I’ve spent seven-and-a-half days of my life on the Vern Express.

I know that seems like a lot of time. But if you don’t believe me, I did the math.

When I’m on the Vex, I’m antsy about what else I could be doing. I check my phone every minute and mentally curse the driver for not speeding. I could be doing work, taking notes in class or sitting down for lunch, but instead I’m on a bus, stuck in traffic.

And while I loved living on the Vern, I always felt just a little bit jealous that I didn’t live on the Foggy Bottom Campus, where students live a transit-free life. But each year, as more and more students live on the Vern, this loathsome intra-campus travel becomes a more pervasive issue.

And after all, GW students are known to count every minute and fret over wasted time.

But one day toward the end of the year, when the traffic on Foxhall Road was particularly heavy, I had a realization. Maybe these moments on the Vex aren’t so bad at all. They remind me to take a breath, and to take notice of the small things.

For me, Vex time is planning time. I spend the whole ride working out the details of my day and thinking about what other meaningful things I could be doing with that time. I doubt I’m alone in that.

During lectures, many of us are looking forward to getting out of class and getting ready for the weekend. We start thinking about papers and finals a week in advance. We plan our schedules for August in early April, and a summer internship is often finalized during the winter.

And the University’s D.C.-focused marketing campaign — which starts as early as during admissions pitches — only contributes to the career-centered and future-oriented feel on campus.

While it’s not necessarily a bad thing to think ahead, it can cause us to occasionally forget that we are, at the end of the day, students. At an accepted students luncheon, I had to calm someone down because she was hell-bent on figuring out her internships before she had even enrolled. Our four years here should be about learning important skills and having meaningful experiences, not about resumé padding.

It’s a shame that many college students are so focused on their futures that they don’t take enough time to live in the present. This trend has caused more students to major in high-paying fields like business and finance while fewer turn to the humanities.

Even Harvard University released a report last week pledging to boost humanities programs after finding that it had let less career-oriented fields fall by the wayside.

At the end of the day, we must make sure that college students are taught critical thinking skills and are given the opportunity to hone in on their writing ability — true 21st century skills that go a long way in nearly any profession, and make the college experience itself more fulfilling.

College is filled with learning experiences both inside and outside of the classroom. Every moment doesn’t have to be geared toward becoming a professional.

I’ve spent seven-and-a-half days of my life on the Vex. But that wasn’t just wasted time.

So as we look towards the fall, I know I’ll spend less time thinking about where I’m going and a little more about where I am. We never know what we could be missing.

Dan Grover, a sophomore majoring in English, is a Hatchet columnist.