Wednesday, March 9, 2011

An Open Letter to Hannah Hillam by Tucker James Samuelsen

The following note was written by my friend, Tucker addressed to another friend, Hannah.
It is absolutely worth reading.

Dearest Hannah

You watched your first episode of Lost on February 21st, President's Day.  In the 16 days that have followed, I understand you have finished the first 5 seasons.  I did a little number crunching for you.

You've watched 103 episodes of Lost in that time.  Assuming an average run time of 42 minutes, that adds up to 72.1 hours.  16 days is 384 hours, so that means 18.7% of your life those 16 days has been spent watching Lost.  

But it gets worse.  Let's assume you sleep 7 hours a night.  That means you've slept for 112 hours in those 16 days, so you've been awake for 272 hours.  This means that 26.5% of your waking life has been spent watching Lost.

It still gets worse!  You work 20 hours a week, and you're in class about 15 hours a week (both estimates).  This means that you've been in class 36 hours, and you've worked for 48. This means awake leisure time adds up to 188 hours, of which Lost has been 38.2%.  

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average college student spends about .8 hours per day grooming, 1 hour eating, and 1.5 hours traveling per day.  That's 2.3 hours per day, for a total 36.8 additional hours spent in those activities.  (Source http://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/chart6.pdf). We're now at 151.2 hours, of which Lost has been 47.68% of your time.  If we take off 6 more hours for Church or Church activites, that gets us to 49.6% Lost time.  

So... in the last 2 or so weeks, about half of your free time has been spent watching Lost.  Note that I haven't taken into account homework, or Sean make out time.  

The moral of the story?  Nothing.  I was just curious.  Love you Hannah!



 In pie chart form. 


Check out Hannah's blog, Verbal Vomit . She's a clever writer and a phenomenal illustrator.

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