There is always time to be an overachiever

The author H. Jackson Brown once wrote, “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have… The author H. Jackson Brown once wrote, “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.”

I am out to prove him wrong. I will cram more time into my days than is imaginable. Never again will I opt for a leisurely lunch in lieu of my noon astronomy recitation. No longer will I waste precious hours strolling across Carnegie Mellon’s campus in the glow of the moonlight (no matter how pretty it might be). No more hours of mine will be devoted to beating the high score on ptmarion.com’s hexagon challenge. I hereby refuse to continue to just listlessly count down the hours filling the time between sleep. I will pounce on each hour and lodge it firmly in my jaw’s clenches like a chew toy, refusing to let Father Time pull the life out of my days by clinging onto my minutes with my kung-fu death grip.

I wake up at 4 a.m. (I hope all you wusses on the crew team have an enjoyable morning sleeping in) to the strains of my beeping alarm clock. I remove my headset after another long night of nocturnal Spanish language training and immediately take off out the door for my daily 6-mile run, having gone to bed the night before already wearing my specialized running gear, shoes and all.

Taking haste both to monitor my heart rate continually and to make sure I’m mentally progressing on my memorization of the Magna Carta, I return to my room and grab a backorder copy of “Popular Science” to keep me company during my two-minute shower. I pull on an appropriate T-shirt advertising Greenpeace’s ideals of nonviolent action on behalf of Mother Earth. Then I quickly send a pre-written mass e-mail to 50 old acquaintances letting them know they’re in my thoughts despite our invariable drifting apart and put up an appropriate Ghandi quote for an away message before heading out for the day.

Having already determined the most efficient paths for my paper delivery route, I am able to talk a homeless man into making amends with his estranged son and plant the seeds for what will one day be a glorious weeping willow in Schenley Park before heading into class at 8 a.m. where I take notes on my laptop while simultaneously keeping tabs on my NASDAQ stock and fine-tuning the minutia on my petition to Congress calling for an end to the circulation of the penny.

Having organized my schedule so that my 27 credits worth of classes follow — and occasionally overlap — each other, I keep my metabolism up by sprinting between classes. My speed is only somewhat hindered when I use my cell phone to call relatives and update them on my current enterprises, ensuring that my family ties remain strong despite my mission trips to Bolivia rather than going home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Finally emerging from class at 7 p.m., I unwind from another day of acing exams and brainstorming for my senior thesis by hitting up a few board meetings. (Today is Thursday, so it must be … Save The Squirrels … I think.) Then I volunteer at the library where I show disadvantaged youth how to develop good study skills by working on the assignments I have for my lowbrow gen. ed. classes that I can’t possibly be expected to lower myself to do on my own. (I am only human, after all.) After grilling the nearest faculty members on recommendations for my Rhodes scholar interview, I head back to my single residence hall room, making sure to post some promotional posters for my Student Government Board bid on the way.

Thankfully, I have no pesky IMs or messages on my answering machine to bother myself with, giving me a good window of time to finish off more of the dictionary before heading to bed. (I am confident that “N” will be cracked within days.)

I slip on tonight’s headphones selection — Latin — and put my head on the pillow, satisfied with having made the most of another day.

It is only then that I realize that I have forgotten to eat again. Oh well, the results can only help my research study on the effects of eating disorders.

I drift off to sleep, already excited for what tomorrow may hold.

Carpe diem!

Daron Christopher vaguely recalls promising to incorporate the word “booster” into this column to a random person at the crew house. E-mail him ways he could have pulled it off at djc14@pitt.edu.