This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at St. John's chapter.
For those of you that have yet to discover the crazy awesomeness that is Doctor Who, it is (to put very very simply) a show about a time traveling alien named The Doctor who goes around saving planets (mostly planet earth). This amazing show is produced by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and has been on the air since the 1960s. The show went into hiatus in 1989, came back for a tv movie, and was officially rebooted on BBC in 2005. It is now in the ninth season of the reboot series, with the wonderful Peter Capaldi serving as The Doctor. In the +50 years that this show has been around it has taught us several life lessons, more than one can recount, but here are 6 life lessons that Doctor Who has taught us.
- Time is a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey…stuff.Thanks to the fabulous tenth Doctor (David Tennant) we learned that time is not exactly linear, it’s a big mess of …stuff. So you took off two (or more) years before coming to college? So what if you’re in your super senior year? There is no specific timeline you have to follow in life! Yes there are people who graduate in four years straight out of high school but that doesn’t mean we all have to follow that path.
- Don’t forget your past as you look to your future.During his regeneration into the twelfth Doctor (technically thirteenth but whatever…semantics), eleven (Matt Smith) reminded his companion Clara that people change all the time, some change every day but it is important to remember who and how you were in the past in order to shape the person you hope to become in the future.
- Bowties (and fezzes) are cool.In a city like New York, you cannot be afraid to experiment with your fashion choices. Whether or not everyone will agree with your choice of clothing or accessories (RIP fez) remember that fashion is a means of expressing YOURSELF not necessarily conforming to what others think you should wear.
- Don’t Blink.We don’t mean that literally, you obviously need to blink, it means don’t brush something off as unimportant just because it seems harmless (statues seem harmless enough but we’ve been taught otherwise). Just because an assignment isn’t due until the end of the semester, that doesn’t’ mean it’s not something you should just ignore until the deadline is next week.
- Find your own “Zero Room”.For my classic Who fans, you might remember that the fifth Doctor was taken to the zero room to get over his regeneration sickness, away from what is the chaos of the universe. College is just as chaotic and we all need to find our own “Zero Room”, free from distractions where we can do whatever we please in peace.
- Sometimes the better destination is where you’re needed and not where you wanted to go.Eleven: You didn’t always take me where I wanted to goIdris (The Tardis): No, but I always took you where you needed to go.Your plans may currently include working on Wall Street, making a ridiculous salary but that may not be where you end up. You may end up living in suburbia and working as a statistics teacher, helping the younger generation understand and be as interested in numbers as you were at their age and play a part in shaping their future.