5 minutes

In high school five minutes didn't mean a whole lot to me. It was just a worthless, awkward increment of time. Now, five minutes equals anywhere between 4-7 pages of required reading. Five minutes holds the key to being on time, tardy, or absent. Five minutes can mean adequate sleep or exhaustion. Five minutes is roughly one and half youtube videos, two sentences of a paper or blog post, and one coat of nail polish.  Shoot, those same five minutes are often the deciding factor of whether or not I get lunch between classes. (There isn't a break in my schedule on Mondays and Wednesdays. Thanks, I appreciate your sympathy.) Five minutes is a lot of time.

Before going off to college I had very little respect for those unappreciated, awkward increments of time. 5, 10, 20 minutes, they were never enough to start a new project, but they were also too long to sit and do nothing. No more. Over the past three weeks I have begun to learn just how precious a commodity my time is.

I've always been good a managing my time, but I will be the first to admit that time management at the college level is a far greater challenge than most freshman realize. At home, you have a foundation of family schedule's to work with. In college, it's all up to you. You manage your time, every last minute of it. No one cares if you stay up till 1 or get up at 4 to finish an assignment. No one is bothered if you skip lunch or *gasp* class. (Relax, I've been attending my classes faithfully.)

A popular saying goes, "Good grades. Social Life. Adequate sleep. Pick two, welcome to college."  While this silly saying is kinda ridiculous there is some truth in it. Yes. Some days I don't sleep as much as I should. Some days I choose to go to dinner with friends instead of studying. But by the same token, there are just as many days when I choose to forgo a fun outing with friends in order to study or get some much needed rest.  So as I've begun to learn how to make the most of 5 minutes, I'm also learning how to balance my time, every last minute of it.