I wrote this article for the ChiBus (Chicago Booth student-led newspaper). Thank you to Aidan and Pratham for helping edit. I changed the title for this personal post because I find it more funny.

There’s no denying it: the culture of the classroom has changed over the years. Today, no one bats an eye when students type on their computers or text on their phones during a lecture. I get that some people prefer taking notes on different devices. Our electronics relentlessly beckon with more events to attend, more job opportunities to research, and more information to consume. It is hard to ignore that ever-present, urgent electronic pull. But at the risk of sounding like a Luddite or an old fart, I believe there are some spaces where we should resist that pull and focus on the present. The classroom is one of them.

Absorbing information for three hours is a difficult task. I often find myself daydreaming or struggling to stay connected with the lecture—especially when topics lose my interest or go over my head. In response to this boredom or perceived inefficiency, it’s common to turn to our devices—sometimes a laptop flanked by an iPad, with a phone nearby. Whether a top-of-the-line Apple product suite is necessary for learning is up to the individual.

Still, I want to question why we feel the need to stay plugged in. There’s research arguing both sides of technology in the classroom, but the more fundamental question is: why do we need a laptop, tablet, or phone out during class at all? I fully understand that we are all busy and feel the demands and pressures of our lives in our own unique ways. Yet when we arrive in class, we should ask ourselves why we walked into the classroom in the first place.

Our role as students at Booth is multi-dimensional and unique to each individual. We all have different professional obligations and aspirations. We all have different personal stressors. Yet, what everyone has in common at Booth is our pursuit to get an MBA – an academic degree that trusts its owner to operate wisely and intelligently in any post-education endeavor. Perhaps, for 9-12 hours a week, it would be prudent to close our laptops and put our phones on airplane mode. Free from the obligations and answers our electronics provide, we can turn our attention to our own mind and focus on the lecturer only 20 feet away. I would argue that it is wildly difficult to fully immerse oneself in a three-hour lecture and exit feeling as if one learned nothing. Those three hours are time invested in ourselves. A fine line exists between justifying time and energy allocation due to scarcity versus acknowledging our own prioritization inefficiencies.

There is nothing wrong with missing class due to life’s conflicts. But inside the classroom, we are presented with an opportunity to struggle and grow. We don’t need our computers to think. We don’t need our phones to feel connected. We don’t need to research Bain internship opportunities this very second. We can let them go. The culture of unquestioned use of personal electronics in the classroom is one that we perpetuate as students, and one that we can just as easily reverse. Next time in class, maybe we can stow our electronics, think freely, engage with other students, and learn from our professors. Our time at Booth is not just a bridge to a new career. For many of us, it is the last time in our lives that we have an opportunity to learn uninterrupted, unhindered, and to engage wholeheartedly with our understanding of the world.