This Monday I had yet another renal calculus crisis—the second one in less than 12 months. There was I, in the emergency section of the local hospital contorting in pain from 18:30 to 22:30. By 23:00 the stone had moved from my ureter to my bladder, which reduced the pain, and by the next day it finally got expelled from my system. After a blood test and an x-ray, the doctor said I had to drink more water and reduce the salt in my diet. I am considering taking Herba Desmodii capsules, a natural diuretic, which a co-worker said does wonders to kidney stones.

In the afternoon of November 23 of 2004, after my last class of the day, I headed to a computer store where I had reserved a copy of World of Warcraft Collector’s Edition. Three years later, I look back and I realize how I almost ruined my life with a computer game.

I am an undergraduate in Software Engineering. I feel kind of silly writing this, but I will share my true story with the intent of helping somebody who might be going through what I went through. I hope this will not bore you.

I was addicted to WoW during my first year of university. I seemed to be a pretty dedicated student; I did not miss any lectures and took detailed notes. However, my head would wander elsewhere—be it sketching my character, building her skills and planning the next quests. As an active member of a guild, I was the first to get a mount. Every day of my life led to the same—as soon as I got home, I would go straight to the computer and log in to WoW. My idea of having a good time was spending hours and hours in front of the screen completing quests, levelling up and earning gold at the auction house.

All was fun until I saw my first transcript: A+, C+, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, D- and D-.

With these results, I had a GPA of 1.96. In my institution, you need to keep it higher than 2.00, or else you get expelled. I decided to take a definite and concrete action. Not only did I uninstall WoW from my computer but also I completely eliminated games from my life. If I told you that I even removed the solitaire card game that comes with Windows, you would probably laugh, but I really wanted to stick with my resolution.

I also changed my studying habits. I stayed long hours at the university, reading lectures in advance, redoing exercises, rewriting notes—I pretty much lived at the library at that point. When I got my transcript I thought it was someone else’s: A, A, A, A-, B, B, B, B, B-, D+ and D-.

I knew that if I could stay focused and stick to my study routine, I would do even better. I was not mistaken. Here is my transcript for the third year: A+, A, A, A-, A-, A-, B+ and B-. Nothing below a B-grade, and now I have a cumulative GPA of 3.02.

That is only one side of my life that changed. Since I quit, I have met many interesting people, including a gorgeous and smart girl who is now my fiancée.
Some will say that it was not the game that influenced me but it was I who had problems in the first place; that might have been the case. I agree that games do not ruin lives, people ruin lives; all I can say is that now I have more free time to spend with those that I love: my family and friends.