When you were a kid, remember how cartoons always depicted your conscience as a little angel sitting on one shoulder and a little devil sitting on the other? The angel was the part of your brain that always told you the right choice to make, while the little devil usually presented the more enticing but much less virtuous option.
When you are a little kid this is a pretty good analogy. It's easy for you to imagine that a tiny man with horns and a cape is telling you to go for the cookie jar, while another tiny guy with a halo is reminding you that your mom said you had to wait until after dinner.
To me it seems like things change as you get older. I think your brain still has that dual nature, but if I had to personify each side of my conscience as a college student I would need to use new characters. When you get to be our age, I think your little angels and devils are replaced with a mini drill sergeant and a small concierge.
Like the angel, the drill sergeant is the little voice that always tells you what you are supposed to do. The difference is that this side of your college conscience seems to be driven by responsibility instead of virtuosity. Instead of saying "Play nice," it has become the part of your brain that is shouting "Get out of bed and do your homework!"
For the most part, we've outgrown the kind of mischief we used to associate with the miniature devil, and now it's the voice of indulgence we hear. This new voice looks more like the welcoming concierge saying "Relax, put your feet up and leave your worries behind for a while."
These new sides of our conscience aren't quite as black and white as the ones we used to have. We knew for sure that listening to the little devil side was never good; one way or another, you always got caught with your hand in the cookie jar. If you wanted things to end well, it was always better to listen to the angelic voice.
The concierge and the drill sergeant are more evenly matched. Sure, we would all like to say we should listen to the drill sergeant, do everything we are supposed to and never slack off or procrastinate, but that's just not the case.
Take last weekend, for example. After five hellacious days, I made it to Saturday afternoon and my little drill sergeant was still running around in my head reminding me of all the homework and job applications I needed to start. The responsible thing would have been to listen to that voice and spend all of Saturday night catching up, but I decided to ignore it. I listened to the concierge instead, ordered in and spent the night relaxing and watching trashy reality television with my girlfriends. It may not have been the most productive of nights, but taking one evening off made it much easier to face the homework drill sergeant yesterday morning.
I realized that at our age, things are less clear cut, and sometimes you have to let the concierge win. What you are supposed to do and what you need to do are not always the same thing.
Katie's column runs weekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at k.mcnally@cavalierdaily.com.
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