Can you go a week without TV?

I wouldn’t call myself an avid television watcher. On average, I’d say I watch about three hours worth of TV each week. Not bad, right?

So, when I was asked to take up the challenge of no television or any form of video for a week, I signed up without hesitation, fairly confident in my abilities. But I couldn’t be more wrong.

On the first day of my challenge, after returning from a tiring day of school, I grabbed a quick bite to eat and settled down on the couch with the comfort of my laptop. The clock read 3:45, and I figured that I could probably sneak in an episode of “New Girl.” Not until my browser loaded to the Netflix homepage did I realize that I still had to complete the challenge.

After barely preventing myself from failing on my first day, I proceeded to begin my homework and finished rather early that day.

With the hour of so of free time I had, I had the choice to either catch up on the APUSH homework that would be due next week or break the challenge and watch TV.

As a junior, catching up with homework with that one golden hour of free time was a fabulous idea, but I was not in the mood to do APUSH (a rather bad decision on my part).

I decided to not follow any of those options and went to bed, with wasted an hour on my phone and finally fell asleep.

Throughout the rest of the week, I was unaware of the challenge. The homework load I had received in school combined with my dance practices kept me busy and I was unable to think about my lack of “New Girl” episodes. It wasn't until Friday that I faced my biggest challenge.

As I came home exhausted from school, my craving for television was higher than it had been all week. Surprisingly, though, I was able to spend the hours before my dance class texting my friends and practicing for class, which kept my mind off the TV I yearned for.

After class, I walked into the kitchen looking for something to eat, and was met with the roar of the television.  I could hear the television downstairs roar and the beginning credits of a movie start.

Unable to watch, but still curious, I asked which movie my family had started.

Either enthralled by the movie or deafened by the high decibel music that reverberated through our house, my parents did not respond to me.

Quite possibly using the lamest method I could to gain information, I proceeded to sit down near the bottom of the stairs to hear the dialogue and figure out which movie my parents were watching.

Let’s just say patience is not my best attribute, nor is dialogue guessing.

Before I knew it, I was sitting downstairs watching “Spider-Man.”

You could say that I tasted victory right before it slipped away from me. I endured the challenge for most of the week, but at the last moment failed.

Although this challenge did not make me realize that I was in fact addicted to television, I did realize that I was able to finish my work at a faster rate and more efficiently. The time I saved , however, did not push me to work ahead on assignments; rather, it instigated me to engage in various other distractions such as my phone and binging on junk food. (I went through a whole bag of Chex Mix in one week).

So would I recommend this challenge to fellow juniors and seniors who need to get work done?

Yes, but make sure you keep your phone and all sorts of food away or else you’ll be stuck engaging in six different texting conversations at a time with a mouthful of Chex Mix, like I did.