Blackout - Rondee Tanciatco

Last Thursday, there was a major blackout in San Diego and Arizona that lasted for hours. During the beginning of the blackout, I was at school during afterschool band rehearsal, where we were practicing our field show. When we got news of the blackout, I hoped that it wouldn't last too long at first. However, I didn't realize the effects it would have on me and other members of the community.
It became difficult for my parents to pick up once practice was over due to the traffic along the freeway. Once I got home, I wanted to hurry so I could check if Southwestern College was still up for classes, so I could get to Chinese without a problem. However, when I arrived there, the campus was clear, except for a few people who still needed to leave and a few police cars. When I got back home, I tried to hurry and complete my homework, but to no avail. The sky began to darken and my family did not have sufficient lighting to allow me to complete my homework without draining too much batteries (we only had a few candles, and mainly used flashlights when we wanted to travel around the house). So from there, we listened to the radio and I just stayed on my phone, hoping that the 3G service would be consistently available so I could surf the internet to pass the time. Sadly, the connection didn't persist regularly so I decided to go to sleep. During those last few moments before I went to bed, I also hoped that school was going to be canceled.
This significance of this experience was that it revealed to me how much people are dependent on electricity. It has easily become a part of our daily life, and I didn't realize how "awesome" it was until that day. It made me thankful that we were able to harness electricity. The old saying, "You don't know what you have until it's gone," really applied to me (and most likely others, too) that day. I never truly knew how important electricity was before. We need it do our homework, do the things we enjoy, surf the internet, go on YouTube, etc. However, I don't think that this means that humans need to stop being so dependent on electricity; it just means that we need to realize what we have and not take it for granted. Humans need to recognize the significance of electricity and realize what it has done for us. I find it really amazing how a blackout that only lasted hours, caused us to appreciate electricity, especially seeing how it is so widely used almost everywhere in the world. It even caused some neighborhoods to have a gathering together and get to know each other (this didn't happen to me, though). This event also made me think about what would happen if a blackout struck in a future where we would be even more reliant on electricity and technology.