Enjoy the little moments because time flies quickly

By Dr. Heather Bozant Witcher
Clarion Herald, Young Adults

One of the things I love most about teaching college freshmen is their enthusiasm and curiosity. They’ve just entered college; they have a taste of freedom; they’re trying to figure out their own path.

This semester, I’m teaching college composition. Almost all students take composition as they figure out the differences between writing for high school and writing for college.

In my class, students explore their broad topics with a focus on curiosity and questions – not coming to a project with an argument, but instead striving to choose topics that they don’t actually have answers to … yet.

One of my students is really focused on the idea of generations. At first, I didn’t quite get the idea – what could be the appeal? What kind of argument could she eventually come to over the course of the class?

But then she explained it. There’s the generational approach to popular culture – the cyclical nature of trends. I was in Target the other day and saw body suits making a comeback from the ’90s. And, there’s also the generational approach to families. Particularly in the South, families tend to stay in the same neighborhoods, travel in the same circles. There’s a reason that our children end up attending the same schools that we attended.

As adults, particularly in New Orleans, we end up seeing the same high school football stadiums later on from a different set of eyes – no longer as teenagers, but as adults watching our own children, and as grandparents watching our grandchildren.

Why is that? And what does it tell us, particularly, about the South and southern heritage?

As my student explained, I saw a different approach to her interest. I’m a young parent, and I’m so often struck by the fact that time is a thief. It’s a constant blink-and-you-miss-it mindset.

This past weekend, we redid the twins’ room for “big boy” beds. And while the boys were super excited, the emotional strings were tugging at my heart.

Those were the beds that I first placed them in after they moved from the bassinets in our room. Those were the beds that they learned to pull up on (and eventually to climb out of). It brought back memories of sleep training, praying that they would sleep through the night.

As we reminded them “when the light is red, you stay in bed,” I turned around briefly before closing the door. In my mind’s eye, I still saw those cribs, the small bodies swaddled in the corners. But in reality there were two toddlers, clutching blankets and stuffies, waiting for me to leave the room before they could attack their books and bring them into their beds.

That’s the generational approach that I took – the speed with which generations sneak up upon us. The fact that in just a short period of time we turn from parents of toddlers to parents of high schoolers.

And so, we cherish each moment.

It’s the same message I tell my freshmen. Enjoy the moments – not just of the research process they’ll learn in my class, but of their college experience. It, too, is a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in time.

hbozantwitcher@clarionherald.org