The spring season in Korea brings with itself warm temperatures, pleasant weather, and a lot of outdoor activities. The better the weather gets, the more time we leverage to enjoy spending time outdoors. Spring is when music festivals, concerts, hikes, trips to other cities, and night-outs become frequent and fill the lives of the young. Speaking of the young, it is especially important for university students to take advantage of the beautiful weather and celebrate their youth —  here are the reasons why.

A university campus can be thought of as a bubble with its own environment and its own rules. Everyone inside of that bubble has similar goals and lifestyles — studying hard, working hard, and becoming a better version of oneself. This is the main reason why college is generally the time when people try to reach their potential a lot more seriously. The fast-paced and competitive atmosphere of university campuses makes people more aware of their abilities, more hardworking, and as a result, more stressed out. This constant “race” becomes so embedded in students’ lives that they forget to take a break. They might even observe that no one around them is resting, as if it is frowned upon. Eventually, students stop paying attention to the fact that there is life outside of this bubble as well.

Let me dive into one of the possible reasons for having such a hectic lifestyle. Students work for long hours to get well-educated or master a certain skill in order to reap the benefits of hard work in the future. As one of the postulates of delayed gratification, one resists the urge of an immediate pleasure for the sake of getting rewarded later. A mentality close to that, which I’m sure many would relate to, is thinking as if one is sacrificing X number of years of their life for Y amount of “freedom” later. Nevertheless, I think such logic is flawed. In my opinion, no matter what lifestyle one leads, life stays the same at its core — there is a set of pleasures and challenges. The essence of one’s life is in its balance, and anyone who dreams of a “flawless” life has not put enough time into thinking what that would look like. Therefore, is there a valid reason to sacrifice X number of years for better, but by all means not perfect, Y amount of years of “freedom”? It does not seem completely fair.

It would be great to enjoy the rewards of hard work without feeling that X number of years have been sacrificed for themat. Time spent working on oneself should be accountable for the “better” life later, but it should not be an exchange but should rather be a causation. A solution to this involves understanding the nature of how we remember things. A certain period of life is remembered by a number of distinct events. We do not remember all the details about going to a campus library, working on assignments, or routinely attending classes. What we do remember is what stands out, like going on a trip, sharing a couple of laughs with random people at a bar, or attending a concert. The more we remember events like that, the more memorable a certain period of life becomes. You don’t have to spend weeks slacking off work and mindlessly doing whatever you want, but some amount of fun from time to time will not vanish unnoticed.

No one doubts the value of studying and developing one’s character during their student years. But if that is all that is present, those student years will not be remembered. One must take a break and have some fun for the sake of making warm memories for later. If one manages to evenly spread out memorable days within the period they grind, one will undoubtedly enjoy the returns of hard work, while reminiscing about it in the fondest ways.