[freshfey]

The way I understand it, it means missed days, opportunities and chances. Every day you try to trick the system (meaning life), it teaches you by taking away a day from you. Now it can take that day in a good way (you learnt something) or it can take that day in a bad way (you wasted a valuable 24 hours of your life that you'll never get back).

[hesitz]

Sounds fine, but -- to me -- like many of the other points in the piece, it applies equally both before and after graduation from college. I think a lot of college kids fool themselves into thinking what they do during college doesn't matter; they'll start anew and turn over a new leaf when they graduate and "adult life begins". It doesn't work, those sorts of rationalizations are similar to New Year's Resolutions, which also don't work. Adult life doesn't start with a blank slate after college graduation; college kids are already living their lives and, to use the author's own term, amassing their own life debt.