A wise man once told me that you get three options in College: social life, good grades, and sleep. The catch is you only get to pick two. This year, I’ve chosen social life and good grades so you may have seen me sleepy on more than one occasion in Barsema. This same wise man tells me that food shares a very similar formula: Hot, ready, or delicious. Again, you only get to pick two (think about it, you can’t have all three. Trust me, I’ve tried!). I think he’s put some real thought into this stuff! Anyways, as a senior in college, I want to leave no regrets on the table upon graduation. I will forsake the time that normal people dedicate to sleep to do school work or to go out with friends and make memories that will last longer than any ride on the struggle bus.
Sure, sometimes I will take a weekend to myself and hang around my apartment or at home; I just try my best not to make it a habit. People consistently tell me from their own experiences to live college life to the fullest. Just last week I was scrolling through our student voices blog and that philosophy was reinforced by a post from previous blogger, Nick Lo Vetere.
In his post he states, “The fall semester felt like it was over as soon as it began and the spring semester feels almost as if everything over the past several months happened in a matter of a week.”
He goes on to state that he would take advantage of every opportunity from going out with friends to forming new relationships. His parting quote from the post reads, “I can only hope that if incoming college students stumble across this post that they go to school with the notion that it will go by quick and they need to take advantage of everything as early as possible.”
I feel that I have waited too long to really begin my own experience especially after being stuck at a community college for the first half. Now I feel like I am trying to play catch up and I’m jamming four years worth of experiences into a two year timeline here at NIU. I feel that I have done a fair job but there is only so much time left where you’ll have a month off in winter, a week off every spring, and three months off for summer. Please heed our advice when we say that College moves very quickly. As Ben Franklin, one of our nation’s founding fathers used to say, “Lost time is never found”.
Plan out your time early and often and make your college years memorable. Go on a road trip or see someplace foreign. Go out to apple orchards in the fall or kayak down a river in summer. Do whatever you want; just do something! Go out of your comfort zone and do something remarkable (I’m thinking skydiving for me). Don’t leave college saying I should have done THAT because who knows when the next opportunity to do THAT will be. 2.0out
