A boring summer job is where you learn the difference between a slow hour and a wasted one.

Not every empty hour is the same kind of empty. An hour that drags can still be doing something, covering a shift, earning money, holding a place open, while a wasted one leaves nothing behind in any direction. Boring work teaches you to tell them apart, because you have time to feel the difference. Once you can, you stop treating all dull time as equally dead.

During your next slow stretch at work or in class, decide what the hour is for. Learning the job properly, thinking something through, being useful to whoever is busier. Dullness with a purpose attached stops feeling like being robbed.