Frankie Heeringa

Time: fleeting, ticking, tracking, losing. There never seems to be enough of it, or at least we find ways to make that a reality.

In high school, students are busy trying to get into a “good” college, and in college, students are busy working to create a “successful” career pathway. Through the collective years, we continue to grow up. As young adults in college we have supposedly made it to the place where dreams can come true and opportunity is only bound by our own imagination. Within this unique world of possibility, there, of course, remains a lot we don’t know.

Being at a school like Bowdoin means many of us have a self-direction that at least makes it look like we know some of what we are navigating through. We are likely accustomed to day-long schedules and minds constantly running–even if we are unsure where, they are headed somewhere that is not here.

Two words: “just here.” They got me through grueling high school cross country seasons and competitive classrooms where potential feelings of success lay gatekept behind walls of comparison. I still say them sometimes, in my mind that’s always running, because I find that the reminder helps return me to my body, to the subtle rise and fall of my breath.

In fact, part of the reason I am at Bowdoin and not somewhere else is because of the reflections the College’s reputation and culture have encouraged me to have about the different qualities of time I can explore. In Bowdoin’s Offer of the College it reads, “to be at home in all lands and all ages” and “to lose yourself in generous enthusiasms.” To me, this articulates subjective experiences of time that are valuable for us to remember we can have. On and off campus I have been inspired by meaningful conversations about the ways in which we each spend our time.

I also wonder why we use that word “spend” in reference to our time, as if time is transactional, a never-ending cycle of budgets and bargains. Viewing it as a transaction implies that we have more control, which makes the colloquial rhetoric around time ironic, because in actuality, we have no control over its progression.

As a first semester freshman currently navigating the liminal space of transition, I am more susceptible to falling into old, received patterns that, in high school, I was told would bring the ultimate “success.” However, I don’t want to believe that time is only a transaction and I don’t believe treating it as such will bring me a greater sense of self or purpose just because my list of commitments gets longer.

This space of transition is one worth protecting, so I am trying to fit one more “thing” into my busy, wonderful, multi-faceted college life before it gets too easy to dismiss it: continue learning what time—four letters, one word and a multitude of connotations and manifestations—means to me.

Here are a few new ways I have experienced time over the past weeks: at Thorne, two friends became five, and 20 minutes of mealtime became two hours; on the quad, I witnessed the September sunset tinge of the leaves for a second that felt like it could hold an entire season; during morning runs on the trail, I am getting used to letting my mile time matter less and my natural rhythm dictate the pace. In these moments, I start to feel a bit lighter. Not lighter in the superficial sense, not lighter because I compartmentalized my anxiety, but lighter because I let go of an unnecessary structure that weighed down my movement through time.

Could I instead be panicking about the impending date of my first exam and cramming in another five minutes of review? Could I be listing all the possible summer internships I’ve heard about that might fit my interests and thinking about my resume layout? Yes. I always “could” be doing something else. We all “could.”

Now that I have made it to college, now that I have reached the destination toward which I spent four years racing, I am finally working to feel more comfortable in the slower movements, in the sitting still and the growth it inevitably nourishes. Sometimes “just here” can be enough.

Anya Houston is a member of the Class of 2030.