So many activities,
so little time, again
Frances Matteck
nw news editor

Time can either be a blessing or a curse. The time you spent this morning savoring that extra doughnut you know you didn’t need was great. The time you spent running around this afternoon trying to get your errands done and taking your little brother to the orthodontist for your mother was horrible.
I love time. I wish I had more of it though. I’ve found that I never have enough time to take care of everything I need to do.
When I was in high school, I did everything. I was in band, National Honor Society and the foreign language club. You name it; I did it at one point in time. Then my sophomore year I got really sick because I was overloading myself with too many activities and too many advanced placement classes. There just wasn’t enough time for everything I wanted to do, and I was trying to cram as many activities in as I could.
I missed a month of school, and the only thing I was allowed to do when I got back was band, and that was because it was a class. You would think I learned my lesson, but, no, my junior and senior years were jam packed with activities.
It is a common assumption that when you get to college, everything will just fall into place. You are older and, therefore, more mature. You can make wise decisions about what you can handle and stick to just a couple of activities. Well, I’m here to tell you, that’s a bunch of crap.
As soon as I got here, I discovered many interesting things that I could do. I was the blind girl who opened her eyes one morning and could see for the first time. Why didn’t they tell me in high school about all of this cool stuff I could do?
With so much I wanted to do, I enrolled in 16 hours of classes, joined the newspaper staff and kept my job. If that wasn’t enough, I started two dance lessons a week and babysitting one afternoon a week. I was stuck in the same time warp I got into in high school. I was insane to think I could handle that load.
By November I was ready to collapse. I turned in my projects for classes, studied for finals and finally welcomed the reprieve of Christmas break. Surely this experience taught me that I need to limit myself and just do one thing at a time.
But I haven’t learned that lesson, and I probably never will. I’ve got 17 hours this semester, work, the newspaper, two dance classes and judo. Maybe next year I’ll have enough time to do what I want to do. Maybe I’ll just do less, but probably not.