The old college try

Once upon a time, I thought having free time was a bad thing. I used to be somewhat indignant about all the free time I seem to have at college. It's pretty pricey to go to Duke, as well as difficult to get accepted in the first place, so I guess I expected to be constantly occupied, just to get the most out of the cost.

I don't mean that I expected to be constantly offered amenities like you might find in an expensive hotel, or that I expected the administration to overwhelm me with pre-scheduled social events. Although these things are apparently not uncommon on some college campuses these days, I'm not impressed by them. I also didn't want to be bombarded with so much schoolwork that I never had time to breathe. But I guess I expected more structure than I got.

At first that irritated me. It came back to the question of price and utility. Like the ever-busy adolescent I used to be, I equated activity with usefulness. If I was constantly busy, so my thinking went, I was doing something worthwhile. To be perfectly honest, this way of thinking figured into my decision to take a job in Iowa. I knew that working on a campaign here would have an impact on the future of the country. It's cliché, but this election is one of the most important in my lifetime. I couldn't miss it. At the most basic level, though, I knew that I'd be busy in Iowa, and to me that meant I would be doing something useful.

Six months of being busy later, I've got a slightly different perspective on things. I crave time for myself, time when I have the power to decide what I want to do. That was once almost something of a burden for me, but now it's an incredible luxury.

Now, I'm not saying that being idle is somehow better than doing something useful. Nobody at Duke sits around doing nothing all day, and if we did, I imagine we'd fail miserably and be kicked off campus. That'd be totally justified. But alternately, very few people in the working world, political or not, spend all their time working. They'd die early deaths if they did, and they'd probably have it coming. Embracing either extreme eventually robs life of meaning. Right now, alas, my life is rapidly trending toward the second option.

I need balance, and I think there's a great deal more of it in college. There is work to be done, and most of that work is not easy. Sometimes, especially when exam time rolls around, it can seem totally overwhelming. I know that, but the freedom of it all almost shocks me. No matter how much work we have to do, we choose what that work is. Our majors, classes and other activities are entirely ours. Even when we have a specific assignment we'd rather not do, we can at least apportion our day as we wish to accomplish it. We can stop studying for an hour if we want and watch television.

In most jobs, especially the most demanding, there is no such opportunity. That's especially true when you're not at the very top of the totem pole. Decisions are made for you. Time is assigned on your behalf. When you are given a bit of freedom, it's usually very marginal and has little impact on most of what you do.

Living in this situation at some point in your life is unavoidable. Almost nobody shoots straight to the top, and many people never reach that level. So all we can do is hold on to the great and liberated present. When I get back to Duke, that is exactly what I will do: remember my busy past, anticipate the slightly terrifying future and savor all the decisions I will make for myself in the next three semesters. I think this mindset will make the time I spend at Duke even more fulfilling.