The Art of Slowing Down and Enjoying

This summer, I was required to go home for an extended period of time for the first time since I came to Florida Tech in the Spring of 2014.

Since I’ve been here I’ve had the luck of learning a great many things and participating in many great events. At a certain point, it starts to feel like running from one thing to the next with no moment to rest. Casual conversations in the dining hall became rushing to my next class, finishing that research paper that’s due in 48 hours, to the next fundraiser your club is working on.

This article is about a simple life lesson and a simple welcome back to Florida Tech.

Walking around, you constantly see people on the phone checking their emails, sending another Snapchat or texting. The worst part is, they are surrounded by people — people they call their friends. No one is actually talking. Everyone is so engulfed in the current media trend, too busy with a digital world to pay attention to the great things going on around them.

This summer during my travels, I got away from all of this. Being home meant no phone service. I opted to not get data over the summer to save costs. Initially, I struggled with the inability to check what my friends were up to, to make plans on the fly. This caused me to have to slow down. I went from constantly checking my phone looking at text messages, scrolling my Instagram feed, or switching between Pandora stations, to actually looking out my car window and saw what I had been blind to for so long.

When you take the time to stop and actually enjoy and when we stop running around trying to save time by texting, eating, reading emails and watching the news all at the same time, it’s so much better. Instead of saving time, we now spend all of it worrying about all the things we need to do. When we stop on the other hand, we begin to see incredible things in the world around us once again.

I went from seeing pictures on the internet of the world around me to seeing that I was already there. My time spent on computers and phones was now being spent surfing and exploring the world around me. The connection you have with your friends becomes so much stronger when none of you are staring at phone screens, and you enjoy each others company.

Take the time to slow down you will realize that food tastes better, conversations become more meaningful, and the world becomes a more beautiful place. We slow down and start to live at a more natural pace and gradually we begin to feel better. Take the time to enjoy your semester. Stop staring at phones and laptops and talk to the people around you, actively participate you would be surprised at the great things you can see on our beautiful campus with all its incredible students and faculty.