After the Tech-Free Challenge

It is hard to describe the Tech-Free Challenge's results, as I am not sure about them myself. I thought it was relatively easy, and yet dull at the same time. I think it fared well with my basic expectations. After completing the challenge, I do not watch any TV during it, and used no microwaves, enabling me to say I did accomplish a level 4 challenge of the year 1950. I did not think it would be as easy to accomplish the challenge as it turned out to be. TV is a luxury, but not a necessity in my mind. I think that is the main difference between the levels I took and the levels some others took, being level 5 or 6. When you get to those levels, you are not trying to accomplish ways of entertainment; you are trying more to survive. I think I can now see that even more than I did before. When you have no heat or cooked food for you, it changes all of your focuses, and you do not care so much about being bored of reading homework or a science magazine. You are focused on how you will last the night, and how you can feed yourself. If I were to do this again, I would want to plan my time, and see if I could challenge myself more, going without electricity would be both an interesting and interactive experience. I believe I can learn a lot more from that than the level 4 I took this time due to the fact that a level 6 involves a lot more information and survival skills, while trying to keep yourself from being bored in level 4 does not take as much survival skills. This knowledge and developed idea of how this relation of basic survival needs and our technologies in society are the main things I believe I learned, even without having gone on the level 6 challenge.

The amount of time we spent on these challenges was not that long in comparison to the time I would imagine it takes to get good at it. If I was to continue my challenge for another day, I would imagine I would find myself trying to find more alternatives and more ways to keep myself entertained, although I do not think it would change all that much. Now, on the other hand, if I did it for a full week, I believe I would be able to greatly increase my ability in keeping myself entertained and I think I would have by then developed my knowledge and thoughts about how I can enjoy myself the most during that time. If I did it for a month, I think at that point it would become more of a normal routine, and no longer pose as a challenge, but rather that be the way things are for my life. I think things would begin to become normal in a sense, as I develop to my new situation. Any longer than that and I think you do not develop new traits and skills, just further develop the ones you already have.