Today, I realized I’m already back to my same old school routine that I’ve been doing for the past two years and the school year just began not even three months ago. The daily walk to my bus stop, the continuous loops through the hallways before first period, my self-assigned window I sit at during power hour. Every moment feels so important but by the next day I completely forgot about it.
High school students have a weird relationship with time. The first week of freshman year feels like forever, each day filled with anxiety of finding your classes and the terrifying fear of not knowing anyone. Now you’re in your first quarter of your junior year, just wanting to get over this repetitive show. Every monday can feel like a repeat of the last, the sound of the regulated bells lulling you into a hypnotic state. Each day feels similar while it’s happening, until you look back and everything has changed.
Recently, small things around the school have shifted without me noticing. In August, everyone was wearing their best shirts and pants for the new school year. Now it’s an ocean of hoodies and sweatpants in less than a month. It’s crazy how people who were complete strangers to me on the first day of school are now some of my favorite people. The hallway posters have changed every week and I barely noticed. Every tiny detail, which seemed so important in the moment, has now dissolved into a complete blur of lost memories.
The intensity of every moment may be the real reason why it disappears. Students are so focused on surviving their U.S. history test or the adrenaline of trying to submit their work by midnight that their brains decide to compress it all. Adults always pressure teens to “make memories” when just trying to survive the day is already hard enough. Everyone says high school flies by, but what they don’t tell you is that it doesn’t feel like flying until it’s all over. That terrifying feeling of time slipping right through your fingers before you’re ready is something, not even your parents warn you about.
What are we supposed to do with this strange feeling? Maybe the point isn’t to remember every single detail, but to remember the moments that actually matter, the ones that were meant to be remembered. Lately I have been taking at least one mental picture each week, not of big things, but the small ones. Me and a friend laughing so hard that we started to cry, the sunlight hitting the window of the classroom perfectly, the relief of submitting that assignment right before midnight. Time is still moving, it’s just up to us to look up every now and then to notice it.
