Warning: this article may initially sound like one big pity party, but I hope you can learn something out of it. I don’t regret my choices for one moment, even if it may seem like I would. So please enjoy, and I hope you take my wonderful advice (because I ALWAYS give great advice)…

If you have free time right now, let me tell you something… you had better CHERISH it!

Being a music major who was only taking 13 credit hours and not working last semester, I had more free time than class time. I spent all day either playing a game, watching a movie, or waiting around for my friends to be finished with their work, and it was pretty amazing.

This semester… I’m taking 17 hours and working 16+ hours a week, and my classes this semester have a lot more out-of-class work than last semester. So even my “free time” is spent working.

Of course, I do have a little down time (occasionally), but if there has been one thing I’ve learned from this drastic change in schedules, it’s that I TRULY CHERISH when I’m free. Most people (including myself) take free time for granted, but this semester has barely started and it’s already taught me that my old way of thinking was wrong.

Free time used to be “how can I kill the next 3 hours of my life?” Now it’s “what can I do to ENJOY the next 30 mins?” I don’t know if any of y’all reading this can relate, but life has become less about existing and more about enjoying. So rather than sitting around waiting for someone to be free, I watch a new movie or listen to some music that I like. I sit and enjoy a good meal (because even that has been merged into work time lately). Sometimes I might even just sit in silence and close my eyes because that’s become a rare event in my life.

I’ve missed out on so much with my friends this semester. Late night meal runs, early morning workouts (which I admit I could do without), lunch with my best friends. These things are hard to come by now, but when they do happen, they mean the world to me! That age-old saying “absence makes the heart grow fonder;” it’s SO true. Not being around my friends very often has made our time together that much more special.

So to those of y’all with tons of free time, use it wisely. Take that distant-acquaintance-that-seems-like-a-nice-guy out for lunch and really get to know him. Or spend time with your best friends watching y’all’s favorite movies (or even new movies that you just never wanted to put effort into watching). Just spend it doing something you will enjoy because if your life is anything like mine, who knows when you’ll have another free moment to enjoy.