I hate waiting so much. If waiting and I were sitting next to one another on a train, I would put in my headphones and not exchange pleasantries. Luckily, I live in a society built on instant gratification, so I have to interact with waiting less and less, but there are still times when it's unavoidable.
There is no worse feeling for me than my flight getting delayed, or arriving somewhere too early (which is probably why I am pathologically late). Missing a bus is disproportionately upsetting to me because the prospect of having to wait for the next one seems nearly unbearable. I know everyone does it — I see people waiting all the time.
We wait to get into concerts, at the grocery store, for that guy in English to notice us, for our deadbeat friends to pay us back. You might even be waiting as you read this — for class to start, for it to end, for your Spring Fling tickets (by the way, could someone please tell me who or what Drake is?) Maybe waiting is your downtime; a small price to pay; some time to think; perhaps it's a chance to practice good posture or to people−watch. Whatever it is for you, for me, waiting is something to avoid at all costs. Why? Because I equate "waiting" with "wasting."
In a period of our lives that is very much finite, the fear of wasting time is monstrous. Every time there is a fire on the Red Line (more common than you'd think) and I am stuck underground for an extra 25 minutes, the part of me that is scared of growing up mourns the loss of that half−hour in what is supposed to be the best four years of my life. Every time that heralded period is brought down by a mundane interval of waiting, I can't help but think that the rest of my life will be that much worse now that the best part of it is muddied by a little more wasted time.
I know this sounds ridiculous, but think about it. Even you, dear freshman, are not immune to the constant declarations by our elders that they would literally kill someone to relive their college years. At least when we were teenagers, everyone was saying they would never want to do that again. How are we supposed to feel when the end of our golden age (and I don't mean the one where you get to join AARP) is in sight even as we begin it?
Even as my fear of wasting time lives on, I find myself in a consistent and more fundamental state of waiting nearly all the time. I am waiting to hear back about jobs, waiting for graduation, waiting to finish classes and get my diploma and move out of my house and to a new city — I am waiting for the other shoe to drop, to find out what life becomes when it loses the structure that college has so benevolently bestowed upon us.
In the meantime, the last weeks of my college career are flying by. I can guarantee that some weeks of yours are, too — they just happen to be the middle weeks, or the relatively early weeks of a four−year period you can never recreate, or when you really think about it, of an entire life in which no two days will ever be the same, unless you are Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day" (1993).
So, stop waiting, and start living. Every minute spent in line, in limbo, or in unrequited love needn't be a waste, and the college years needn't be the best four of your life, but they're still pretty damn good, so enjoy them — I know I have.
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Jessie Borkan is a senior majoring in psychology. She can be reached at Jessie.Borkan@tufts.edu.
