Like many college students, sometimes I have trouble getting to my first class Monday morning on time. It’s a 10:20, so I’m rarely late because I’ve overslept; more often than not I’m frantically trying to finish something for one class or another that just didn’t get done over a weekend that is always too short.

This Monday was no exception; in fact, I was running later than normal. But as I quite literally sprinted up the hill, I ran into something that made me stop and think.

There was a man standing outside Lathrop, coffee cup in hand, face turned up towards the sun. He was just standing there, enjoying the sunshine, and I couldn’t help thinking that he, of all of us scurrying around the quad intent on wherever it was we needed to go, had the right idea. Granted, he was either a professor or a staff member, so wherever he was headed would probably wait for him, which is a luxury most students don’t have; still, I couldn’t help but think, as I disappeared into the dark and artificially lit depths of Olin for the day, that maybe the rest of us had our priorities slightly skewed.

I have a friend who essentially lives in the library. I’m hardly one to talk, the way I bounce back and forth between Cooley, Olin and the theater; but he takes it to an insane extreme, and we literally won’t see him for days. One of my roommates from last year did the same at the Coop, which at least has windows, but is still pretty gloomy inside if you’re not right next to them. And I know we’re not alone.

Nowadays, the average person spends more than 90 percent of his time indoors. I don’t have stats from before industrialization, but that has to be nearly double the amount of time a normal human being would have spent inside in an agrarian society. Clearly society has changed, we’re not all farmers anymore, but that doesn’t mean we have to completely shutter ourselves away inside.

The sun is shining, the grass is getting green, birds are all twitterpated, the robins, and more notably at Colgate, the swans have returned, it’s consistently not snowing. Spring is here. So go out and enjoy the sun, dance naked under the next full moon (April 13, in case you were curious) to celebrate new life and not being confined indoors by snow and ice, grab a Frisbee and a friend and find some green space, or just take your work and do it outside. After a winter in upstate New York, we should all be taking the time to enjoy the sun and warm weather since it has finally decided to reappear.