By Robbie Bullis | City of Dewey, Walker Counter

To us teenagers, time is just a slow and steady march. Day in and day out, constantly creeping forward.

I have often felt as though I have too much time. When I’ve haven’t been busy and when I was allowed to spend the hours allotted to me however I wanted, I often found myself wishing time would flow faster.

Boredom then, I suppose, was an all too common facet of my sense of life. Boredom has weighed upon my shoulders and my chin and has kept them both slumped low.

I struggle to find the usual boredom that comes with stagnation here at Ripon. A speech delivered earlier this week, though I forget the exact quote, had a line in a similar vein to “if you feel boredom, you’re probably a boring person.”

I remember the sort of loneliness I felt on my first day, and the anxiety that came with it. My greatest fear was that the long week ahead of me would drive me to beg Saturday to come sooner.

And yet, here I am, and the respect I feel for my new friends is both deep and mutual. It feels like I’ve met new brothers.

Nearly every day I’ve spent here at Badger Boys State has felt near perfect, and I’ve ended up going to sleep feeling exhausted, accomplished and wishing I could spend even more time with my new friends. I’ve nearly forgotten what day it is as they all blend together so seamlessly.

The level of family and friendship surrounding me on all sides, the joy I get from hearing boys so full of potential deliver speeches that bring me to tears and the love and admiration I feel for every single person here seems to make the days pass with an unfiltered and unimpeded feeling of joy hanging over every single event.

I have yet to feel truly…well, bored.

All of this has given me a new perspective of myself and the activities of my life back home. The sense of contentment that puts me to sleep every single night I’m here is something I didn’t know I missed.

My perspective on the very nature of time has had a fundamental shift. I realized that the boredom I’ve felt isn’t a result of time, but rather my own sedentary lifestyle. Seeing what I can accomplish from day to day, all the power in the voice of a single citizen, it’s driving me to strive for better.

And yet, a new fear seems to nag at my heart. Even greater than my realization about the slowness of time is the sudden awakening I’ve had to the limits of my own time.

Just as I once wanted it to flow faster, I now live with the constant and unshakable knowledge that time will continue its march once I’ve left this world, just as it always has and always will. I look back on days wasted, days spent sitting for hours on end and achieving nothing and know now that moving forward I will march into life with greater confidence.

Perhaps the greatest takeaway from my experience here is this shift in perspective on the years I’ve been gifted: with what once felt like far too many now seeming all too short in my mind’s eye.

Live each day to its fullest, treat each moment as your last and know how truly precious your time here on Earth is. Because some day, inevitably, it’ll disappear too.

To us Badger Boys Staters, time is a constant flow. Day in and day out, sprinting forward faster than we’ll ever know in our youth, and fast enough that by the time we realize where it is, it’s already passed us by.

Don’t let these moments slip through your fingers. Work hard, live, love and treat everyone with love and respect.

Make your days count.

“You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.

No one told you when to run you missed the starting gun”

-Pink Floyd’s “Time”, Dark Side of the Moon