Ask yourself, right now, what the word “work” means to you. What images come to your mind? Is it a carpenter adding a last layer of polish to his newly designed table? Is it an overworked law student, with bags under her eyes and profanities under her breath? Is it a mathematician, shivering with awe at what he has proven? One image cannot seem to stand alone here: work is not always mental or physical labor, nor is it always the fulfillment gained by having done something well. If it were always the former, there would be no such thing as job satisfaction. And if it were always the latter, then our sense of accomplishment would be dangerously low. For me, work has always been a packaging of the labor that tests your endurance and the feeling of pleasure that comes after. This definition of work is unromantic and saps energy from your day. Nonetheless, it is practical, and it makes sense for most college students. We don’t all love the classes we take, but we do our best in each of them, and the ones that we love hopefully give us insights into our career and our future lives. Fair, yes?

No. Not fair. Not fair at all.

I learned just how wrong I was in my definition of work a few months ago, when I met a college senior—let’s call her Sara—who was terminally ill, suffering from pancreatic cancer. Yet she was determined to graduate with honors in mathematics, while waitressing on the side to pay for her tuition and doing research in theoretical physics. In our conversation, she smiled at me through bloodshot eyes, buried in a mountain of paperwork in a cubicle-sized dorm room. Her skin was yellow and frail, but her eyes shone with an intensity that I had rarely witnessed. As she went through the story of the discovery of her cancer, she told me of her denial, her anger and finally her acceptance of her condition. As a dying woman, she defined her college experience in a new way. There was no time to waver when it came to her academic choices: she could no longer justify taking classes just because they might have long-term value. She had deep conversations with her professors from day one, read academic papers with an unmatched intensity and discovered the intellectual and personal loves of her life. For her, there was no current sacrifice of happiness for a larger, undefined, unexpected goal. She didn’t waddle between alleys of thought and intern at places she didn’t understand or appreciate in the hope of a letter of recommendation. She focused her attention on something she truly loved. She studied like an Olympic athlete practices his or her sport. In short, she lived life in the face of death.

I think many of us at Stanford are too secure about our own mortality. We bathe in passing time as if it is never-ending. I have been guilty of the very same—being a trivial student at times, asking petty questions of professors and worrying about the exam more than the knowledge itself because this class isn’t the most important thing in my life. I still find myself using cheap high school gimmicks that have no place at a university like Stanford. Yet the urgency of meaningful work can define someone just as deeply as a lifelong love can. Sara has done this for me—she has allowed me to move my definitions of work from an outer to an inner reality. Sara couldn’t allow her work to be anything she didn’t love. For her, work was not endurance for a sense of satisfaction. No—work was her satisfaction.

I think many of us hope we view our “actual jobs” this way. Yet we put off this expectation of work until after we graduate and enter the industry or the job market. But isn’t our job currently “student”? Are we living our adult lives right now? In Sara’s case, it was the urgency of her mortality that led her to this redefinition. But in our case, she can lead by example.

I found recently that Sara passed away the same day that Benoît Mandelbrot did. It seems fitting for the universe to regard the two in the same breath. If you can read newspapers in heaven, Sara, know this: your life—and your death—has touched more than just those you know.

Know any Saras in your own life? Drop Aaditya Shidham a note at [email protected].