Finding My Rhythm: The Real Talk About Balancing Work and Studies as an International Student

The digital fog: How modern technology scatters our focus and changes how we think.

This is my personal opinion and my experience. Every person has different thoughts, and not everybody may agree with it. Maybe technology has helped your memory. Maybe it saved you time, opened doors, changed your life for the better. I believe all of that can be true at the same time.

But I also believe something human is slowly slipping away, quietly, without noise. Not taken from us forcefully, but given away willingly, one small convenience at a time.

I don’t write this as an expert or a researcher. I write this as someone who once trusted his own mind completely, who now sometimes reaches for a phone before reaching inward. As someone who looks at his mother’s sharp memory and wonders what we are trading for speed, comfort, and ease.

My high school in a remote village of Nepal—where our minds were our only tools and memory was our superpower.

When I was fourteen, sitting in my high school classroom in a remote village of Nepal, mathematics felt like a superpower I carried inside me. The wooden benches were rough under our arms, the chalkboard cracked from years of use, and our teacher, a thin man with wire-rimmed glasses, would rattle off multiplication problems faster than we could write.

“347 times 89,” he’d announce.

My mind would immediately start working. I could see the numbers moving inside my head, breaking themselves apart: 347 times 90, minus 347 times 1. Within seconds, my hand would shoot up with the answer. No calculator. No smartphone. Just my brain doing what it had been trained to do.

The quiet landscape where we learned to solve complex problems without a single screen in sight.

Back then, we didn’t even know what a calculator looked like. The closest thing to advanced technology in our village was a single radio that crackled with news from Kathmandu. Yet somehow, we could solve mathematical problems that might make today’s students reach for their phones in panic. We memorized entire poems in Nepali, Sanskrit verses, historical dates, and complex formulas, all stored in our minds like a library that never needed charging.

Yesterday, I tried to recall a simple English word I’d forgotten. I couldn’t. My brain felt sluggish, like an old engine struggling to start. Frustrated, I opened my phone and searched for it in a dictionary. When the definition appeared, I smiled, but with a small ache. 

The moment of the "silent theft"—reaching for a phone for words we once knew by heart.

It was such an easy word, one I’d known since my early twenties. It was such an easy word, one I’d known since my early twenties. But my mind couldn’t retrieve it on its own anymore.

That moment didn’t shock me loudly. It arrived quietly, but it stayed. I realized my memory power wasn’t disappearing suddenly. It was fading slowly, politely, almost invisibly, taken by the same technology I believed was making my life easier.

The Great Memory Recession

A symbol of a simpler time: My mother’s Nokia, a tool that assists but never replaces her sharp memory.

My mother is seventy years old now. She never went to school. She can’t read numbers on paper or write her own name. But ask her to calculate the cost of vegetables for dinner, and she’ll give you the exact amount in seconds.

“50 rupees for potatoes, 35 for onions, 80 for chicken, that’s 165,” she’ll say while cooking, without stopping her hands.

She uses an old Nokia phone. She can receive calls and dial fixed numbers. That’s all. No internet. No apps. No digital help. Yet her memory remains sharp, untouched by the digital fog that sometimes clouds my own thinking.

The irony isn’t lost on me.

I studied in Singapore, passed through London’s academic spaces, experienced South Korea’s technology-driven education system, lived in Portugal, learned from Denmark, and now live in Belgium. And still, I sometimes need a calculator to solve 37 plus 89.

From Mental Athletes to Digital Dependents

Living across different countries showed me something uncomfortable about modern education. In Singapore, I saw children solving complex problems on tablets but struggling with basic mental math. In South Korea, students could code advanced programs but couldn’t remember phone numbers without checking contacts. In London, universities had every digital resource imaginable, yet attention spans felt shorter than ever.

In Nepal, we were mental athletes. We had no choice. Without Google, we memorized geography. Without spell-check, we learned to write carefully. Without calculators, our minds became our only tools. We wrote nonstop in class, trying to catch every word because we knew we couldn’t “look it up later. We wrote nonstop in class, trying to catch every word because we knew we couldn’t “look it up later.”

Today’s students can find any information within seconds. But finding information is not the same as knowing it. There’s a difference between access and understanding, between searching for something and carrying it inside you.

The Muscle That’s Atrophying

Memory is like a muscle. Use it, or lose it.

Why memorize tables when a calculator exists?
Why remember phone numbers when contacts save them?
Why learn spelling when autocorrect fixes it?
Why sit with a question when Google answers instantly?

Are we losing the ability to calculate life's simple problems without digital help?

Each time we outsource a mental task, we quietly tell our brain it’s no longer needed there. And slowly, it listens.

I remember observing students in Denmark during exams where computers and internet access were allowed. They could research instantly. But when asked to write a handwritten essay without digital help, many struggled, not just with spelling, but with organizing thoughts. Without the digital structure, they felt lost.

The Two Sides of the Digital Coin

I don’t believe technology is evil. That would be dishonest.

In Portugal, I saw rural students attend lectures from Lisbon through video calls. In Belgium, language apps help immigrants like me learn Dutch at our own pace. AI tools explain difficult ideas beautifully. These are real gifts.

But the cost is real too: weaker memory, shorter focus, reduced deep thinking, and a growing discomfort with not knowing. We are losing the ability to sit with confusion, to struggle, to wrestle with a problem until it finally opens itself.

The Forgotten Art of Mental Struggle

In my village school, struggle was normal. If we didn’t understand something, we stayed with it. That discomfort strengthened us. It taught patience, resilience, and the quiet satisfaction of figuring something out on our own.

Now, discomfort lasts seconds before a phone appears. But that discomfort was never the enemy. It was the teacher.

What We’re Raising

I fear we’re raising a generation that is deeply connected but quietly dependent. They have access to everything, yet hold very little inside. They can solve problems with assistance but panic when asked to think alone.

This isn’t an attack. It’s an observation. And I’ve seen it repeat itself across continents.

Finding Balance

This isn’t about rejecting technology. That’s impossible and unnecessary. It’s about balance. About knowing when to use tools and when to trust the mind.

Convenience is not always progress.

My Personal Reckoning

As I write this in my apartment in Brugge, looking at buildings that have stood for centuries, I’m reminded that everything around me was created by human minds without digital help. Architecture, literature, science, all of it came from memory, patience, and deep thinking.

 Writing from Brugge, Belgium: Reflecting on a world built by human memory and deep thinking.

My mother’s sharp mind at seventy, my own teenage mind in Nepal, these are not outdated stories. They are reminders of what humans are capable of when we use our minds fully.

Conclusion

Technology is a tool. Nothing more, nothing less. Right now, we are using it in ways that quietly weaken something precious: our ability to remember and think independently.

The most advanced computer ever created still sits between our ears. Losing trust in it would be a quiet tragedy.

If this story reminded you of your own school days, your parents, your grandparents, or a moment when you forgot something you once knew well, I’d genuinely like to hear from you.

What has technology changed in your memory or thinking?
Has it helped you, harmed you, or both?

Please share your thoughts and your experiences in the comments. I’m not looking for agreement. I’m looking for honest human stories. Maybe, together, we’ll remember something important.