The Harder They Come

Confinement Activity

Wow! Where to begin? Initially, after receiving this assignment, I laughed and thought to myself "what a piece of cake." Boy was I Wrong! In all twenty years of my young life, I cannot recall a more frustrating eight hours. In order to understand the magnitude of this experience, one must understand the subject of this experiment. My name is Patrick Abrahams and other than the 6 hours of sleep I get each night, I never stop! I am always on the go, never by myself, and most importantly never without my phone or some sort of electronic device. In order to prepare for this project I received numerous hours of expert advice from my psychologist and spent several sleepless nights pondering how I would successfully complete this rigorous challenge. On a more serious note, I was absolutely freaked out by this, because it challenged me to completely isolate myself from the very things I cherish the most (computers, people, and my phone).

In order to successfully complete this assignment it was imperative to choose the proper time of day and place to avoid any distraction that would prevent completion of this assignment. If there is one thing that I value, more than anything, it's honesty. I knew it would be possible to do this assignment by cheating and cutting corners in certain areas. However, I was very intrigued to see if I could display enough personal discipline to complete this project valiantly. In doing so, I chose a Thursday morning and turned off my phone to avoid any distraction whatsoever. I chose a Thursday morning because I knew that nothing was going on, socially, that would tempt me to break this personal promise. Also, I alerted my family and friends about my experiment, and expressed that I wanted no interruptions. Period.

The morning of the project I awoke with mixed emotions. I was anxious to get this project over and done with, but nervous in whether or not I would actually complete it. I chose to complete the eight hours of confinement in a sauna at my grandparents house. The home was vacant and the sauna had no visual distractions that would tease me with curiosity. Also, in completing this assignment at a remote location, my friends and brothers were unaware of where I was. Nevertheless, this alienated me from any interruptions or practical jokes that most likely would have occurred. On the drive over I was as calm as O.J. at a murder trial. This lasted until I pulled in the driveway and panic set in. My hands shook fiercely as I turned the key. This was it, there was no turning back at this point!

I wore basketball shorts and a tank top, because although it wasn't on, I figured a sauna would get quite "stuffy" after eight hours. The only thing that accompanied me was a newspaper, pen and paper, and research for another one of my classes. My game plan was to read the newspaper, front to back, for the first two hours and then spend the rest of my time writing my final research paper for another class. I placed a timer outside the door for eight hours and proceeded into the sauna to do "what no one had ever done before." Eight hours, one room, ONE PERSON!

Within the first twenty minutes I asked myself numerous times "What the hell am I doing in here?" I began to think of my fellow classmates and pondered if there were any in the same position that I was that day. Then I began to question how many of my classmates were honestly going through with the requirements of this project. I then wondered if I was the only fool that actually was following through with this ridiculous demand. I didn't have a watch in there with me so I never knew how long I had left.

By what seemed like between the first and second hour I was completely bored out of my mind. I had no desire to even look at my research paper, let alone attempt to write it. I had read the newspaper front and back twice. On that Thursday morning I was sure that there was no one in Brevard County that knew more about current events than me! I found parts of the newspaper that I didn't even know existed. I did all the crossword puzzles and quizzes in the comic section and was frustrated beyond belief! At this point in time, I realized that my game plan for survival was worse than FEMA's Hurrican Katrina response!

Another thing that worked against me was that I read the instructions of this assignment wrong and didn't realize that I was allowed to come out for bathroom and meal breaks. During what seemed like my third and fourth hour in confinement I began to think about what life would actually be like inside a real penitentiary. I thought about the stories my friend Jackie shared with the class a couple weeks before and was completely blown away that people spend 20 years to life in the situation I was currently in. Here I was, four hours into the project miserable, and there are individuals who experience this everyday of their life. This bothered me for many reasons. One was because when people hear certain sentences such as twenty years, they act as if that is minute. Twenty years

...