The Christmas break power outages wreaked havoc with students.

On Christmas Day, 11-15 inches of snow fell and covered central Arkansas. The snow left 200,000+ homes and business across the state without power for up to seven days.

New iPad mini’s, iPhone 5’s, laptops and Black Ops II soon changed from the best gift ever to obsolete blobs that sat without charge or use.

Without phones or television, students socialized face to face, and with nowhere to go because of icy road conditions, it meant spending time with family or finding creative things to do.

Sophomore Cody Blamberg spent his time playing music.

“I played my guitar a lot,” Blamberg said. “I love playing so it was a perfect opportunity to jam.”

Most homes have electric ovens and stoves, but without power they couldn’t be used. Some were lucky enough to have gas stoves, but without a power supply to refrigerators, food spoiled.

“We were able to cook,” Blamberg said. “But all of our food went bad so we couldn’t cook if we wanted to.”

Junior Katelin Byrd had a generator to supply her home with power.

“We had a generator, but it wasn’t a full house one,” Byrd said. “We went without power for five whole days before we went to the garage to get the one we had.”

Even though it was expensive, Byrd said the generator was worth it in the long run.

“Having a generator is definitely worth it,” Byrd said. “We could finally do normal things like heating up food and watching television.”

Senior Hollie Locke said people were too dependent on technology and electronics.

“No one even knows how to look up a word in the dictionary,” Locke said. “If you need to learn how to do something, forget instructions because there is a YouTube video out there.”

Even though the power was out, people still used technology. Instead of candles, people used flashlights and even battery-operated candles.

Sophomore Conner Bumgarner said her family lit candles and read together.

“Our power was only out for one day,” Bumgarner said. “So my family sat together in the living room and we all read together.”

Bumgarner said she read “Good Omens” by Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchett.

“It was a really satirical and funny,” Bumgarner said. “I really enjoyed it.”