In his 15-part series, Matt Flocco gives freshmen a slice of wisdom each week.
For the past two years, my New Year’s resolution has been to make Sunday the day of rest. This is partly for my own religious purposes, but more so because sometimes you just need time to stop and digest it all.
Everyone should take one day out of the week for themselves–no homework, no extracurricular activities, no job. This is all extremely utopian, but if you can manage it, you should try it once in a while.
Work your patootie off on Saturday, then take Sunday to sleep in, watch television, go city exploring, do whatever. Take the time to catch up with your roommates, watch a movie you haven’t seen in a while. Maybe give your family a call to see how they’re doing, or maybe have a few friends to your house to catch up and have dinner.
One of the problems with being a college student is being busy. That and the copious amounts of moolah you will have to pay back after graduation.
Shh, everything will be OK, the world is ending December 2012.
Being busy and active is absolutely wonderful and healthy, but you won’t retain any of your experiences if you are too busy jumping from one thing to the next.
Use that one day a week, or even half a day, for you. Use it as a time to reflect upon the previous week. Meet any new people this week? What were they like? Have an interesting conversation at any point? Get into any fights? See something on YouTube you really liked? Learn something in class you thought was awesome and worth exploring? Skipped class because it was that awful?
Take a break and look back. We get so focused on looking at the future that we really do not worry about what is happening to us at the current moment. We have been “preparing” since our first days of school. Grade school prepares for middle school. Middle school prepares for high school. High school prepares for freshman year. Then that prepares you for internships. Then while you are in those internships you prepare for more classes. Then you prepare for graduation and the real world. Then you get to the real world and you realize you spent your entire life preparing.
Preparation is important, but only to a certain degree. Be satisfied and happy that these years are just awesome. Work hard, but give yourself a break. Give yourself time to reflect and digest before you head to that graduation ceremony in a few years.
Matthew Flocco can be reached at matthew.flocco@temple.edu.
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