Timing

Luck, Fate, or whatever you want to call it (I say fate).

Timing is crucial. Arrive to class one minute late and you may miss out on the description of the upcoming midterm. Walk into an interview late and you immediately set an undesirable first impression on the interviewer. Leave a panel early and you may miss out on a guest speaker and crucial information. Get to a bus stop 10 seconds late and you may end up waiting another 20 minutes.

Examples upon examples come to mind, and it all comes down to punctuality. In the past couple years, my adherence to punctuality has declined due to my observation of those around me. I admit I am easily and always influenced by my surrounding environment, whether that is by way of imitation or repulsion. So, why am I reflecting on timing? Well, this afternoon I had decided to stay at a meeting despite a deep desire to leave and eat lunch. After sticking around, Chancellor Block came and gave an encouraging talk on his path to his current position. Wow, what if I had decided to leave? Following the meeting, lunch, and my time sitting at the peer advising table in Covel, I went to my room to finish watching a Korean movie that I had not finished during the morning's Korean discussion. Of course I became absorbed in the movie, and I kept putting off my plan to go to a guest lecture on behavioral finance by a visiting Carnegie Mellon professor. With 10 minutes left in the movie and my unrest with not going to the lecture, I paused the movie and ran down to the Anderson School. The lecture was supposed to start at 3, but I had left my room at 3:15. As I arrived at the room, I found out that everyone had left to another room (I assume this because nobody was there). If only I was there 20 minutes earlier...
Missing the lecture is trivial (no offense intended to the lecturer); instead, my recognition of my deteriorating sense of punctuality has become very pungent.

"Be quick, but do not hurry." -John Wooden-