Editorials featured in the Forum section are solely the opinions of their individual authors.
It’s finals week, then I’m out of here. It feels like just a day ago that it was snowing out, just a week ago that I came back to Pittsburgh from winter break, feeling sort of rested and rejuvenated, and just a month ago that I had orientation week.
This is likely a familiar story, and one that may resonate with you. Except, I question how true it is. Thinking about the people I’ve met, the crazy and sometimes unbelievable experiences I’ve had, and even how the world has changed since I arrived at Carnegie Mellon last August, it’s been an eternity since I started.
I’m bad at names, but I’ve learned hundreds this year. So whenever I think about how fast time has seemed to fly, I think about those names. But, my perception of distance in time isn’t at all consistent: if I try to remember how I met some of my closest friends here, I must’ve been friends with them forever since I don’t recall how I ever met them. Ultimately, I speculate that the past events which I happen to think about more are the ones I’ll recall when I reminisce. But when I think about an event in more detail, it feels more recent. That’s a little undramatic of an explanation, but it makes sense.
How do I cope with this? I journal. I don’t often look back at what I’ve already written in my journal, but when I do, I begin to remember events I’d totally forgotten. On occasion I have to convince myself I didn’t just make up that whole paragraph about how I planned to wake up at 6 a.m. the next morning (For those curious, I didn’t wake up at 6 a.m. the next morning), or how I used to only have one 80-minute class on Tuesdays. That must’ve been forever ago.
Even if I reason all of this out, I question how helpful it is to convince myself that time hasn’t flown by in the blink of an eye. I’ve repeatedly caught myself thinking, “Oh, seven or eight weeks? That’s not that long at all.” That’s half a semester, and the longest I’ve ever been in Pittsburgh consecutively. During first semester, I didn’t think this; maybe the three weeks between Thanksgiving break and winter break felt short, but not the entire semester. But during second semester, not only does time seem to fly by for some reason, I anticipate time flying by in advance. Now that I’ve been here and done that, everything is less novel. That’s to be expected, and there’s not much to do to counter it other than following the typical advice of trying to notice and enjoy the little things. But it’s a little sad nonetheless.
In my experience, Carnegie Mellon students tend to follow a very finite list of conversation topics, and time flying by doesn’t usually make it onto that list. I have no intention of adding time flying onto that list, and if I do, well then, oops. A common (and definitely at least partially true) Carnegie Mellon stereotype is that students are crazy busy. To the extent that stereotype is truthful for each individual student, perhaps that causes time to fly faster because we have less time to regain our footings and remember the past — or perhaps that makes time crawl slower because we have so much more occupying our time. But either way, I find it useful to pay attention to how we perceive time, even if only to spur reflection. Carnegie Mellon students are known for doing so much with their time — it’d be a shame to not fully enjoy what we do in the moment, or especially to do so much you can’t enjoy what’s supposed to be enjoyable.
I don’t have the answers to life; I can’t explain why time sometimes flies and sometimes crawls. (On that note, if you do happen to have the answers to life, please email me.) But until someone does email me, the best we can do is reflect. Maybe time didn’t fly so fast after all, or maybe it did. Either way, I know a lot has changed since last August, and a lot will continue to change. I’ve enjoyed my time more so than not, and that’s what matters at the end of the day. Ultimately, whether time flies or crawls doesn’t change the fact that we should seek to learn from and enjoy our time. So, unlike me, don’t stress about time too much.
Leave a Reply