By Abigail Gan | Reporter
You get to class, put down your backpack and look around. The room is quiet, similar to most of your other classes before it starts. The common denominator? Nearly everyone is on their phone.
I understand you’re probably tired at 8 a.m. and would rather scroll on Instagram than talk to the person next to you, but the effort is so worth it.
Phones have become such an integral part of our daily lives. According to a study from Harrisburg University, students may spend an average of eight to ten hours a day using their phone. Eight to ten hours. With many of us having little free time throughout the day, how much spare time would we have if we put our phones down?
Specifically before classes, being on your phone leads you to miss out on opportunities to make connections. It’s easy to go into a class with the mindset you might not see any of these people after the semester is over, and there’s truth to that.
There are people who sit around you in class who could have a crazy connection to you, work in the same place as you in the future or become one of your closest friends. But you’ll never find out if you don’t talk to them.
I know it can be hard to randomly start a conversation with someone you haven’t talked with before. But in the future, you’re not going to regret spending the time before class talking to people and developing relationships over spending an extra five minutes on Instagram or TikTok.
Personally, the classes in which I took the effort to talk to people around me end up being my favorite ones. The conversations throughout the semester — even if it’s only two minutes before class — can build a beautiful friendship. Some of my closest friends have been the product of these before class conversations. They are people I might have never gotten close with if I had been on my phone instead of talking to them.
The reality is, most of us will only be here for eight semesters, some of us more and some even less. We need to make the most of our time in college. Soak up each conversation in this season of life.
Many of us are addicted to our phones and fill any empty space or time with social media. When things get awkward, we get on our phone. When a conversation dies down, we check our notifications. I’m guilty of that too, but I think we should sit in the stillness of silence, the moments when it might feel like nothing is happening.
We should sit in the awkwardness of conversations and take that as a chance to push in further and deeper. Sit in the realness of life and don’t miss out on potential relationships by being on your phone.
