Don’t virtue signal your busyness

Home Opinion Don’t virtue signal your busyness
Don’t virtue signal your busyness
Hillsdale students should stop bragging about being busy. Courtesy | Flickr

Time is currency. And some people like to check their bank accounts more than others.

Notoriously busy Hillsdale students like to flaunt their schedules  — for many, busyness is a status symbol. Between school, work, extracurriculars, and telling you how much school, work, and extracurriculars they have, the busy class are the clear elite at Hillsdale. 

Scum-of-the-earth lower class like you and I may have a few papers here and there, but our schedules aren’t packed enough to list off a second-by-second play of our days. And it shows.

But lauding accomplishments as time-fillers instead of achievements demeans the work itself. More projects and deadlines can be a good thing — but bragging about them does your accomplishments a disservice.

Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn spends almost every waking hour of his days working to further the school’s mission. Yet he still finds time to come down to the dining hall and harass students about the good. Imagine if he rattled off a to-do list instead of quoting Aristotle.

The true hallmark of greatness is other people telling you how busy you are. Stop seeking approval by busy-bragging and instead, find joy in what you do. 

If you can’t find  joy in a four-hour physics lab, that’s OK. But we all have the same 24 hours in a day — and acting like your time is rarer than someone else’s won’t gain you any respect. 

If you have work to do, go get it done. And if you have time to spare, don’t spend it counting the hours you’ve already lost.

I’m too busy to listen to you complain, anyway.