"As if you could kill time..."

so the last few weeks have been pretty uneventful here in edinburgh. with limited funds, daylight, and motivation, ive tried to not expend myself more than is absolutely necessary. the good news is that i am in good company. there seems to be a general tone of ennui amongst the members of my program; no one i have talked to has expressed any genuine interest in their classes or studies yet this semester. it is hard to tell whether this feeling is truly universal, or if it began from one nefariously influential member and gradually spread through the rest of the class, assisted in its infectious invasion by the weak collective will that has also pervaded the programme.
and while avoiding and bemoaning seemingly meaningless class readings is fun for a while, i cant help but start to feel guilty. i dont know if you all have seen the film Dead Poets Society, but there is a scene early on where Robin Williams, who plays a recently hired English and Literature teacher at a highly prestigious college-prep school, leads his class to a trophy case in one of the school's hallways. he explains to his class of two dozen male teenagers that the boys in the photographs from years past once stood in the same spot as they currently exist; they were young, ambitious, privileged, and with nothing but time and potential ahead of them. williams then explains that the athletes in the pictures are now contributing to the growth of graveyard flowers. successfully capturing their attention, williams begins circling the group (whose attention is now strictly on the faces in the black and white photos), whispering "...carpe diem....carpe diem." williams is later shown in class reading the famous lines from poet Robert Herrick, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And the same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying." these scenes portray the central theme of the movie: taking advantage of the day you are given. as a last emphasis on this theme, i have to draw attention to Henry David Thoreau's poignant observation: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." And while this is an oft-quoted line, the line immediately prior is all too ignored:
"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity!"
I love that last line. so as i sit here, masticating every bite of Kung Pao chicken into amorphous clumps of chaos, i start to feel a tad guilty. although it's completely quixotic to expect myself to "carpe" every "diem", i should probably be making more of my short time here in Scotland, not just waiting around for that long off April day when the mercury breaches 60 to take advantage of my surroundings. hopefully by my next post i'll have something of significance to report.
i hope everyone is well. cheers.