Much has been said about being overwhelmed by information at NYUAD. Hell, one can’t even walk into the elevators without being bombarded with posters upon posters of events, opportunities, random QR codes, poems, and cows. There’s constant news and shoutouts of SIGs or student life accounts on Instagram, always a new event that’s definitely better than any we’ve ever been to. Meanwhile, ROR reigns supreme as the one-size-fits-all dumping ground for everyone’s problems (lest it gets too problematic, then its Crushes and Confessions and the morbid anonymity it offers). There was even a post about transport sharing on ROR recently…there’s a separate group for that. Please respect the painstaking distinction and navigation process required to join “NYUAD Transport Sharing” and maybe you won’t have to pay an exorbitant amount just to be able to get back to campus in one piece.

Emails are constant, event spots are ever-vacant, new studies are forever open…this is how it has been since week one of freshman year and how it will be until the end. Everyday begins with checking Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Gmail, the Student Portal, Albert, Brightspace, FABS, the psychology study sign-up website, Slack, and other apps that were probably very important to check and you did not, yet never in that order because it would take longer to remember it than all your friends’ birthdays (wish them on time for once, Facebook won’t let you forget anyway).

It begs the question: why? Why is this obsession with continuing something so stress-inducing? Why do we allow all these apps to take up precious storage on our phones and tabs on our browsers? Why do we always keep notifications on and our phone face-front on the table?

The obvious reason is the fear of missing out, lest the one day we decide to detox is the one day where the greatest internship, coolest event, Bill Gates or Hillary Clinton, appear (again).

And, of course, we all want to grow as people. Not everything on our admission essays was a lie. We want to learn more about things we’d never known about or just now felt the need to explore; we want to learn a new sport, a new language, and just talk to some new people. So we join groups, we fill out forms, and we sign up for events that, given their sheer quantity, we would probably be better off attending at another more leisure time in our lives. It gets concerning when the ratio of “I’m exploring myself” events and events we care about tips too far towards the former. Consider the idea that maybe some notifications can be ignored, some potential hobbies can be left for the entire rest of our lives on this Earth, and that noise and clutter don’t need to be our best friends.

Know this too, the human brain can only process 12 choices at once, so when the jobs that you’ve applied to, events you’ve signed up for, and exciting prospects you’ve liked passes that figure, the only thing left is that you are delusional. Given each of those choices in a smaller pool, you probably wouldn’t choose half of them. You know that feeling when you’ve opened so many tabs of Handshake that your browser begins to lag? That’s a good sign to stop. The brains of us golden children need and deserve relevant, tailored information, not a constant barrage of notifications. Because brains shutting down means ignorance, and when the age of information becomes the age of ignorance or anxiety, we have a problem. There’s no circulation and outreach without mindful consumption, so ration your notifications for the sake of you and your perpetually overstimulated nerve system, please.

Not to say that the ever-present excess of information is forever bad. Killing time between classes, avoiding awkward eye contact, and looking dignified while waiting for someone to have lunch with, the notifications on our devices are our only savior sometimes.

Furthermore, there’s no other way to know what’s going on on campus than to check the magnificent variety of groups we NYUAD students are members of. Some days, you just want the comfort of staying in your room, spending time with yourself, and taking a nap…until that nap lasts until midnight and you step out of your room to find the remnants of good times gone, the worst feeling by far. Or you’re really in the zone, making steady progress on your new satire article for The Gazelle. Then, perhaps you should keep your phone out of your line of sight for once. When you put the final full stop and open your phone to find that half your friend group has gone back home without saying goodbye while you were in full zen mode, anyone would wish they would’ve checked their damn phone. There is no feeling of utter detachment from this community than to not check any social media apps for even a few hours.

So maybe don’t ignore that little number showing you’ve got 20 new notifications on your email, or it might just be your summer trip funding that you just gave up right there.