The Only Time We Have is Now

The prospect of a restful summer grows nearer each day; the life around you buzzes with new hope, and a simultaneous tranquility seems to perfuse the atmosphere on campus. While watching groups wearing sincere smiles under the familiar tenderness of the increasingly warmer weather, listening to the hums and buzzes of the insects returning to campus, and your “to-do” list for the remainder of the semester lessening with each day that passes, it is so easy to get lost in the excitement of it all! 

The notion of rest at last feels like a close reality rather than a distant hope; whether this idea of rest involves reading, spending time with friends and family, or fulfilling the duties that leave you feeling the most content, this time allocated to your peace is all due to your efforts over the course of this academic year! Countless late nights spent studying in LITS, gathering the motivation to attend classes near the semester’s end when attendance feels more daunting than rewarding, and varying instances of pushing your own needs aside in order to fulfill academic expectations; this is a highly commendable achievement, and you deserve to be recognized for the strenuous efforts you’ve put in this year. 

Still, it is vital that you don’t lose your attention to the imminent break that awaits you; this break is only consequent of each and every obstacle, trial, and triumph faced. This time is yours and yours alone to recognize and to seize. In the same vein, Virginia Woolf’s statement from her novel A Room of One’s Own reinforces this truth: “No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”

There is this pervasive and unrelenting emphasis placed on this ceaseless “grind” of “productivity.” During these last few weeks of the academic year, everything tends to feel intensified— perhaps by the emotions married to the Seniors’ last weeks alongside one another, separation from friends for the summer break, or maybe it’s a collective sense of compulsion to accomplish everything to make the most of your break. I get it— I’ve been there! But we don’t have to find ourselves in the margins of burnout; it is possible, and advisable, to make this time your own as Virginia Woolf’s unnamed protagonist finds contentment in a room of her own. 

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well” (Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own). Nourish yourself, your needs, and begin by recognizing that this cosmic time of rest, the sum of the year’s strains and efforts, can be assigned to other facets and time periods of your life. The delight you derive from your own company and time should be without limits; this doesn’t go to say to neglect your obligations and sense of hustle in totality, but truly celebrate all you’ve endured through allowing time beyond devoted breaks to relax.
Woolf’s unnamed protagonist endures patriarchal demands and general misfortune through embracing her time and identity against countless pressures to succeed. Embodying a similar sense of deep-rooted self-efficacy is so vital in claiming the time we have now. “Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top” (Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own). It is all too easy to succumb to the regrets of the past and prospects of our futures, but realizing these weeks— this time— we hold now is what makes experience valuable, college feel meaningful, and the spontaneous breaks of rest a bit easier to allow ourselves.

• #self reflection
• advice and thoughts
• college
• mental health