Life is full of choices.

More than just a clever catch phrase for beer posters and T-shirts, the motto makes a lot of sense.

Whether it's deciding to wear plaid or stripes, shower or not shower, we make important decisions every day. While some decisions have bigger implications than others (everyone knows one must choose carefully in the dining hall), these choices affect our lives on both a daily and long-term basis.

Take, for example, one's choice to not do one's homework: short-term

effects include relaxation, napping, possibly even a seeing a movie or two; long-term effects include guilt, homework build-up and lowered grades. Did this student choose wisely? Who knows?

Choices in one's life are made solely on one's innermost desires and feelings. Whether moved by want or even guilt, life's decisions represent a person's whole character. In that respect, how can any choice be wrong?

I've questioned my choices a lot this semester. From first applying to study in Washington, D.C., next semester, to writing an antagonistic column criticizing the University, my decisions have often been based upon passion and emotion, not reason.

Never once, though, have I regretted anything I've done. Because of my actions, I will spend a full semester in one of the most (if not the most) influential cities in the world, and I've met some of the most helpful people at the University.

Everything hasn't gone smoothly, though. Every move in life has repercussions, and I will have to face mine for choosing to study in

Washington next semester. I won't see my friends now abroad for another

semester. I can't celebrate with my parents and my friends' parents at Junior Parents' Weekend (an event I'd been looking forward to for a long time). And I'll have to give up a work position next year that I've lusted after for months.

I can't count how many times I've asked myself, Idiot, why are you going away?

There's so much I'll be missing and so much I had planned for next year that will inevitably fall through. Life truly is full of hard choices. I had never really believed in the motto until now.

The difference between choosing wisely and not is in what you use to make your decision.

My roommate has recently encountered a moral dilemma: relax and let loose after a very long, very strenuous semester, or protest the death penalty.

Her heart and mind are at odds, each one fighting its respective cause.

"I should go," she says, noting how much she is against capital punishment. "But I do want to go out," her heart jumps into the debate. "What should I do?? he asks me, an anxious look of confusion on her face.

My response to these problems is always the same: do what you want to do, not what you feel you have to do.

Life is entirely too short to dissect every move, every word, every thought. What will we have left?

What will my roommate do? Her head and heart are still at war. What I tell her is to not live in regret. It is the worst sin one can commit.

So choose wisely. Let your mind rest and your heart take over. It's the best decision you'll ever make.

• Choose Wisely