As someone who has struggled with tardiness throughout high school and college, I often wonder why I am still resistant to the overwhelming cultural pressure to have a rigid schedule and always be on time. I am suspicious of the United States’ dogmatic adherence to the clock as a construct, as many other places and cultures have a more flexible view of time. Additionally, lateness is often framed in intensely moral terms in educational or professional settings, as a personal failure or sign of laziness, or as an act of disrespect to others.
However, since Oberlin College professors have different policies and attitudes toward tardiness and attendance, it can be difficult to form an intentional relationship with time. As students, we face many pressures that cause us to load up our schedules and sacrifice attendance and punctuality to ever-increasing burnout. Instead of feeling trapped by the clock, those who struggle with punctuality might benefit from considering less oppressive ways of viewing time.
The way that we perceive time, its value, and its presence in our lives shapes everything we do. It is theorized within the field of chronemics, or the study of time perception, that there are two main ways of perceiving time: monochronic and polychronic. First developed by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in 1959, it is generally thought that the U.S., Canada, Western and Northern Europe,, and economic powers in Asia like Japan and South Korea follow a monochronic way of perceiving time. It is then assumed that the rest of the world, including Africa, Latin America, Southern Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia, follows a polychronic system. This categorization is often oversimplified and exoticizing, so it might be helpful for our relationship with our work obligations to frame monochronic and polychronic perceptions as two ends of a continuum that tends to fluctuate one way or another depending on the place in question.
Monochronic perceptions see time as linear, tangible, and limited. Monochrons do one thing at a time and compartmentalize their activities within schedules, routines, and deadlines. Monochromism is linked with the advent of industrialization in the Western world, time becoming seen as capital and a resource that can be “wasted,” “killed,” “bought,” “spent,” and “traded.”
Polychronism, on the other hand, is defined by a tendency to take on many activities at once and have a more flexible, expanded view of time. In India, for example, the concept of “Indian Stretchable Time” playfully refers to the cultural views on punctuality. As alluded to in an article by Swati Chandra in the New Dehli Post, it is completely normal to be anywhere between 30 minutes and more than an hour late to a social engagement, party, or wedding. In a professional and interpersonal context, it is also thought that polychronic time values relationships over efficiency. For example, a meeting might run late because of an interesting discussion, regardless of whether people have prior commitments. In a basic sense, a monochron might primarily define the meeting by the period of time it takes up relative to the rest of their day, while a polychron thinks first about the content and goals of the meeting.
The difference between monochronic and polychronic perceptions of time extends beyond the structure of our daily lives, deeply affecting the way that we live and see ourselves. The U.S. is one of the most monochronic cultures in the world, so we value staying busy, rigidly organizing our schedules, and productivity. As college students, our lives are centered around constantly looming deadlines and classes we cannot be late to. We are meant to be more focused on “doing” than “being.” Additionally, on an existential level, if time is a resource equal and related to capital, do the years of our lives amount to anything more than large masses of potential capital? Is that all we are?
Despite the arguably more human appeal of polychronic time, it is not the reality of the system we live in. We are paying the College to be subject to deadlines, non-negotiable class meeting times, and Google Calendars with neatly separated activities. However, amid the focus on our responsibility to the clock, we forget our responsibilities to our professors and each other. It is easy to rebel against the oppressiveness of our schedules by being late and skipping class because that is something we control.
Your time management skills do not define you. Whether you find scheduling and punctuality to come naturally or you find yourself constantly interrupted and finishing things at the last minute, it is perfectly normal to have a fluctuating and uneasy relationship with time.
The polychronic insight is that our time is not entirely ours. It is disruptive and disrespectful to be late to class, not to mention skipping. It damages students’ relationships with professors and makes them appear unserious about their education. Furthermore, students rely on each other for insightful discussions and fostering an environment of learning. If we believe that class time directly translates to capital, then we ignore all the most meaningful parts of a liberal arts education.
As participants in the Oberlin College community and mission, we have responsibilities to others and ourselves that we must develop respect for. Don’t be on time because that is what your schedule says, but because you believe you owe it to yourself and those around you.
