton went without their laptops and the clusters got crowded, but the way things are now, braving the cold is the only downside.