Sometimes time seems to pass incredibly slowly.
When you’re sitting in that class that you hate, staring at the clock tick by on the wall for 50, or if you’re really unfortunate, 75 minutes, you feel as if you’re glued to that seat forever.
Everybody feels this way sometimes — no matter what your job is or how you spend your time.
Part of being human is sometimes wishing that you could somehow speed up the hands of time.
However, it’s also part of the human experience to reflect on the past few days, weeks, months and even years and wonder where time went.
In retrospect, life happens fast.
Last week, I Skyped a friend studying abroad in Australia, and he had already taken the first of his two final exams earlier that day.
That seemed ridiculously early to be taking final exams, but final exams at UNC start in three-and-a-half weeks.
You could also think of them as beginning a mere week and a half after UNC’s Thanksgiving break.
That thought’s crazy to me.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it’s still 70 and sunny in New Orleans nearly every day.
I’ll take this weather over the recent North Carolina forecast of 50 and rainy any day.
But it definitely doesn’t feel like the fall is coming to a close.
When you have a set block of time in front of you, most people make a list of things they want to accomplish.
This list may be internal or may be written out on paper; it doesn’t make a big difference which.
In the case of a semester, which is a little more than three months, it’s easy to feel like you have plenty of time to get everything done that you wanted to accomplish.
This mentality is dangerous because it makes putting things off all too easy.
Earlier this morning, I checked out the list of restaurants I wanted to try, bands I wanted to see, and other things I wanted to do in New Orleans this fall.
Okay, the list was pretty long. I’m going to have a very busy last few weeks in the city if I want to experience everything that I’d hoped to.
I told myself in the past that I would be more careful to avoid this fallacy of thinking in the future, but it always seems to happen.
It’s hard to push yourself to accomplish everything that you want as soon as possible when you can easily put off finishing things at a more leisurely pace.
It’s OK though.
Right now, I’m hyping up my game as far as making sure that I experience as much in New Orleans as possible while still here.
I can relax later, but I’ll never get back these last few weeks in such a unique city.
I imagine that people feel the same way about accomplishing goals during the last few weeks of the fall semester, right before the holidays set in.
It’s that time, once again. It’s time to pull yourself together and get everything done that you’d planned on working through during the last few months.
You’ll be glad that you stepped up your game and achieved your goals when the fall season’s over.
Promise.
Lea Luquire is a senior Spanish major from Asheville interning in New Orleans, La. Contact Lea at llea@email.unc.edu.
