It's crazy how time works. 3 weeks is such a short amount of time, but at the same time seems like forever. When this program finally began, I distinctly remember thinking about how long the first day dragged on, how overwhelming it was, and it seemed like the program would never end. My daily schedule was always packed - if I wasn't traveling somewhere, I was buried somewhere deep in the library, researching. I had I think, one day where I came back to my room and was able to just unplug for an hour and completely relax. Because of this, the days always sped by, and as I got more comfortable in class and made more friends, the faster they seemed to go. Funny how that works. But like they say, time flies when you're having fun.
I was sitting in our suite's lounge with Claire this evening, and we had this discussion - one that I'm sure everybody on campus right now is having or already had with somebody. How it feels like we were all just moving in and unpacking yesterday, but at the same time we all acknowledge that we've been gone for nearly half of Summer. Weird how everybody asks that unintentionally rhetorical question, which isn't even unique to this situation. After any camp, at graduation, etc., it's the question that's on everybody's mind - where did the time go?
Our last day of class, we just watched most of JFK for the first session. At noon, we broke and decided to all get lunch together as a class. We headed down Amsterdam to Thai Market to eat together. It was really nice to be able to spend as much time as possible with my classmates on the last day, especially since a lot of them are commuters, so I don't see them outside of class anyway. When we got back to class to finish JFK, we were left with about an hour of class left. I expected us to use that time to just talk or watch more SNL skits or at least just hang out, but Professor Porwancher caught us all off guard and just dismissed us. He gave us a few nice words, saying that he genuinely appreciated our class more than any other he'd taught, and when he let us all go an hour early it all hit me - just how sad I actually was to leave. My classmates and I said our goodbyes outside the building, and shed a few tears as well. I really can't believe just how much this 3 week class has affected me, and at the beginning I did not at all expect to be so sad to see it finally end.
I'm sad to have to say goodbye to all the people that I've met, particularly Claire. That's another thing, when I started this program off 3 weeks ago I genuinely believed that I would not make any truly close friends - 3 weeks isn't enough right? It's such a short amount of time! But I was wrong. It breaks my heart a little to think that I won't be seeing her at breakfast every morning, or that I can't just run across the hall anymore to get her to go to Times Square with me. 3 weeks was long enough. There was so much that went into every day, so much substance, so much character, that made it enough to substantiate such a great friendship. But time works in the most frustrating way - it rushes you through the good parts and stretches out the sad bits. And when everything's over - the good, and the bad - you're just left with this grey area of reflection, where all you can do is weigh out those good parts, that seemed to go so quickly, with those bad, slower bits. And it doesn't ever really make sense, so you just think on it. You can't go back now, you can't change anything. All you can do is try your darndest to slow it down a little bit more, but the fact of the matter is that that's not the way that confusing science of time works. When you're enjoying it, time won't slow down. So you just have to take it as it comes, and when the going gets rough and time slows down again, you look back on the good days, the best moments, and you try to preserve them for just a little longer.
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