When I was at Biola, my life felt very divided. When I was at school, I was all there - eating in my school cafeteria, studying in my school library, hanging out with my school friends, sleeping in my school bed at night. Most of my time and energy was devoted to the Biola world, and in some ways, New Mexico felt very far away.
And then I would come home.
Home was the place I'd be for holidays, home meant seeing family and friends I hadn't seen (and maybe even hadn't talked to) for months. Home meant big meals, rushing around trying to make time for everyone, sleeping in a bed in a room that was "mine", but that had remained frozen exactly as I had left it the last time I was there. I'd more or less live out of a suitcase, not even entirely unpacking over the long Christmas break (although that was usually due more to my laziness than anything else). Home also meant isolated hours of stressful studying, as I had to keep up with my Torrey reading even on breaks. My first Thanksgiving home I spent several hours in my room, reading and taking notes on Leviticus and Deuteronomy, only able to freely relax after I had checked everything off my list: themes, questions and answers, outline.
So even on vacations, a good portion of my mental energy was dedicated to my Biola life.
But now, things are different. Home is not an island escape in the sea of homework and commitments and paper deadlines. It's still a place I can relax and see my family, but I no longer feel justified to spend the majority of my time at home doing so, because every morning I wake up and I have to go back to school. I still have to confine myself to my room and tell my sister that I can't watch TV with her, because if I don't, then I'll fall behind.
In a way, now that I'm living at home, I almost feel worse about not spending time with my family than I did when I was at Biola. Since I'm living in the same city as most of them, I feel more guilty about not seeing them, whereas at Biola, email, phone calls and Skype were the best I could offer.
Which brings me back to my first thought. Now that my school world and my home world have collided, I need to step it up on the time management front. Granted, I had a lot to juggle at Biola: a demanding honors curriculum, all my other classes and homework, friends, church, a long-distance relationship, and, last semester, a play with three hour rehearsals (at least) four nights a week (at least). This semester, I've got school, church, spending time with family, being with Jordan and wedding planning and everything that comes with that (pre-marital counseling, meetings with vendors, entire afternoons devoted to addressing envelopes).
Maybe what I'm actually learning here is that no matter what's going on in my life or where I am, things are always going to be very, very busy. Freshman year I had professors tell me more than once that as you grow older, you don't have more time. You have less. One of my Torrey professors put it this way: you will never have more disposable time than you do as a college student. Hard to believe sometimes, isn't it? I mean, college demands a lot! But I'm beginning to understand what they were getting at. Sure, college is busy, but when you get into marriage, and jobs, and added family responsibilities, not to mention having a family of your own someday, college starts to seem more and more manageable.
Nonetheless, I'm also learning that if I want to get sufficient sleep, and if I want to start being punctual instead of chronically late, I can't afford to come home, spend an hour watching television, and then spend another hour fiddling around on Facebook. I never watched TV at Biola, mostly because I didn't have one, and trying to watch something on a dorm TV just wasn't convenient.
Time management is an invaluable skill, and one that you learn as you go, it seems. It's just another part of growing up and becoming a responsible adult. I'm responsible for my work, I'm responsible for my time, and that includes time wasted.
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