The cyclical vortex of the undergraduate school week is rife with the twin monotonies of work and repetition. From Monday morning to Friday night there are classes, assignments, homework and tests, and this is played on repeat from the beginning of the semester to the very end of finals week. It really is funny how people turn to their friends with a perplexed look and ask “Hey, where did the semester go?”
It really all comes down to work and repetition. Without work, college would be literally the greatest thing ever (not that it isn’t already). Without repetition — that is, the daily grind of doing what needs to be done drawn out over an entire semester — there is no telling how many students would absolutely lose it. It is the sweet serenity of a routine, the comforting feeling of doing the same thing each and every day that really makes this semester fly and these precious four years seem like one warm, sunny afternoon in the Nature Preserve.
Take a look at Andy Dufresne in Shawshank State Prison. He described those torturous weeks in solitary confinement as the easiest time he’s ever done. Cut off from the outside world 24 hours a day with no sunlight and rotten food — that is what is being called “easy.”
Such is the splendid power of repetition. It has the unique ability to take long stretches of virtually anything and condense them down to a distant memory. Think about it: We don’t remember long stretches of nothing followed by equally long stretches of nothing. It just becomes a singular expansive bareness. The mind serves as a cookie cutter, dividing the world into what is different and what is the same. We are not computers that store every last bit of data. Rather, we (usually) remember the important stuff, the zeniths, nadirs, peaks and valleys that serve as the chapter titles of our respective autobiographies.
So, as the semester progresses to its inevitable end, we are forced to look back at what has happened. Funny how all those crazy weekends stick out like Sarah Palin in any intellectual setting. It makes me wonder, if it was not for all those spontaneous conflagrations that define the “college experience,” would there be anything to remember?
Fifth grade was a blur, but ninth grade? What a freaking year. The summer of ‘08 might not have even happened, but first semester of freshman year? Simply cannot be forgotten. It is the interruptions, the surprises and the breaks of normalcy that stand out as truly memorable.
Speaking of creating memories, too many articles have been written about making the most of your time in college. You need to seize the day, the night, the test, the hour, the moment, ad infinitum. But time isn’t something that can be grasped, savored, then let go. Albert Einstein proved that ogling your watch doesn’t slow down the world, only your distorted perception of it.
You really can’t seize the moment because, by some crude and simple logic, the moment is not seizable. It will pass you by like everything that has happened yesterday, is happening today, and will happen tomorrow. Anyone telling your otherwise is denying reality, which seems to be the new thing nowadays.
So the only real option is to break the monotony that defines this everyday existence. Mired in the flurry of activity that predicates this existence, it can be difficult to determine where to start. Doing all that needs to be done can be overwhelming, and the constant repetition blinds our perception of it. But by at least acknowledging that there is a routine, progress is made towards breaking it. Then this new routine can be broken, and then the new one replacing it is shattered, paving away for the next one’s obliteration.
Maybe reality is just the breaking of old and establishing of new patterns, in which case the richness of life is determined by how many routines you have broken and the memories that such transformation has left you with.
All these adults say their time in college were the best years of their life. It really makes you wonder what the rest of life is like.