The end of the fall semester is marked by many things - the start of the holiday season, chugging spiked cider instead of beer, and the cloud of panic that takes over when we realize that midterms are two weeks away.  As all those nice, warm feeling rush through us at this time of the year, I am, in addition, celebrating the inauguration of my new column.  But aside from that shameless self-promotion, this holiday season is also about presents!  We all want something special to fill our stockings come Christmas morning, and it had better not be Tootsie Rolls.  Actually, I don’t want a lot of things for Christmas this year... no gaudy jewelry or $500 handbags.  All I want for Christmas is more time.

I’ve been obsessed with the notion of time since high school when I had five classes a day, not counting lunch.  I also had a principal that tightly held the reigns of what mildly resembled a dictatorship – students caught in the halls after the bell rang got a phone call to mom.  And so that’s how my life came to be controlled by our school bell – Ding!  In one door.  Ding!  Out another.  It was a cycle that seemed to never end until I graduated (or so I thought).  My first semester at Penn, I had at most three classes a day and there wasn’t a bell to rush me from one class to another (given the size of my classes, I don’t think I would have been missed anyway).  As the years went by and I more-or-less became smarter, I realized that going to class is actually time well spent in most cases.  My schedule filled up insanely quickly after factoring in club meetings, group projects, and awkward lunches with friends who I haven’t seen since NSO.  Gradually, my schedule was just as busy as it was back in high school, except that now, my “school”-day became “all”-day. 

Most of you are probably just as hung up on time as I am, if you think about it.  If you open up your Microsoft Outlook calendar and see color coded blocks, then you’re obsessed with time.  If you open up your backpack and see a planner the size of a notebook, then you’re obsessed with time.  It was scary to admit it when I first realized that I had this problem.  When some of my friends complained that I wasn’t seeing them enough, I blamed them instead.  I thought they were too needy and didn’t understand what I was going through with my non-ending appointments.  When someone told me that “If you really wanted to do something, you could have made time for it,” I instantly got defensive.  I couldn’t make compromises with my time; everything written in my schedule had to be done.  Every day became like a battle against time - to finish that essay by midnight, to turn in that problem set by 5pm, to eat three meals before 9pm.  It’s scary to admit that my life is run by the digits of the clock, by an invisible bell that still rings in the back of my head.  At the end of the day, I started to feel the high of having accomplished everything on my calendar.  Eventually, I realized that I was an incipient addict. I belonged in time-aholics anonymous. 

As they say, the first step to recovery is admission.  The second is to believe that we can turn ourselves around and find a solution.  I used to think that my problems would go away if the day was thirty hours long.  What would you do with those extra six hours?  I have to admit, I’d probably spend them surfing trashy celebrity blogs or watching MTV.  America’s Next Top Model marathons have become like black-holes.  I turn on MTV, and six-hours later, I wake up from my ANTM stupor.  The time that I had planned on using to finish a week’s worth of reading suddenly had disappeared.  Consequently, I spend the next few hours reluctantly being productive, foregoing several parties that evening that I had promised to attend.  So as it turns out, more time really isn’t the answer to my problem; I have to look elsewhere.  For one, I need to stop overbooking my schedule with two, three appointments following one-another.  I also need to manage my time better.  I don’t think I’m alone in having ditched friends as a consequence of wasting time.  It’s an awful feeling that can be avoided by just pulling myself away from that damn MTV.  Of course, that’s easier said than done.

I’ve also realized that I should spend more time doing things that I enjoy.  I can miss that club meeting every once in a while to eat an unrushed meal.  I can sacrifice a few hours of sleep to watch a movie with my friends.  When you enjoy what you do, you come to appreciate the time that you have.  This Christmas, I’m looking forward to spending some well-deserved time with my family.  And as the end of the semester comes around, I’m looking forward to celebrating with my senior friends who are graduating already. Sure, I still have a lot to learn in managing my time, but I have hope that I can overcome this beast that has taken control of my life.  After all, the road to recovery is more grueling than just two steps.