Marco Brasil, staff
Wasting time has become second nature to the modern day person, especially the student population. There are plenty of different websites dedicated to wasting time which range from blogging sites to tacky cat photo sites. It is arguable that most people waste their time by being on Facebook waiting for new comments on their posts and commenting on others posts. The popular social networking site also has many different apps that are great for wasting time.
One type of website which wastes time contains user-created content which is uploaded. Popular examples include I Waste So Much Time and Meme Base, which include funny images and videos that users share. On the crueler end of the scale sit websites like People of Wal-Mart and WTF Tattoos which showcase the interesting clothing and body modification choices of random people caught by the users. Other websites contains stories shared by users. Some examples of these kinds of websites would include F My Life and Not Always Right in which people send humourous stories about their lives and customers who, as the name of the site indicates, are not always right. Interest based websites have become a hit in the past few years. Stumbleupon, Pinterest and Tumblr allow users to indulge their interests through finding and sharing things they enjoy.
Not all forms of wasting time are completely pointless. Veronica, a third year student at McMaster University, says, “The internet is unfortunately the best and most endless way to waste time. A more constructive method of wasting time would be practicing playing the piano.” This goes to show that some ways of wasting time can actually be beneficial. If one wants to waste time they can practice playing an instrument or a sport, they can go for a run or workout at the gym.
Working out is a great way to pass the time and it is beneficial to students. Not only can it help you stay fit, but it can also help to reduce stress, which in turn leads to better grades. Tara Parker-Pope writes on the NY Times blog, “College students who want to boost their grades can start by boosting their level of exercise, new research suggests.” Listening to music can also be beneficial to students. In a short, one-page article entitled “Music and spatial task performance,” it showed that college students who listened to 10 minutes of Mozart’s Sonata, and then took a test on spatial reasoning had a statistically significant rise in scores from those students who had not listened to the Mozart sonata. Music can make you relax and feel more concentrated.
When it comes to wasting time, there are an endless number of things that a person could do, especially with our advances in technology. There is an ever-growing amount of websites that help you waste time and DVDs have become cheaper as Blu-Rays have taken over. And if you don’t have any internet connection or movies that you can watch, you can take a nap, which requires nothing except a place to lie down.
