Concluding Week Long Experiment…

“Living Deliberately?” At the beginning of the semester, I had no clue what that meant, to live deliberately. We read many books throughout the semester, and many articles that experimented and challenged ways of living. It was a great way to break into the topic of living deliberately, but I still didn’t understand what living deliberately was about or what that meant. Having us come up with a weeklong experimented that would challenge our lifestyles was a great way for us to actually experience what living deliberately was about, or at least get a little taste for it. I believe that doing this experiment allowed us to have full hands on experience and allowed us to be able to relate to authors such as Thoreau or Walden. I believe that doing this experiment has taught me more about what living deliberately means then all the other readings and discussions.

My experiment wasn’t as successful as I wanted it to be, yet I still liked my end result of it. I may not have succeeded in many areas of this experiment such as Technological, Transportation phases of this experiment, I still learned a lot. Maybe that was the point of this whole thing, the point of the experiment wasn’t only trying to succeed, but also evaluate our actions, and learn from our mistakes. I believe that this experiment was a success because what I took away from my mistakes was much more meaningful then my succession in the experiment. I learned that sometime I give up to easily, and that I try to blame my mistakes on other things instead of taking responsibility for it. When I made the challenge to stay away from Facebook and TV, I gave in to both of the categories within the first day. I learned that instead of trying to be a mature young adult, I acted like a young foolish kid who was trying to ignore the rules and tried to get away with activities I wasn’t supposed to do. I did not take the experiment seriously enough, and it isn’t life or death experiment, but I learned that no matter how decimal or unimportant something may be, I should still try to do my best, because that’s where it all starts, with small things and then further progress into much bigger things. That is where living deliberately comes in, if you can’t even take seriously simple little things, how can a person live deliberately? Living Deliberately includes taking information around us, and changing based on what we know. Walden did not become “No Impact Man” on the first day of his life experimented. He failed, he accepted the fact and improvised and had much better results after that. That is what Living Deliberately is about, taking in information such as facts or even one’s own mistakes, making decision that has a person truly question and reason of why they should do something and why they should live a certain way.

Living Deliberately is not an easy thing to do, there are many trials and errors, and great responsibility come when one chooses to live a different lifestyle. I know that I am not that person; I know that I can never change my lifestyle completely just because I found out what happens to animals, or the fact that this planet cannot sustain the amount of pollution that we produce. Although I may not be able to change my lifestyle, I can make choices that could have an impact, it may not be great, but at least I will know that I am trying to make a change. That is what Walden was trying say, that one does not have to change their lifestyle, but making even most decimal decision can go a long way. I will try to change some of the ways I do things, not only because it benefits others, but because I can also have benefits from the same changes. I had a fun time doing this experiment, and also want to thank professor J for make this part of our class, making the class much more meaningful then if we were to never do this experiment. This is my last post, hopefully you learned something from me, and maybe thinking about changing some of the current habits you may have. Have a good one! J

Day 7, Finally!

            Seven longest days of my life; at least it seemed like it. Half way through the experiment, I realized that I was looking more toward the experiment ending, instead of trying to live the moment and take full advantage of it. I believe maybe that was my problem with the experiment and other times in life; whenever something became difficult or I believed I could not do something, I usually gave up and made an excuse to make myself feel better. I realized that maybe this experiment wasn’t so much about the experiment itself, whether we succeed or failed, whether we commit to our experiment or not, it is about what we take away from it. It is about what we do from learning or experiencing, what we choose to do after the experiment. Maybe that was the point of this experiment or even the class, to be more aware of the way we live our lives and making choices after becoming aware of our actions. I may not have done the best throughout the experiment, but I can say that I tried. Here are my results of my week long experiment:

1.      Transportation

“Can you be any dumber?” Standing in the elevator yet again, asking myself why I cannot remember to take the stairs. Throughout the week, I have been taking the stairs only half the time, and often times it will be my friends reminding me to take stairs, otherwise I would have taken stairs maybe ten times. This was by far not the most successful part of my experiment, but I am still happy that I attempted to do it, and hopefully in the future I can switch my habit from taking elevator to taking the stairs. One of the variables that affected this part of experiment was my friends, because sometimes I took the elevator with them because I felt that it would be weird to do that since a lot of people didn’t know I was even doing some kind of experiment. I do realize though that I need to have more self-control and not be so forgetful. It was a good experiment though and I believe that it was worth trying.

2.      Food

“Too full!” That is me celebrating my weeklong experiment of being a vegetarian by eating practically everything that was categorized as meat. Never have I eaten so much in my life, and even though it completely contradicts what I did for an entire week, I was still proud of myself and felt that I deserved to have meat. I ate only one piece of chicken the entire week, and that was when there was nothing opened but Chick-Fil-A. I do not want to make that an excuse, but I feel like otherwise I accomplished being a vegetarian for a week. It was a very difficult time, and I will most likely never do it again, but it was a great experiment and a great challenge accomplished.

3.      Consumerism

“More money, less garbage.” That’s what I thought when I checked how much I spent throughout the entire week of the experiment. The total cost added up to around $30, which was amazing because my set target was $50. I know I could have spent even less, but I was happy with my results and I may actually seriously considered adopting this way of consumerism in the future; not only was I saving money, I also wasn’t wasting as much material. This part of the experiment was overall success and I was very pleased to see how little I can spend each week if I tried.

4.      Technology:

“I hate you Facebook!” Yes, still cannot keep myself away from Facebook. This social media network has become almost like oxygen for me, I could not survive an entire week without it. Although my hourly rate definitely decreased throughout that week, I still went on and was not very pleased with myself. I learned that I need some more self-discipline that I need to learn how to say no. It feels like we’re talking about staying above the influence, yet to me Facebook seemed to me like an addicting drug which I was not able to quit. I hope in the future I can stop that habit and actually try not to be on it and procrastinating all day. This was one of the hardest parts of the experiment and I knew it.

5.      Positive Impact/ Political Action:

“Am I opened that weekend?” I was reading the AU daily news and found out that UC kids could volunteer to have upcoming students interested in UC to come and stay overnight. I found this a very interesting way to get involved with AU, and I believe I involved myself with AU far more than I expected. It was a great way to introduce me to AU daily and other e-mails we got that I don’t usually check, allowing me to be more aware about what’s going around this university.

6.      Health & Happiness:

“Water…” Dancing is not as easy as it seems, especially if it’s not just doing little side step back and forth. It has been a lot of fun dancing every night, and I will definitely make sure I open time for it, because I enjoyed it so much and forgot how much fun it was to dance. I haven’t danced in so long, I am glad that we had the experiment because I don’t think I would have started to dance again, at least not for a while. I guess I have professor J to thank. Haha

Day 3: Trying to survive…

            I was a being too optimistic when I thought it was going to get any easier after first day. I guess the whole theory of first day being the hardest can go down the drain. It is day three of my experiment, I am dying from hunger, hunger for meat. I also miss the elevator, a lot! Bits Walking up and down six flights of stairs sound easy, but it isn’t so easy when there is a forty pound bag on your back. It is a difficult task to keep on taking the stairs, not so much because of the difficulty, but because of the habits that I developed and having hard time overcoming them. This experiment is changing the way I do things, and also making me realize of what I am doing and how I could change. Here are my triumphs and failures…

1.      Transportation

“My back hurts!” That is the sound of me complaining walking up and down the stairs. I live on the six floor, making it not the easiest floor for taking stairs to, especially when carrying a backpack. This experiment made me realize though how lazy some of these students are. When I used to take the elevator, I saw kids pressing 2^nd floor button, taking the elevator one floor (I HATE THAT!). Taking the stairs might have hurt my back, but realizing that I’m not being the lazy one makes me proud of myself and inspires me to keep doing it. I still have the occasional “oh crap!” moments, but for the most part, I have been doing much better.

2.      Food

“This is nasty!” Not being able to eat meat sucks, I really do not enjoy watching everyone else (including my friends) eat chicken, steak, turkey and other meat products in front of me. It is not only painful to my eyes, but also my stomach, because no matter what I eat, I always feel hungry. Yet I am enjoying not eating meat, because it opened up door for eating other food that I would never even try. I tried eating shells, food at the vegan section, and other things, but all I say after trying all those things, “this is disgusting!” Even though I did not like most of the new food I tried and I did not enjoy the tastes at all, it still benefited my friends watching me try it and see the look on my face, they say it is “priceless!”

3.      Consumerism

“No way!” My consumerism experiment has been by far most successful. It has been three days and I have only purchased a Gatorade, two bags of chips, and a subway sandwich (veggie sub of course). It adds up to around fifteen dollars, which is far less than I would spend on the weekly basis prior to the experiment. I also realized not only am I saving money, I also am saving the planet by not adding to the daily trash produced by us. This is probably the easiest part of the whole experiment, and I am enjoying the rewards I am getting by doing this.

4.      Technology:

“Too addicted!” I am truly too addicted to Facebook, not only am I still checking it, I am still spending too much time on it talking to friends. The TV portion of the experiment is going great, maybe because I cannot even turn on the TV, but the Facebook portion is not having any success. I need some new ideas of how to prevent me from using Facebook, so if there are any brilliant ways of getting rid of Facebook, please share!

5.      Positive Impact/ Political Action:

“Get pumped!” I have been trying to involve myself with this university, and one of the ways I am doing it is by reading the newsletter, and it inspired me to even go further. This upcoming Monday April 09, 2012, I am taking part in the march for Sexual Abuse, and standing up to it. I think it would be a great opportunity for me to involve myself with the university and be a step more active in the university activities.

6.      Health & Happiness:

“Sick!” I learned a new dance move that is part of dancing called “Jerking.” I have been dancing, and not just a half an hour, last night I danced for an hour and a half. I have been enjoying this part of experiment, and it certainly does bring “happiness” to my life. Dancing is something I love to do, and always do it for the rest of my life, so being able to take the initiative and make myself do it at the end of every day; it has been the best part of this experiment by far. Maybe I can teach some of you classmates how to “Jerk”. Haha

Day 1.

            It’s only 10:20 am and I am already dreading this experiment. The difficulty of this experiment is much harder than I anticipated. It was only 2 hours into this experiment, and I already made two mistakes; rode the elevator on my way to the Lit class, and bought a Powerade. Both of these actions already made me realize that it was going to be a hard changing my routines and habits, especially the habits. Even though I failed twice within the first two hours of my day, I didn’t do too bad throughout the rest of day one.

1.      Transportation

For this part of the overall experiment I had to make some changes. Instead of walking to Tanley town and not taking the shuttle, I chose to take the stairs instead of taking the elevator. I made a conclusion that I wouldn’t take the Tanley shuttle that much throughout the week anyway, so why not choose something that I would take on daily basis, and the elevator seemed like a perfect idea. This is how it all turned out:

“Oh crap!” I screamed while riding the elevator. It was only one hour into me weeklong experiment and I already forgot to take the stairs; so much for making a change. I hate when you think of things you were not supposed to do until you do them, and this was a perfect case for that. I did not think about it that much at the time, but later I realized that if I don’t take this experiment seriously, than what’s the point. I decided to make sure to remind myself to take the stairs, but yet again, I walked into the same elevator only an hour later. My first day of using alternative ways of getting around was a total failure. At that point I just thought the only thing I could do is try to do a better job staying away from the elevator the following day.

2.      Food

“I want a dam chicken sandwich!” Those were exact words to my father when I was at Arby’s stopping by to get food. Earlier I have told him about my class experiment, and he made sure I followed it. When we walked into the restaurant, he asked me, “What kind of salad do you want?” My response was obviously not good, because Arby’s is not a “salad” place, it was a place for sandwiches and curly fries, and yet here I was eating a house salad with ranch dressing. I hated my life that minute, and I hated my dad for making me own up to my experiment and doing it. The first day was hell, not being able to eat meat was almost like taking away water from a fish; doesn’t work! Even though I had support, I have been doing a great job staying away from meat products, but it is coming at great costs. I am not sure of how much longer I can do this, but I must stay strong and resist the temptation.

3.      Consumerism

“Oh well…” Those were my words when I realized I just bought a bottle of Gatorade which was not necessary, and did not help my experiment of buying less as a consumer. Although it did not cost me that much, it’s yet another bottle that is going to waste. When I thought of it that way, I decided to make sure that bottle goes to a recycling trash can. That made me feel much better inside, but still did not excuse my actions for buying the bottle. I haven’t bought anything since, so I am doing much better job at consuming and spending less.

4.      Technology:

“There!” This was when I unplugged the TV before starting my first day of experiment. I knew that staying away from TV and Facebook was going to be hard, so I found ways of getting rid of ways of accessing them. Unplugging my TV has made such difference in my time consumption in my room. Instead of watching TV, I was doing homework, or listening to music. It was difficult at first, I still remember taking the remote control and trying to turn on the TV, before realizing that there was no way it was going to turn on. I deleted the Facebook app on my phone, making me less likely to keep checking or chatting on Facebook. This actually allowed me to spend more time paying attention to my professors instead of talking to my friends from home. So far, this has made the biggest impact out of all these other categories, making me contemplate on whether I should adapt these choices into my everyday life choices.

5.      Positive Impact/ Political Action:

“Sweet!” I was reading the AU newsletter and I found out there was going to be a screening of “The Descendants” on Friday. I took this part of experiment very lightly, because I generally don’t even include myself in these kinds of things. Reading the newsletter actually turned out to be more of an asset to me than anything else. It feels much better to know what is going around the campus, and I may even include myself in some of these activities.

6.      Health & Happiness:

“Too tired…” I did not get a chance to do any type of dancing my first day because I was too busy playing sports and then doing homework, so unfortunately I did not get my half an hour of dancing. This was going to be the best part of my experiment of changing the way I live, yet I did not even get to do it. I realized that I was going to have to set up a time to do this, that way in the future I would get to dance.

My Experiment

Hey! My name is Mike; I am a freshman at American University. One of the classes I am currently taking is Living Deliberately in the 21^st Century, English class that focuses on ways of living and the way our living impacts society around us. In this class, we’ve read books from Walden by David Thoreau, to No Impact Man by Colin Beavan. This class allows us to look at the living styles these authors chose to liv in, and apply it to our own lives and experiences. To write our final paper for this class, we needed something more than just information from text to support our thesis, we need something with more hands on approach. The approach that we took was to change our ways of living, allowing us to have experience to back up our argument on the topics we will write about. This is why this blog even exists, so we can record our progress throughout our experimental week and share our experiences with everyone else. There are seven categories that we had to include in our experiment; transportation, food, consumerism, technology, positive impact/ political action, and health & happiness. Below is the list of what these categories are and what my challenge for each category will be. Because I love playing sports, I know one of the hardest things I will have to do is try not to eat meat for the entire week. This will be a very interesting upcoming week, and I hope you all have fun reading about my week and how miserable I will be by the weeks end. Enjoy!

Transportation:

Almost every day, I use the AU shuttle to get to the Tanley town, it’s very convenient, and it’s free of charge. For Living Deliberately experiment, I will choose to either walk or run to Tanley town. Most likely, I will run back and forth unless I have items to carry, in which case I will walk. This not only will benefit my fitness skills, I will also help the environment by not being part of the pollution that the shuttles cause from being on the road.

Food:

I am a very active person; on an average I play at least two sports every day, which means that I have to consume large amount of calories. I eat meat practically with every meal in order to maintain my current weight. For my experiment, I want to see if I can stop eating meat with my meals. This will be a very hard thing to do, but I would like to see if not eating meat, and consuming alternative foods with protein in it will allow me to maintain my current weight. I don’t think it’s possible, but I will enjoy testing out my theory.

Consumerism:

I am a person who eats unlimited amount of food; I spend around one hundred plus dollars on food besides TDR and tavern. That is a lot of food, so I would like to see if I can keep my costs for food under $50 for an entire week. This will not only be difficult because the budget constrain will be much smaller, but if I end up being hungry, I will have to be much smarter with what I buy. This hopefully will improve my shopping skills because my current shopping skills are very careless.

Technology:

I am one of the biggest procrastinators, and one of the things that help me procrastinate is TV, and Facebook. For the experiment, I will unplug my TV, and I will try to somehow block Facebook for the entire week. This will be one of the hardest things to do, because not only is it a habit, I will be blocking a social part of my life, which could prove to be too challenging for me. I want to do this because if I end up doing more work and less procrastinating that week, I may adopt this way of living to help me with school.

Positive Impact/ Political Action:

I try not to participate in any political movement, I don’t really like politics. For my experiment, I’m going to try to make myself more aware of the politics, and all the movements that are happening around DC. I don’t really like politics, but maybe this will be an opportunity for me to try to become a more informed citizen of the things that are happening around the community and the world. I will try to read at least one newspaper every day during the week.

Health & Happiness:

One thing I used to do in high school is dance, a lot. I stopped because I always felt like I never had the time to do it, and so I haven’t danced in over a year. For my experiment, at the end of the day, I would like to take an hour, and dance. Dance is not only a fun activity to do, but also it is a good way to get rid of energy or release stress from the school work.