Woah, is it
August already? How did that happen? I could’ve sworn it was barely July. I
guess it’s true when they say time goes faster the older you get. It seems a
bit too fast for someone my age, though.
It makes me
think back to my days in school, when each day dragged on and on. I wouldn’t go
so far as to say I disliked school, but I always found it tedious. I enjoyed
learning, but the information I was taught was spread out over too much time. I
always felt that everything covered over the course of a school year could’ve
been taught to me in a month or two.
Then, there’s
all the time that was spent reviewing what was taught in previous years. True,
it was necessary to a point, but I always felt I was being re-taught what I already
knew when all I needed were a few key points.
I look back
at all those years now and think, what a waste. I know that I learned a lot of
valuable things – my love of reading and writing was greatly nurtured by school
– but, at the same time... I feel like I learned far too little for the time
spent. Especially with how much longer the days felt.
The
absolute worst part, though, is the skill I became most proficient in. The
skill of how to do nothing.
Either
because I finished my in-class work early or because my brain wasn’t feeling up
to it at the time so I was leaving it for homework (this was quite common in
the heat of summer, during the two allergy seasons that hit me or if I had a
cold in the winter), there were times in school when there was simply nothing
to do. Everyone was supposed to be working, so we weren’t allowed to talk (not
that I was much of a talker). So, I learned the art of doing nothing.
If my brain
was feeling functional, I could spend the time thinking – the favourite
pass-time of an introspective child. If not, well... it was simply a trick of
looking like I was working while waiting for the class to end.
I almost
feel like this is something intentionally taught in school. The other side of
looking at it is “how to pass the time when there is no work to do” which is,
sadly, directly applicable to the workplace. It’s almost as if we are
intentionally taught how to waste time.
Then we get
older and time goes faster. We’re proficient at wasting time, but there no
longer seems to be time to waste. We base all our perceptions of time off how
long those days in the school room were and we wonder how much we could get
done if we had that much time and energy again.
Whereas a
day used to be a long time, soon it becomes short. Then a week becomes our definition
of a short amount of time. Not long after that, months go flying by as if they
were only one week long.
Before
long, a year is thought of as a short span of time.
I watch all
this time zipping past and wonder how fast time will pass for me in another
decade. More than that, though, I look back to my years in school and wonder
why I was forced to waste so much of my most valuable time.
If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.
