Timeline
I think it's funny how many reminders we get that we're living on a timeline that has definite definitions of past, present, and future. It's not that hard to look around us and really see how each of these three things really present themselves.
The past is probably the most obvious of the three, but really, it seems to at least hit me the most often in recognizable form. Tonight, for example, walking home, seeing the light on in the dorm room I called home for 2 years, which was walking home from a friend's apartment where we had just talked about some of the things we actually liked about dorm life as opposed to being spread around apartments around campus. Things like that or even things as simple as a 10 minute phone call to an old friend from back home. It's always nice to think about those positive memories from the past.
But even with the present, even though we are obviously always thinking about it, I always find it interesting to try to think about what's going on more from an outside perspective. To think really about what's currently going on. The most obvious example right now is Engineering Open House being this coming weekend, but really just the semester in general. How will we look back at the present in the future?
And then there is the future. Especially being Junior year, I really think this is the first time that I am actually THINKING about the future... not just "thinking" about it... Sure, in the short term, there's things like next fall's course catalog coming out tomorrow, but there's more reminders of the more distant future too. I just went to the auto show a couple of weeks ago where I legitimately started looking for what kind of car I'll want to own after I graduate... own my own car! Or really having to start to think what courses I need to take in my last 2 semesters here so I can try to line up what kind of job I want to do... Amazing that we used to think about what college we were going to... now we need to think about what we want to do with the rest of our lives, and that's only going to get more interesting in the fall when we're actually going to job fairs and start getting job offers.
I just think this has been one of those periods that I can clearly see how linear time really is... how to take lessons from the past and apply them in the present. I'm actually feeling better in general this semester than I have the past few (maybe not these past 2 weeks, but a high concentration of exams and projects will do that). I don't really know if I'm looking at things differently, but maybe I am. Maybe I've finally figured it out...
The past is probably the most obvious of the three, but really, it seems to at least hit me the most often in recognizable form. Tonight, for example, walking home, seeing the light on in the dorm room I called home for 2 years, which was walking home from a friend's apartment where we had just talked about some of the things we actually liked about dorm life as opposed to being spread around apartments around campus. Things like that or even things as simple as a 10 minute phone call to an old friend from back home. It's always nice to think about those positive memories from the past.
But even with the present, even though we are obviously always thinking about it, I always find it interesting to try to think about what's going on more from an outside perspective. To think really about what's currently going on. The most obvious example right now is Engineering Open House being this coming weekend, but really just the semester in general. How will we look back at the present in the future?
And then there is the future. Especially being Junior year, I really think this is the first time that I am actually THINKING about the future... not just "thinking" about it... Sure, in the short term, there's things like next fall's course catalog coming out tomorrow, but there's more reminders of the more distant future too. I just went to the auto show a couple of weeks ago where I legitimately started looking for what kind of car I'll want to own after I graduate... own my own car! Or really having to start to think what courses I need to take in my last 2 semesters here so I can try to line up what kind of job I want to do... Amazing that we used to think about what college we were going to... now we need to think about what we want to do with the rest of our lives, and that's only going to get more interesting in the fall when we're actually going to job fairs and start getting job offers.
I just think this has been one of those periods that I can clearly see how linear time really is... how to take lessons from the past and apply them in the present. I'm actually feeling better in general this semester than I have the past few (maybe not these past 2 weeks, but a high concentration of exams and projects will do that). I don't really know if I'm looking at things differently, but maybe I am. Maybe I've finally figured it out...