Can you give me advice on this college application essay? I am not finished yet though. "Okay guys, use this QR code to get to your reading assignment!", my 7th-period science teacher would say enthusiastically. She would point at the code projected at the front of the room with the website's URL link on the bottom. While everyone took out their phones to scan the code, I once again pulled out my school Chromebook. Painstakingly slow, I typed in the long mess of a URL link. I got it wrong the first time and had to look through the whole thing again. (The "O" was supposed to be a "0".) Finally, finally, I clicked enter and got to the link. I glanced up and saw that everyone else had already started reading the article by now.

This was how it was for me through kindergarten to my 10th-grade year in high school. I didn't have a phone. At all. Not that I didn't bring it to school, I just- very literally- didn't have one.

Take a moment to dwell on the idea. As an adult, you probably were born in a period where this wasn't much of a big deal at all; it was normal. But now it's different, the world is changing. For instance, imagine it this way- if you have middle or high-schoolers, or even elementary children who have phones, what do you think their life would be like without one? If you're young and still in school, how do you think you would manage without your phone? The mere idea might seem out-of-the-box, but it isn't. And maybe it shouldn't be.

The reason for my lack of a phone was simple: my parents did not think it was healthy for me to have one. It wasn't that they couldn't afford it or that they were "overprotective". Nevertheless, in all honestly, it was pretty obvious that that's the first thing that came to many people's minds. My classmates would gasp and say, "Oh my god…the horror!", while making pity faces at me. Sure, it made me feel better then, but they weren't really needed at all. I realized later that it was I who was at advantage.

Throughout middle school, I made my way through the days fine without a phone, but even then it was a rarity to not have one. I clearly remember this one time (when I lived back in NJ), my best friend's older sister, who was in middle school, exclaimed to me, a 4th grader, "You can't survive middle school without a phone!" Defying all odds, I most definitely did survive. And I knew I wasn't the only one. Many have done so before and are still doing so now. But my middle-school self didn't care for that and the thought didn't make me feel any better.

But no one can deny that it is very complicated- to put it lightly- to move to a new state and a new high school in 10th-grade- where approximately 99.9% of kids had a phone- without a phone. To add to that, I was (still am) 4'11", horrible at conversations, and had no sense of style. That all put together made me very different, so different that I couldn't even try to fit in anymore.