When I received an iPhone as a high school graduation gift, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I thought I had just been handed a new, sexy piece of technology, a new best friend that would serve primarily as a bodyguard eternally shielding me from boredom. I never thought that this best friend would soon force me to contemplate my own mortality and consider the worth of my time spent not only on Earth but also in a liberal arts college that presents a wide range of options for my education.This past Saturday, as I was riding the shuttle into Boston with some friends I found myself doing something that has become a frequent habit since I've acquired my new best friend: ignoring the friends I'm with and browsing the "free" section of the App Store. Generally, this compels me to download an addictive, time-wasting game that will give me a new excuse to ignore the people who care about me and entertain myself for weeks. This time, however, something different caught my eye-"iDie." From its application description, I was lured into downloading what seemed to be a morbidly dark, tongue-in-cheek, superficial "life expectancy calendar." All I had to do was type (or rather, touch) in my gender and birthday, and I'd be informed how long I had until my "deathday" according to "life expectancy estimates . generated from the United States Social Security Administration's actuarial Life Table from 2004" according to Apple's description of the App.

I'm not a numbers person, and that's most likely why it wasn't until I actually saw the graph-a quarter filled-politely informing me, "Your life is 25.492716853% complete," that my world was flipped upside-down. It's not every day that I contemplate my own mortality. The Brandeis shuttle to Boston isn't necessarily the most cinematic place to assess the worth of one's time spent on earth thus far, but I had no choice. The decimal places in that long percentage I saw on the screen were increasing! The graph was filling up. I was dying by the second and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Of course I never actually thought I would live forever, but actually watching with my own eyes as my life slowly moved to become more and more "complete," I couldn't help but think of what I could do to make it truly complete.

What should I be doing more? What should I be doing less? Should I spend my time filling my life with beautiful girls and meaningless physical contact or should I devote my efforts to finding a worthy life-mate? Should I exercise more and try to slow this clock, or should I waste less of my time exercising and savor my remaining moments with the people I love, doing things that I love to do? Who should I room with next year? Should I use my Brandeis education to take more practical, career-oriented courses, which would ensure great wealth shortly after graduation? Or should I abandon the idea of school altogether, and venture out and see and experience new and exciting things in the world?

When I got off of the shuttle at Beacon and Massachusetts Avenue, I approached the clichéd "walk across the busy street with new perspective on life" that I've seen in movies too many times, but I couldn't decide how to do so. Should I run across even though cars have the right of way to get to my destination early and experience the most of my time left? Or should I wait cautiously, ensuring that I won't be hit by a car, allowing for further opportunities for living the fullest possible experience? Once my friends and I were seated at the restaurant we'd chosen for dinner, I was noticeably flipping out, uncontrollably asking waiters and strangers if sitting and waiting for our food is really the optimal usage of our remaining days. I excused myself to the bathroom, pulled my so-called BFF from my pocket and searched the App Store. Maybe there would be an application to set me straight, to tell me how to react to this death sentence I've just downloaded. Why wasn't there any application called "iLive?" I ended up downloading "iTV" (an app with which I could miraculously watch TV on my phone anytime and anywhere-within the 3G network, of course!), washing off my face, and returning to the table.

I've cooled down considerably since last Saturday night, but it would be entirely false if I were to tell you that my introspective tantrum has brought me any closer to understanding life and my personal time management. If there is any lesson to be learned from iDie, it is that my graph is constantly inching closer to becoming filled and there is nothing that I or anyone else can do about it.

It took a highly controversial Feb. 24 New York Times article titled, "In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth" to help me come to terms with my current existence in college in the scheme of the 74.5 percent of my life that I have left. Many consider the four years spent in college as separate from the real world-a transitory phase of life filled with hard work (for some), innumerable intoxicated evenings (for most) and casual sex (for what seems to be everybody except for me). Today, with a solid degree in a field like engineering, even if you think of college as empty time, one can be almost guaranteed a lucrative job shortly after graduation. What guarantees do we have coming out of Brandeis as English, Politics or Near Eastern and Judaic Studies majors? As the money my parents have set aside for my education follows recent market trends, I've been receiving increasingly anxious phone calls from my father expressing this concern. What will I have to show for four years' worth of tuition money invested in this period of time? By then, my life will be more than 30 percent complete!

It is impossible to claim that anybody knows the answer to this question, but even after less than one semester taking part in this liberal arts experiment, I feel the effects. I'm becoming instilled with the invaluable tools and skills necessary to impact the world as significantly as possible before I leave it.

And, having experienced 25.4929578183 percent of it so far, that is the best meaning of life I could come up with.