A college student’s time is a hard thing to conceptualize. Does it ever feel like, by the time you reach that class or meeting, you can hardly recall what you did before you arrived, and you then have at least five commitments thereafter?

Time, as a college student, is something that unquestionably exists, but since we have schedules packed thicker than our fattest textbook, it can easily be taken for granted; busy, as an understatement, far exceeds itself.

So, how do we conceptualize the time we have?

Recognizing the significance of our surroundings is a start in allowing us to be conscientious of how we spend our time.

In many respects, every person we meet and every professor we have learned something – anything – from, are the people who are consuming time on our life’s calendar. In the same sense, this learning exchange is distributed in reverse, I would imagine, for professors.

Listing those who influence our time as Lakeland College students might include: professors, advisors, roommates, classmates, teammates, club-mates, co-workers and really anyone who passes us by on Lakeland’s outdoor walkways.

Taking a minute to look at the person next to us, who we know at least by face, if not by name, might come as a surprise to us that these individuals are a part of our time table, even if we talk to those people only once.

The people we met when we first arrived at Lakeland College, and will meet until we reach the culminating moment of wearing that oversized gown and we are named Lakeland College graduates, are all recognizable markers of our newly-spent time.

Our time is spent not just in every moment we find ourselves in classrooms when we are learning, but in everything we do. Next time we sit down to masterfully play our instrument, hear the whistle signaling us to look up to our opponents waiting for us to challenge them, or put on gloves in Lakeland’s cafeteria preparing for the coming works hours, we must recognize these instances are all equally important components of our time.

Maybe the time we experience at Lakeland College is more than a degree, is more than an attempt to reach a ‘well-rounded’ societal status and is some of the most life-altering stuff we have ever done, possibly more than the reason we show up to class in the first place.

In this sense, time acts like a momentary mirage, one that if taught to treasure, can make any experience at Lakeland College impactful.