I have driven back and forth from school to home a bunch of times. I know the way by heart. But I still put up the GPS every time I get in the car to speed home or languidly drive back to school.
Especially when I’m driving home, I want to get where I’m going as fast as possible. And on the GPS, it shows what time you’ll arrive at your destination. I’m always trying to shorten that time. Even if it’s just by a few minutes, those are a few more minutes I get to spend at home.
As I draw closer to graduation, I have started to savor the few minutes I have left. At the time of writing this, there’s roughly 35,760 minutes left until graduation day. That’s not a lot. In that time, I still have so much left I want to do.
Maybe this all boils down to what a procrastinator I am. I wait until the last minute to wake up, to leave for class, to submit an assignment – it makes sense I would wait until the last minute to realize I am graduating soon (35,759 minutes, to be exact).
So, with the last few minutes I have as a student, I’m going to spend as much time as I can savoring and fighting for one more minute of everything.
One more minute hanging out with my roommates at night. One more minute chatting with my favorite professor. One more minute before my student loans start accruing interest. One more minute on a drive with the windows down. One more minute at our gazebo. One more minute in the lounge in Murphy. One more minute sitting in a Her Campus meeting. One more minute playing old games on the Wii.
I’m sure I’ll also spend one more minute delaying starting my subfield presentation and studying for my finals, but that’s ok. I’m still learning the value of time, even just a minute’s worth.
These last few weeks, getting emails about caps and gowns and making reservations for post-commencement brunch, have really put things into perspective for me. I’ve always known I’d graduate in three years, but it still always seemed like this far off thing. Now it’s almost here and my college career has gone by in a flash. I don’t regret anything and there isn’t much I would change.
I would change, however, the minutes I took for granted. I spent so much time pushing things off because I thought I had time to do it all. Now I only have 35,757 minutes left to do those things.