If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run

I don't quite recall everything I did when I was in university. That's 30 years ago now! I do remember playing the rhythm guitar for the hall's rock band, playing rugby, even some hockey for the university, composing and performing a song for Talentime, writing and staging a musicalas well as chairing the music and dance committee. Yes, I was very much into the social aspects of university life then. I even found myself a wife, courtesy of some hacking into her VAX bulletin board and leaving her original poetry to read.

If the genes pass on as they should, one can assume the next generation would find university life a fulfilling one. And that has indeed been so.

J has been just as active. In his case, he joined the outdoors club, served on the committee for Singapore students and is really involved in the Catholic church and all its activities, including helping up after a hurricane pelted the shores of North Carolina. He also found time to make bi-monthly trips to New York City, and is a proud owner of a Dodge Charger and now living on his own in his student apartment. Oh yes, and being on the Dean's List with Distinction for consecutive years now.

It's M's turn now to figure out how she wants to fill her days. And just only in her second term of her first year, she has already managed to keep herself rather busy and holistically so!

She kept up her sporting life and is now representing her university in Ultimate Frisbee, a game she had picked up recreationally in Singapore when she stood down from softball. She is now playing that competitively in the UK and have just had two matches in the BUCS games.

There is a large population of Singaporeans and Malaysians here in the UK and the student association here actually has quite a bit to do and M had enjoyed the activities they organise (even before term started). So, quite naturally, she wanted to do her bit and has just been elected to the leadership committee as the welfare officer. In this role, she will be helping new students to the university settle in and feel at home with engaging events, and in keeping with her passion, to ensure everyone is well and to look out for their welfare.

Unlike her dad, she has not at all neglected furthering her intellectual development. She has been accepted into a university-based consultancy which specialises in sustainability. Her first project is to research and formulate solutions for carbon capture and sequestration. Right up her alley!

And spiritually, she has been serving on the Order of Malta, specifically serving food to the poor and in fact has just been made a team leader on the Catholic charity.

She does all of this while adjusting to life in her own (and even sorting our the house she and her friends would stay at next year), going to the gym, practising yoga (she is now at an advanced level, from my novice perspective) and keeping up her grades wonderfully with multiple essays written each week which are increasingly now beyond me.

She even cooks for herself sometimes and keep up pretty tidy larder and shelf!

Her days are usually chock full of stuff and still she finds time to connect with friends and fellow Catholics (including those in London and beyond) and with her family.

Rudyard Kipling, in his poem If, wrote "If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run". Many interpret this to mean living your life in full, not wasting a single second and doing so with worthwhile activities, then M is certainly living up to this aspirational advice.

Kipling went on to say that if you can do that, "Yours is the Earth, and everything in it! And - which is more - you'd be a woman, my daughter". I paraphrased it a little but the intent remains exactly the same, that a life lived with purpose is the life of one who has grown up and grown up she has.