As a freshman, I started keeping a journal to compile advice from my friends who were graduating. It is the greatest treasure I could have asked for from this place. As a senior, I started rereading it. I want to offer one of my most pressing, universal lessons learned, the thread that runs through each and every entry: to make the most of Princeton, you must make time.
For most of human history, we have tried to capture time. Ancient Egyptians used obelisks to trace the shadows, the Greeks used water clocks and the Chinese used candles. From the sundial to the hourglass, the pendulum to the wristwatch, we have always been seeking the best way to seize the day, by always knowing exactly our place in it. It is, perhaps, some mark of evolution to be constantly aware that our time is running out. We, as humans, have always found ways to mark this time passing and maintain time as a daily reminder.
It is, of course, extremely beneficial to have timekeeping devices — I’ve kept a watch on my left wrist since age nine and probably can’t go 20 minutes without glancing at it. But this is not about how we measure time. This is about how we see ourselves swimming in it.
The verbs we use to reference time — losing time, finding time, sparing time — all treat time as tangible. Time is a direct object. We can create it, make it, find it and lose it. We can have it, as if time is ours to conjure.
However, time is no one’s to keep, to have or to create. When we say we want to make time, or when we say we don’t have it, we are only cheating ourselves. Time is a choice, not a burden; time is our friend, not enemy.
My friend Aneesh, from the class of 2014, wrote in my advice journal, “Time is a created thing. To say you don’t have time is to say you’re not willing to make it. You don’t need to have time for everything, but be aware of its implications when you say or think that you don’t have the time and when others do.”
Here at Princeton, our sundials have evolved into Google Calendars, our hourglasses into iPhone alerts. We treat time as something to be carved, a blank canvas which shouldn’t dare host white space. In making time an object of creation and loss, we risk not actually experiencing it. College is the time we have to learn and grow and fail and rise; these are not at odds with reading for pleasure, staring into space or sleeping. Time ought not be called wasted; it should be gloriously, unproductively or fleetingly spent.
Senior year has gone by so fast, and I am trying to make time — to see my friends perform on Princeton’s many stages, to attend office hours with that famous writer or to find out where exactly is the ceramics studio.
Like a gentle reminder, there is a sundial carved into one of the towers of East Pyne, facing south. Maybe now, instead of shuffling through campus with my eyes fixed downward on my wristwatch, when I pass the sundial, I’ll look up.
Azza Cohen is a history major from Highland Park, Ill. She can be reached at accohen@princeton.edu.
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