Think About Time, Don’t Just Live In It

By Jody Bell

Yesterday I became a senior in college.

I watched my dearest friends – people I’ve known since I first stepped onto campus – receive their degrees and enter the “real world” whatever that may mean. In the midst of my incessant congratulations and tearful goodbyes, I hadn’t thought of exactly what this graduation meant for me. But as the commencement ceremony came to a close I realized that the next time I’ll see the long gowns of graduation, they would be draped around me. 

The twenty-four hours that followed this realization hit me like an absolute wall. How am I this close to true adulthood, where the expectation is a tangible contribution to society and not merely learning? What have I taken for granted during this chapter of my life, and how will it change when I’m no longer wearing my student ID lanyard as a giant “person-in-progress” sign around my neck? After spending my whole life preparing for this exact moment of graduation….what’s next? 

I’m not going to have the answers to these questions for a long time – probably not until far past my graduation. But sometimes these epiphanies hit you; you age so quickly that you don’t reflect on the time that has passed. You face a lightbulb moment and realize just how quickly time is passing when you aren’t focused on the progression of each chapter.

That’s the truth in growing up, and if you’re a Girls With Impact student, that probably rings even more true for you. You’ve spent your life looking at societal and environmental issues that span far past your everyday life. You are labeled “mature” and a “young professional” before you even graduate high school. You are a CEO and entrepreneur before you even know how financial aid for higher education works. I was in your exact shoes as a Girls With Impact graduate from 2017, but what they don’t tell you is that these light bulb moments tend to blindside you a bit. You love being called old for your age, and hurtling towards your professional future and career at light speeds that make the surrounding world look like a blur. It’s only in moments of reflection – such as watching your friends graduate – that you look around at the life that has passed by without notice. 

I am proud of the fact that I started a national organization at 16 years old because of Girls With Impact. I’m proud that by 19 I was the Editor in Chief of their blog and had started a second venture. I am proud that by 20 I have given a TedXTalk on my work. But, I also mourn for moments I haven’t appreciated. I grieve a traditional childhood that wasn’t consumed by such passion that I had tunnel vision towards my future. 

This is the earnest truth of a young entrepreneur – you love what you do and you love the lightspeed you travel at. However, one day you will realize that as quickly as you move through life and hurtle towards fixing that problem stuck in your brain, life will always move quicker. If you’re like me, you’ll be left believing time warps may exist. 

Now, I don’t intend to scare you off by saying this. In fact, you know you have struck passion because passion has a tendency of making you fixate so completely that time moves differently. 

That being said, from a soon-to-be graduate and young entrepreneur, I do have advice I’d like to offer you: think about time, don’t just live in it. 

While that may be my attempt to eloquently word a statement with the size and breadth of a novel, it does ring true. As a young person, you truly have no concept of time – a year is a gigantic portion of your existence, and yet as you age that same year literally becomes proportionately smaller and less significant. Time changes as you age, and your perception of it does as well. 

So, if you fixate so heavily on solving the problems of the world and hurtling wholeheartedly towards your future, you won’t understand just how that perspective of time changes – you may find you don’t truly understand time itself. 

So, take videos of your friends singing way too loud in the car on the way home from school – however off-key it may be. Go to your favorite spot with a pencil and paper and doodle what it looks like from your perspective – even if you aren’t great at art. Tell your family you love them and relish in the family photos – however cheesy they may be. Think about the past month and write about it and what you’ve learned – even if it felt anticlimactic and “boring.” Life happens in the everyday moments that blur together when you're racing towards your own future; if you don’t intentionally think about mini-stories, you’ll end up with whiplash and questioning just how you got to the end of certain chapters.

While the progression of time is inevitable, I hope that my somber tone about its speed doesn’t scare you. It is the speed of change that makes life beautiful, but for young professionals who face a passion that is often obsessive, time can feel terrifying and like the most scarce resource on the planet. 

Jody Bell, 20 is Girls With Impact’s Editor in Chief and a program graduate from Greenwich High School. Girls With Impact is the nation’s only online, business and leadership program for girls 14-24, turning them into tomorrow’s leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators.