Time. There is never enough of it when we need it most, and it can’t seem to go by fast enough when we want it to.

This entire year I have been racing against time, and it wasn’t until now that I realized I’m losing very badly.

I’ve been racing to get homework done, to study for tests, to get my job done at work, and I’m losing. I’ve put what’s most important to me, the people in my life, on the back burner of my mind.

The other night my roommates, who I’ve been best friends with since freshman year, and I got into a furious argument. The topics at issue were small things that with time became big issues. (It seems like that’s always the case with girls.)

Our problem: we didn’t make the time to sit and talk with each other about issues, and because we hadn’t made time for each other, we had kind of lost sense of who each of us is. Knowing who each of us actually is would have kept us from thinking any of us would deliberately do any of the petty things at issue.

My excuse was I didn’t have enough time. I wasn’t taking enough time to be just one of the girls.

A few nights before the lashing out with my roommates, a friend who was my saving grace freshman year called me. She transferred to Bethel College in St. Paul, Minn., our sophomore year but was always good with keeping in touch. This year, however, keeping in touch has become almost nonexistent.

Our conversation last week was perfect. She called out of the blue at a perfect time. She’s the type of friend who can offer the best advice to any problem, which is what I needed given the situation at hand with my roommates.

We addressed the problem of our lack of communication, and both of our excuses were that we didn’t have enough time.

Also, last week I kept running into friend who I hadn’t seen in a while, and our conversations always picked up right where they had left off. I thought things may be different between us, but they weren’t. We still managed to talk about boys and “The Bachelorette” instead of the awkward, “So, how have you been?” and “How’s your semester going?”

All these friends make us who we are. Whether they are the person who, no matter what they have to say, whenever you see them makes your day better, or the person who, even though you haven’t talked to them in a while, conversation picks up right where it left off, they are all in our lives for a reason. We should make them a priority over anything else.

This entire school year, my life has been centered around grades and raising my GPA. Granted I had a 4.0 first semester, but I’ve lost touch with my family, friends from home and my friends at school. Luckily I have a boyfriend who is just as busy as I am and who understands my crazy, busy journalism life.

My point is college isn’t about grades and GPAs. Those things may matter when applying for your first job, but honestly, what role will they play in your overall future? It’s the relationships we develop in college that influence our futures the most. We shouldn’t put those relationships second or we may find ourselves ahead of the game with no one to celebrate with.

Though it may be hard to tell what time it is from the clocks on Eastern’s campus, don’t wish it away. It’s precious and we should live by maximizing its limits.