Divya Ramesh | Not worth the wait

I use Fridays to measure time. One Friday to the end of a rough week. Two Fridays until my friend’s birthday. Three Fridays until my next exam.

When I hear others who say, “Two more days!” or “I can’t wait until Saturday so that I can catch up on that reading for [insert class here],” I know that I am not the only Friday-phile on campus.

Friday glows with the deceptive allure of possibility. It is the end, the breather, the day before catch-up-on-sleep or catch-up-on-work Saturday. As my fellow columnist Rachel del Valle pointed out recently, it’s okay to schedule a day to do nothing. With the Saturday and Sunday buffer distancing the grind of the upcoming week, there’s a sort of illusion that it is okay to crash onto a sofa on a Friday night in Rosengarten and count the colors on the carpeting while mindlessly munching celery with ranch dressing.

And I don’t just keep my excitement to myself. Whenever I see an exhausted soul leaning on the elevator wall or buckling under the weight of a large backpack, I say, “Almost there! It’s almost Friday!”

My enthusiasm is either met with appreciative smiles or very pointed eye rolling, depending on my fellow elevator travel mates. But last week, as I stood alongside a man with “Penn Maintenance” embroidered on his jacket, I received a very didactic response as I rambled on about the motivational power of a Friday evening.

“When all my colleagues get excited about Fridays, I tell them that you’ll waste your life away wishing for the next Friday. Live your life in the here and now because your greatest moment might just fall on a Tuesday.”

The words almost sounded as if they belonged on some inspirational poster. I paused to realize that they were coming from a mouth that was, in fact, attached to a face. My reflection on the elevator door looked like that of a surprised and sputtering goldfish.

It would have made for the perfect cartoon “ah-ha” moment if only I had had a two-dimensional incandescent light bulb dangling oddly above my head.

But in all seriousness, it got me thinking — what if I am “wasting my life away,” to quote my new life coach? So many times during stressful weeks, I have been so fixed on the next Friday that I only half-notice the crowded halls of Riepe cookie night on Wednesday or only half-hear as the Gospel Choir rehearses their music on Locust Walk.

Last week, I was so focused on celebrating a birthday with a friend, so focused on sending a handmade card, so focused on getting to the post office in time (all on a Friday, of course), that everything else from that week is an odd blur.

Then, after wasting away the moments in the middle, that long-desired and much-needed Friday comes along, only to disappoint. When it arrives, it doesn’t have any of the trappings of a “glorious day” associated with it. There’s no aura of possibility.

Part of that possibility is the notion of how much we can accomplish with that free time. I’m going to nap on Friday; I’m going to finish my to-do list. And then, inevitably, none of that gets done because somehow the hours disappear — 48 hours of straight freedom never allows everything to get done.

All that waiting for Friday, and there I stood disappointed. I could’ve just enjoyed the Festival Latino event on Monday to its fullest extent instead. I could have just deciphered the philosophy notes on Thursday because breaking them down on Friday isn’t any easier.

Maybe the Penn maintenance man was right: if you’re a Friday-phile and obsessively look towards Fridays, use them to make it through rough weeks or expect them to be this weekly hiatus or weekly clarification day where you can review things slowly, then you’re wasting your life away. I’m wasting my life away.

As every productive-weekend-turned-unproductive-weekend has shown me, as students in Yemen and Saudi Arabia with Thursday-Friday weekends would say, Wednesday night might be just as good as Friday night.

Divya Ramesh is a College freshman from Princeton Junction, N.J. Her email address is divyaramesh20@gmail.com. You can follow her @DivyaRamesh11. “Through My Eyes” appears every Monday.

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