Veronica Santos

1/23/2021

Time Diary Assignment Reflection

My initial thoughts when seeing this assignment was “Why are we looking at how much time we
are doing different things?” but then I looked closer and noticed that this chart was going to
show us how we were balancing our time doing important things like sleeping and doing things
like being on our phones texting or being on another app. I thought that this assignment would be
interesting, but I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to keep track of how much time I spent
doing all of these things. I have always been horrible about time management and I tend to lose
track of time but in the last year I have been really trying to work on this and yet it's still a
struggle. I just realized that I said that I didn’t spend time reading for fun on my chart but I did
use Facebook, Snapchat and I was texting, all things that require reading so whoops! I however
do more reading for school than I do for my own enjoyment. I started to wonder why I felt
guilty for being on my phone when I was still getting things done and I was using technology for
what it is meant for. I had an awkward moment when I had to ask my mother what a landline is
because I don't have any memory of one because my parents always had cell phones. I was
interested to see my results because I know every day for me can look slightly different.

However, I would have to say that my technology usage is about the same. It didn’t
surprise me that my tv usage was so low because I grew up with a long period of time where we
didn’t have tv because my parents got tired of how we behaved with it and decided that they
were not going to pay for something that we were just going to all fight over and use to ignore
my parents with. After a while, I got used to no tv and now it really isn’t something I enjoy much
of because it feels more stressful to me. Just like how low my tv usage was, I also wasn’t
surprised to see how low my video watching time was because they too can stress me out. I wish
I also wasn’t surprised by how little I spent texting because I use Snapchat in place of actual text
messages. I also didn’t spend a lot of time talking on the phone because there are only two
people I really ever talk on the phone with and those two people are my mother or my boyfriend.
My mother’s phone calls are usually to ask a favor and take no longer than 10 minutes and my
boyfriend I do enjoy talking to and could talk to all day if possible but he is a pretty busy person
and so I have to take whatever amount of time I can get to talk to him. I oftentimes have to stay
up pretty late just to get to talk to him on the phone and actually hear him speak for just a short
hour. I do not engage in a lot of physical activity like running, jumping or anything that really
gets my heart pumping because growing up I battled with my weight, it would take so much for
me to gain weight but it was so easy for my weight to drop and I became very sick because of
this and poor habits. Before I got sick I was working out twice a day, I was obsessed with my
weight and appearance. After I got sick I was no longer able to work out because of the level of
fatigue I was feeling which kept me in constant pain. I also was so low on certain things that it
wasn't safe because I would black out at times. I decided to turn things around and really focus
on gaining weight and so I started focusing on eating but I stayed away from anything I felt
would make me lose the weight. I think because I am in college that it might differ because in
elementary school my siblings come home from school and do hw and then eat a snack. Then
they do a single chore and get whatever time is left until 9:00 to play and be on phones or the
PlayStation or play outside. They have just recently started using technology more at home but
still nowhere close to what I do because I am an online student at home every day. I also am not
as active as them. I’d say they have a good balance of being active and using technology but they
also have the chance to sleep more than me because I have a lot of responsibilities that often put
me going to bed later because there are only so many hours in a day.

In middle school, my brother is a big gamer and he spends way too much time on his
PlayStation and only sometimes chooses to play basketball outside. He doesn’t sleep much and
he eats way more now that he has been gaming. He is cranky often from staying up too late and
luckily he doesn’t have a phone right now or he would probably stay up longer. He however still
manages to keep good grades. Lastly in high school, the oldest of my younger brothers spends
more time doing athletics, sleeping, and eating than he does on his phone. I think this is mainly
because of his personality though because as a high school girl I spent so much time on my
phone even in school and I hardly slept, had really poor eating habits, and I spent most of my
time on Snapchat probably sending hundreds of texts daily. My time spent on hw is way higher
than all of them combined, I am a full-time student in college and I work on hw all day just so
that I can get good grades and get it done. They however spend a couple of hours on homework
max. I think this assignment would look different with anyone you give it to because people have
such different personalities and lives.