COLUMN: The Passage of Time

From Allison Winn's "Allison Wonderland," Fall '95 While I quite obviously and quite thankfully have never been a parent, I am currently a second-semester senior, and I'm not sure that the process of graduating college is entirely different than that of giving birth to a child. Certainly, becoming a parent requires far greater responsibility. But in terms of priorities, of discovering what is and is not important, the imminence of graduation is forcing me to put a lot of things in perspective. It is often only when we are faced with greater issues, such as birth, death or even graduation, that we understand how trivial many things that weigh us down really are. It is very easy at Penn to get caught up in situations that are of little consequence. For that matter, it is very easy in life to get caught up in these situations. It is easy to let grades dominate your thoughts, to let dating wear on your confidence, to let peer pressures force you into situations that you would not chose alone. It is not until we are given the freedom to step back from those situations that we can realize just how unimportant they frequently are. The problem is that at Penn, we rarely get those freedoms because we are constantly surrounded by menial, yet timely, pressures. Writing this column for a semester has given me my opportunity to take that necessary step back from all of the daily stresses. I have been forced to take a larger scope of my world, to look at experiences not just as how they currently apply to me or how they effect my everyday life, but what they mean for me in the future and what they may have meant when they occurred. And I have come to discover that many of the things that I once thought were life-threatening or life-sustaining are not, in actuality, anything more than fleeting experiences which gave me too much anxiety, too much stress, or even too much exhilaration. For example: grades. Okay, I'll admit it. I got a D on my Abnormal Psychology midterm sophomore year. And I swear, I thought I was looking death itself in the eye as I stared at the grade-posting sheet. My college career as I knew it seemed shattered, my academic standing forever marred, my intelligence irreversibly disproved. But now, two years later, what does that D mean for me and for my future? Absolutely nothing. What do my other less than satisfactory grades mean to me now? Absolutely nothing. Were the self-doubts and guilt I incurred over the grade worth it? No. This is not to suggest that academics at Penn should not be taken seriously. It is simply to propose that every once in a while, we should all re-evaluate our priorities. It is simply to remind us all that nothing except only the most vital should be taken too seriously. My aunt and uncle should take raising their new child seriously. I should take my post-graduation plans seriously. But even then, too much thought, too much solemnity, can ruin the pleasures that are to be found in those very experiences. Taking yourself too seriously will only set you up for failure as your expectations will most likely not be met. Taking yourself too seriously will only cause others to look at you as nothing more than a joke. So here I am, graduation gown ordered, senior portrait taken, general requirements fulfilled. And what would I have done differently had I stepped back and taken this whole thing a little less seriously? I would have gone to more basketball games and would have spent less time in the stacks. I would have forgiven grudges much sooner and would have tried to prevent the begrudged situations to begin with. I would have gone abroad rather than worrying about what I might have missed in my time away. I would have taken more pictures, written down more memories, and laughed rather than slept through more early morning hours. James Taylor once said, "The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time." While I'm not sure that dear James has indeed discovered the meaning of life, I do think he is on to something. For although I cannot definitively state what the real secret of life is, I can offer some things that I am quite sure it is not. It is not lamenting over situations that we cannot control. It is not agonizing over finer details which will be forgotten within the week. It is not demanding that everything always work out for you because no one, regardless of expectations, is entitled to perfection. Enjoy the passage of time. It is a fairly simple and obvious statement, but too often forgotten nonetheless. Now that my time here is gone, I find myself wondering how I let it slip away without taking more steps back to appreciate all of the joys that the time itself contained. While I am ready to move on to something else, I do know that I will miss Penn. I won't miss the stresses or the pressures or even the classes. In fact, I am not really sure how much of all of that I will remember in the years ahead. I will simply miss my time here, the time that I had to linger, the time that I had to grow. The time that was here for no other reason than merely to enjoy.