If you haven’t already noticed yet, being in college is one of the strangest times of your life, and will probably always be just that. A completely new world has opened up to us and we have this sense of a new found freedom, yet at the same time we have all kinds of new responsibilities that can be as restricting as they are liberating.

Yeah, you can eat wherever you want, whenever you want, with whoever you want. But do you have the money to being doing that? Not all the time, no.

Yeah, you can go out as much as you want and party as much as you want with relatively no fear of being caught. But can you handle the consequences of a night out the morning after? Your headache is probably too killer to answer that right now.

Then projects, essays, and tests start piling up and you’re working part-time to make some extra cash and when you’re not in class or at work, you have some organization to attend to and before you know it you’re a junior in college and you haven’t done half of what you thought you would and you’re wondering where the time has gone…

This is precisely where I’m at in my college career and it’s terrifying.

I’m less than two years away from graduating and the thought of being in the real world seems about as foreign as a 600 level accounting class is to an English major.

I’m trying to make the most of all I have while I’m still an undergraduate. (As much as I’d love to stay an extra year or two, no way are my parents going to pay for that.)

And I found that one word has made all the difference.

“Yes.”

Yes, I will go on a T-Bell run with you at 1:30 AM on a Tuesday.

Yes, I will meet up with you for lunch.

Yes, I will go record video of the basketball game on Friday.

Yes.

See, I found myself always making excuses for even the smallest things because I had so many other responsibilities with school. And I’m not saying you should give less time and attention to doing well in classes, but I’m managing my time better because it’s the small moments or the last minute plans I’ll remember the most after I walk across the stage at graduation.

Once I started saying yes more often, I found that I started having more quality time with friends. More late night conversations in the car while we run to get T-Bell and take a few laps around campus and more catching up and checking in with friends during the week over a 45-minute lunch at the sorority house.

I also found the more I said “Yes” to my professors, the more opportunities were given to me. This past semester I got to sit right underneath the hoop during basketball games to record video, best seat in the house and it was free too.

Even the small promises I would tell myself “Yes, you will finish this paper tonight”, “Yes, you will make it through this week just fine” made all the difference.

We are in a time where the world has just opened up to us and yet we don’t take full advantage of that because of all the other responsibilities that demand out attention.

But don’t forget once we finish our four years here, our time becomes even more limited, so yes, take a break for just one hour and go get Chinese or a margarita with your best friend.