As an international student, working on my studies feels a lot like being stuck in a time warp. A week spent cooped up in Du Bois feels like an eternity, while a semester packed with exams and assignments seems to vanish in the blink of an eye. This phenomenon, familiar to most students, is a fascinating quirk of our perception of time. Here, I hope to explore the reasons why weeks drag on while semesters seem to zoom by.
- The never ending to-do list
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Weeks often feel slow because they’re filled with individual tasks. Each day presents a new to-do list, and a seemingly endless string of deadlines and commitments. Checking off items may offer fleeting victories, but the list itself keeps replenishing, creating a sense of constant busyness and forward progress at a snail’s pace.
- THE MONOTONY OF ROUTINE
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The repetitive nature of weekly schedules contributes to the feeling of slowness. Classes, meals, commutes to the dining hall – the routine offers little variation, blurring days into one another. I think this is also more apparent in Amherst, as it is a fairly small college town and doesn’t offer fast-paced city life if you prefer that. Without exciting events or breaks in the monotony, weeks can feel like a never-ending treadmill.
- The anticipation trap
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As students, we often find ourselves fixated on upcoming events – exams, project deadlines, even semester breaks. This constant focus on the future creates a feeling of waiting, stretching out the present moment and making weeks feel longer than they should.
- semester spreads: a blur
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Semesters, in contrast, are packed with a wider variety of these experiences bunched together. Exams, projects, social events, holidays – the constant change in activity creates a sense of dynamism. Time seems to speed up as we navigate from one experience to the next which we don’t realise at the time.
- The goalpost effect
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With a semester-long view, deadlines and milestones feel further away, creating a false sense of security. We convince ourselves there’s so much time to catch up, leading to procrastination and a frantic scramble towards the end. This rush of activity at the semester’s close makes the earlier weeks seem like a distant memory.
- The sense of nostalgia
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As semesters progress, the earlier weeks recede into the background. We tend to remember highlights and stressful periods more vividly, creating a skewed perception of time. Looking back, a semester feels like a whirlwind of activity compared to the seemingly endless slog of individual weeks.
It could be the pressure of being new in a new land, and trying to balance studies with exploring everything this new culture has to offer. It’s this constant push and pull that makes time seem so elastic in semesters. The key is finding a balance within this warped sense of time. Some solutions that seem to work for me are injecting more variety into my routine, focusing on the present moment, and reminding myself of the progress I’m making – one chapter, one assignment at a time. All the while, keeping an eye on the horizon, knowing that the end of the semester will eventually arrive, even if it feels like a lifetime away.
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