I’m still trying to figure this whole college thing out. As I write this article, it is late at night, I have a myriad of other assignments to finish, clothes to be washed, and a half-finished bowl of Marshmallow Matey’s (the off brand version Lucky Charms) on my bed. Clearly, I need to re-evaluate how I go about doing work. They say that the lessons outside the classroom are the one’s that matter the most. I most definitely am learning a lesson in time management this year.

During freshman year, I was able to hang out and attend meetings throughout the day, return to my room at 9 o’clock, start my homework at 9:10 and go to sleep at a decent hour. Throughout the year, this “decent hour” of when I would go to sleep became later and later at night. First, it was 11:30, then 12 o’clock, then 12:30, and by the last weeks of the spring semester, I was going to sleep at 2:30 in the morning, sometimes 3 o’clock in the morning. I was able to manage though and kept my grades up, although I was constantly dragging throughout the day and took naps more often. Sometimes, my friends and I would get into discussions about how late we stayed up the night before. I say discussions, but they sometimes turned into little competitions if you will, as we compared how little we slept the night before. “I slept five hours last night.” “Five hours? Ha! That’s nothing. I slept three and a half hours and I’m still going strong!”.

It seems comical but we seemed to have gotten some amusement out of it last year. I believe that our society as a whole values the concept of “busyness”. If one is running around, constantly in a state of motion, then they are being a productive citizen. It is possible to be busy without ever being productive. I know I have had my moments of busyness in the past. We wear our hours of sleep deprivation as badges for all the work that we have put in “on the grind”. A valuable lesson I have learned and still am learning is that you do not have to live your life like this. You do not have to be sleep deprived and you do not have to constantly be running around. We are only given 24 hours in a day. The key is using them wisely.