As you grow older, time moves faster. When you’re a kid, just a single hour seems like an eternity. But now, the days fly by quicker than you can ask yourself, “What the hell did I get done today?”

The one constant in life is that it keeps speeding up. Like a car rolling down a hill in neutral, it’s hard to slow down once it gets moving. And in my third year in college, at age 20, I’m already feeling the effects of severe motion sickness in a too-short, too-fast life.

Not to say it hasn’t been a fun ride. College has brought me everything: the buddies you’d give anything to know will be playing drinking games with you forever, the party nights and the girls … oh, the girls.

It’s going a little too fast, though. My first steps on the Sacramento State campus feels like just weeks ago. Moving into the dorms, finding a cheap apartment, and then finally moving into a house all feel like they’ve taken place over the course of one hung-over weekend.

Then, without any real notice, that scary word “graduation” starts to sneak up on you. Even if it is still a year or two away, it’s a scary thought. Suddenly those buddies begin to graduate and move away, those keg parties turn into wine-tasting excursions and those girls start getting married. You edge closer toward that scary image of having a secure job, with a spouse who’s already nagging you to go mow the lawn and then take your kids to get haircuts.

I mean, hold the phone, will ya? Do we all really have to commit to that? Who says we have to follow all the conventional myths? There is no formula to follow. Remember that these are the days when we’ll have the most freedom to do what we want in every sense of the phrase — most importantly by being selfish and living our lives completely for ourselves.

Let’s drop the college-job-marriage-die routine. Life is too quick to focus on all of that tiresome B.S. The rumor going around is that you only live once, so do it how you want to do it. Don’t forget the real reasons we’re out there doing this living life thing anyway.

Success is about living life the way you want to live it and having a damn good time doing it. I am a full-time student, I hold two jobs and I still manage to appreciate the hell out of every day by living it up the best way possible. Create your own formula. Everyone has free time, whether they’ll admit to it or not, and life becomes what you make of that free time.

Worried about studying for that big exam you have in Economics tomorrow? Forget about it. That single grade won’t have that great an affect on the rest of your life. Even if you ace that test, does it really guarantee a better job? Is that job you’re trying to earn really more important than having fun times?

Stop stressing about how you are going to earn enough money to pay for these nice cars and nice things that mean nothing. You have your whole life to work for extravagant things to impress people who don’t really care.

Instead, have fun, get drunk, miss class and do the type of things you’ll probably regret later. If you don’t do it now, then when will you? This is the time.Life is too short, right? Let’s not sit around waiting for the future just so we can look back and miss where we are now.