Two days before winter break, my cell phone went through the washing machine. No
big loss. I had spent my first six months at Owen in awe of the in-class
tweeting, the cracked iPhone screens, and the responding to emails without
assembling your entire portable office at the horseshoe. When it came time to
get a new one, I was already an AT&T subscriber so my choice was easy. I
went with the Blackberry 9700 Bold. However, my intent here is not
to debate the merits of the Blackberry vs. the iPhone, especially when only one
of them functions as a reliable telephone. The question is, do you need a
smartphone for b-school? After spending one semester with, and one
semester without…”it depends.”
So what do we use smartphones for at Owen? We schedule and respond to meeting
invites, check our email, post on facebook, read WSJ feeds… or somebody
probably does. The thing is, we spend a great deal of time around each other
anyway. If you need to get a hold of someone, they’re either upstairs,
downstairs, or in the library most of the time. The last 3 texts I received
before the school year ended are indicative of how relevant phone-choice is for
our studies: “How do you make a frozen hot chocolate?” “Tennis?” “How’s the
face?” If you’re wondering whether you should get a smartphone so
that you can stay on top of your schoolwork or job-search, it’s probably not
necessary. We keep our laptops open 12 hours of the day and in sleep mode the
other 12 hours, and you don’t want to be responding to a potential employer
with the always impressive “sent from my iPhone” signature anyway.
The value of a smartphone is for our lives outside of Owen. Dinner
plans are often made via email rather than text these days, some of us have
jobs that we’re still working at while in school, or you may have to quickly
dump a bunch of stock in the middle of an Accounting lecture. Smartphones are
certainly everywhere at Owen, they do make it easier and faster to communicate,
and they can come in handy if you’re travelling for an interview. However, they
are an entirely unnecessary expense if you’re already short on cash after
paying for tuition, a new laptop, and your first month’s rent.
My recommendation: if you have one, bring it. If not, wait and see what your first
month’s Starbucks tab is before spending the money.
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