Doing Absolutely Nothing

I chose to do the "Doing Nothing" assignment during lunch in the wood commons. I felt lunch provided an optimum location for this assignment as it has a high volume of people and is a very social environment, thus doing absolutely nothing in an area where people are constantly occupied would be interesting experience. Sitting in my lunch table, I completely froze for 10minutes in the middle of the period. I did not inform my friends I was doing this, thereby when they noticed I was completely unreactive they started screaming my name and poking at me. I felt very uncomfortable at first and was extremely tempted to respond to their inquiries, but I kept trying at the silence. I tried to ignore their yelling and observed the rest of the lunch room. Given that today is the Freshman Mixer we had some kind of contest going on at lunch and whoever won received a pizza party. I looked on as those in the contest were attempting to complete the challenges. The people that were involved looked as they were having a very enjoyable time with the challenges provided. The first challenge consisted of keeping a balloon from hitting the ground by bouncing it on top of one's head until the finish line was reached. As I observed the people watching the game, I noticed they looked to be having just as much fun looking at the game as those who were in it. I concluded that in some way the entertainment those playing the game were experiencing was somehow projected onto those watching the games and allowed them to share in the fun. I managed to last 8 minutes during this assignment as I felt obligated to answer when one of my friends asked for help on a homework assignment. In total I thought this assignment provided a unique experience that I have normally not been asked of during school. At first I felt a need to start talking as by being in such a loud environment made silence feel cumbersome. However, as soon I became occupied by watching the games it became fairly interesting to observe the people and the environment around me and this experience became a unique one.