Time

"Work is hard.  Distractions are plentiful.  And time is short."

- Adam Hochschild

I feel like there just isn't enough time these days.  Not that time-management was ever a strong point for me, but the last few weeks have flown by.  Each day, I feel like I'm constantly astounded by how quickly time flys by.

Sunday night, I pulled an all-nighter working on a 10 page paper - there just wasn't enough time to sleep.  Today, I ended up writing one sentence for one of my 13 short answer questions for my history test.  Why?  Because I didn't have nearly enough time to answer each question to demonstrate what I knew.  Somehow, I found myself with only 5 questions answered after an hour had passed, with 8 to answer in 30 minutes.  The same issue arose last week with both of my Economics exams.  Who knew that I would be pressed for time after being given 3 hours to answer 4 questions on my monetary relations exam?  And luckily I had memorized all the formulas for my finance exam, since I was hard pressed to complete that exam in the allotted 2 hours.

But the time issue is also playing into other aspects of my life, besides testing.  When I go to the gym nowadays, suddenly 45 minutes have gone by.  I went to ballet class this evening, and I felt like we'd only gone through half of the exercises when the teacher was suddenly ending the class - it had already been an hour.  Even commuting seems quick these days - I jump on the metro, pull out my book and suddenly I'm rushing to get my stuff together and off the train before I miss my stop.  It's not that I'm in a rush - actually quite the opposite.  I spend most of my life rushing from location to location due to my penchant for running eternally late; its almost as if life has finally decided to match my pace.

I guess the final aspect comes down to this : I have less than one month left in Paris.  All year I've had this concept of my time here as long; surely not indefinite, since I knew that I would eventually be returning to the US, but long enough.  And now, everything is winding down - final exams, evaluations, goodbye parties... It was that moment when a friend and I had to actually plan the next and possibly last time we'll see each other here (obviously we'll be able to see each other in the States, but you know what I mean).  When I see posters of events, shows or exhibitions I want to go to, and then realize I will no longer be here.

It's that moment when my host mom says she doesn't even want to think about how soon I leave, that she's avoiding it.

The quote above rings so true at this moment for me, even though I imagine the author meant it in a somewhat different context.  But I shall make it my own, since it rings true nonetheless.  The work this year was hard.  I've definitely pulled the most all-nighters of my life, had the most nervous breakdowns in a year, and felt the worst, academically, that I've ever felt.  Luckily there were plenty of distractions provided by Paris and Europe as well as by the amazing people I've met here.  The distractions surely both helped and hurt with the work dilemma.  But in the end, time is short.  I feel like I have so much left to do and to see, and the reality is that this little adventure is almost over.