Time and I have a very rocky relationship

Opinion

Discussion

Welcome to our online comments feature. To join the discussion, you must first register with Disqus and verify your email address. Once you do, your comments will post automatically. We welcome your thoughts and your opinions, including unpopular ones. We ask only that you keep the conversation civil and clean. We reserve the right to remove comments that are obscene, racist or abusive and statements that are false or unverifiable. Repeat offenders will be blocked. You may flag objectionable comments for review by a moderator.

comments powered by Disqus

December 29, 2009

Marissa Linzi

Time and I have a very rocky relationship. We just don't understand each other very well. I don't understand how one hour can feel like two and a week like an instant. I don't understand how the turn of the millennium was almost a decade ago, when I could swear it just happened. And Time, well, Time doesn't understand or even consider any of my needs. He just chugs along past deadlines and speeds through precious moments, and he insists on carrying me along with him. Furthermore, I maintain that at times, he is intentionally bewildering.

The past few months have only strained our relationship more. First of all, traveling over several time zones overnight is wholly disorienting. I left Boston at 8 a.m. on Saturday, traveled for approximately 11 hours, and arrived in Athens at 2:30 a.m. on Sunday? Explain that one, Time! For the first two weeks, I didn't even try to remember what day it was. Forget about figuring out what time it was at home. Completely beyond my ken.

Then there was Daylight Savings Time. Don't even get me started. Somewhere between Saturday and Sunday of that weekend, there was an awkward period where neither I nor anyone around me was completely sure of the hour. To make matters worse, Greece's Daylight Savings Time began a week earlier than the States'. On top of all this, my laptop is still on Eastern Time—to avoid confusion—and so everything I do on my computer, from Facebook to e-mail to this very column, has a bizarre timestamp on it that I don't even bother paying attention to.

On a broader, and more meaningful, scale, the whole mentality of studying abroad for a semester skews a person's sense of time. Four months was the mantra. "In four months," "for four months," "only four months:" From the beginning, everyone was acutely aware of the transience of our existence as Athenians, as classmates, as neighbors, as roommates, and as friends. I think that awareness somehow altered everyone's perception of pace and time. Fast friendships were formed more quickly than I've ever witnessed, along with a serious relationship or two; hopping a plane to a foreign country for a weekend is more than common—it's expected; and in general, there seems to be a mentality of compressing a longer, fuller experience into a very short few months.

My roommate mentioned the other day that we had five weeks of classes ahead of us. Having just come back from fall break, she probably meant "another long five weeks," but what I heard was "only a short five weeks." I didn't want to hear it. It's all going by far too quickly for me. Next thing I know, I'll be back in the states having to figure out real life.

I suppose Time and I will just have to learn to live with each other. I'll never convince him to speed up a boring lecture or stretch out a lazy afternoon, and I doubt he'll successfully convince me of my own age any time soon. I can only hope he decides to play nice and let me enjoy the rest of my stay in Athens, rather than just look back on it and wonder where it went.

ÔÇæÔÇæÔÇæ

Marissa Linzi is a Derry resident and a Pinkerton Academy graduate. She is a junior at Brandeis University and is currently participating in study abroad program in Greece.