Remember a year or so ago when that plague of round-soled “efficient shape-up” shoes hit the streets, and suddenly women everywhere were tripping, stumbling, and definitely not getting toned?
Remember the “hula chair,” infomercial, in which smiling men and women sat at their desks, typing away while their chairs wriggled the lower half of their body, “eliminating the need to separate exercise and work time?”
Remember even this morning, when you checked the Apple App Store and realized there are so many efficiency-related products that even trying to browse through all the apps would use so much time that it would completely defeat the purpose?
Time. There never seems to be enough of it. That’s why people invent all those products, which are successful to varying degrees. We seek the epitome of efficiency because we think it will lead to happiness. Walking on the grass to get to Fondren Science is simply another ploy to seek the blue nirvana of efficiency.
But life is not all about efficiency. How else could you justify nature? The 600 pound grizzly bear eats a diet of mostly fruit and nuts. Most light is lost upon the human eye because the light receptors are actually at the very back of the eye, partially covered by nerve bundles. And speaking of inefficiency, penguins. Need I say more?
Truth be told, walking an extra 0.07 miles to class every day is a valuable experience. It gives students a few moments of quiet solitude in a world filled with the constant chatter of dorm life. It is a chance to examine one’s life and collect one’s thoughts before lecture. It is a time to breathe.
Also, walking that short distance is important exercise. As Mr. Christian Genco stated in his editorial, a student going to Fondren Science building five times a week can expect to spend an extra cumulative 70 hours on walking time for using the sidewalk. Assuming an average body weight of 150 lbs, walking 2.5 miles per hour for a total of 70 hours will burn around 14,280 calories. That’s enough exercise to burn the calories from 10 pizzaburgers, 6 Bubba’s chicken sausage biscuits, 12 cups of Ramen noodles, 17 bowls of Cocoa puffs with chocolate milk, and one carton of eggnog. We all need as much exercise as we can get, since exercise is so easily overlooked with the bustle of student life.
Having more free time is not the key to happiness. It is more important to consider the quality of the time (both free and walking) that we have. While little short-cuts such as walking on the grass might open up enough time to watch every episode of “Law and Order,” to learn to whistle from the nose, or to beat all 255 levels of old-school Pac-Man, I suggest that we as a student body instead focus on the quality of our time. Go ahead. Grab some friends. Walk the extra 0.07 miles with them.
Kelly Kiser is a freshman majoring in biology. She can be reached for comment at [email protected]
