Ryan

Time Really Does Go Fast

Most of us, when thinking of this school year, might think it is “only” September – it really is not that far along.  But we recently passed the six week mark, and are already about a third of the way done with the first of two semesters this year.  And for many of us, this is our last year in high school.  For years we have heard of applying for college, and it has seemed so far off.  But now it is that time for us, too – and I still feel that I am much too young to be applying for college. 

The reality is that we – even as teenagers – might be older than we feel.  We all know our age, and it has just become a number that we repeat without thinking when asked how old we are.  Many of us, at the start of senior year are sixteen or seventeen years old.  Three years is not all that long a time, and to think that in only three years many of us that currently attend our school will be twenty years – two decades – old, it just seems that it cannot be right.  I don’t feel that old at all.  In a year many of us seniors will officially be adults, and I just wonder where all the time went. 

I have talked to people who clearly remember what it was like in the United States during World War II – they talk about details of life from seventy years ago – and that seems like yesterday to them.  In sixty years, will our “just yesterday” be now?  “Ten years ago,” when you are seventeen years old, might as well have been a century ago.  But even at this point in time, I can look back at events from ten years ago and think, “I remember that, has it really already been ten years?”  When someone says “ten years,” it seems like such a long time.  But when thinking of what we remember from ten years ago, it really does not seem like it was very long ago.  Older people say that the older you get, the faster time seems to go.  If it already seems to go as fast as it does now, then what will it be like when we are much older? 

I remember thinking when I started high school that senior year would be a few years away, and that going through the next four years would seem to take forever, but that at the end I would wonder where the last four years went – how they went by so fast.  Now, as I figured I would, I wonder what happened to the last few years.  Freshman year, I had friends who were seniors.  They were not there the next year, and I thought nothing of it – they had graduated and gone to college.  Then the same happened sophomore year and junior year.  Now that I am a senior, I am the one who will not be at the same school next year, and it seems like it cannot be right – it does not seem like it has been almost four years.  But it is already almost time to start applying to colleges – and all this is what I realized because of that.  And I realize now that even though we should plan for the future, we should value the time we have while we have it.