Harry DiFrancesco '12 questions our preoccupation with efficiency and poses the notion that procrastination may in fact be productive in its own right.

Cornell's Faculty Senate approved a resolution Wednesday calling for a limit to students' assignments over academic breaks.

While resisting the temptation to slack off and cut corners can at times be an impossible task, gaining a little knowledge is a key component of the college experience.

The expectation to have successful time management during college is truly a remarkable thing.

For some reason, people expect you to be able to take on a ridiculous amount of things and be able to pull it all off. A challenging course load, extracurricular activities that demand at least five times the time they would have taken you in high school, paying your bills, doing your laundry (and the dishes!), doing homework, keeping fit, eating healthy, having a job (or five), having a relationship, and not going nuts.

Well, people really do not require you to not go nuts. That’s just a personal preference.

If you’re thinking about becoming a lawyer, one of the first things you’ll hear as an incoming law student is something like this: “First year, they scare you to death. Second year, they work you to death. Third year, they bore you to death.” True? More than a little.

Law school is like nothing you’ve ever done before. This becomes apparent on the first day when it takes one intense hour to read 10 pages. Then you go to class and a professor starts with the Socratic method: question upon question about a particular case. That’s why it takes an hour to read 10 pages. You have to be ready for anything the professor might ask. And then the professor stumps you on the third question anyway.

Last week, as I was whiling away time between classes, I came across a review of the documentary film Examined Life. The title references Socrates, who stated, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The film follows eight philosophers as they talk about provocative philosophical questions. “It takes tremendous discipline, it takes tremendous courage to think for yourself,” Cornel West says at the beginning of the preview. Intrigued, I looked into where it was playing. It will be shown in only three upstate New York theaters, and one of them is the Cornell Cinema.