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.
Emily Butler is a senior majoring in music.
