Uni High Gargoyle Staff Blog

It’s kind of hard to believe that I once had to walk in silent single file lines from class to class. That was elementary school, which seems so far away now that I am surprised to realize how much I still remember from more than five years ago.

It’s a cliché, but time flies. Everyone has probably had thoughts about this at some point, but I think that not only does time fly, but it flies faster and faster.

One of the graders at the Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program last year suggested to me that people age logarithmically, the mathematical way of saying that time seems to pass proportionally quickly to how long you have already lived.

Although this phenomenon could just be a product of biased memory (it’s easy to fool yourself about how you felt in the past), I think it is true that an hour used to last a lot longer. One experiences more in one hour at the age of 5 than at the age of 15. As we get older, we get used to the world, and it simply isn’t as exciting and surprising as before.

For one thing, a high school student has far more homework and structured time than a first grader. For me, school used to last from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with only a minimal amount of homework. Now it lasts from 8 to 4, with homework to boot.

But furthermore, there is a definite stifling of curiosity as you grow older. As a third or fourth grader, I could become fascinated with the patterns of leaves and the behavior of ants. Now, that would be a waste of time (unless in the context of a formal project).

Thus, an hour is just not worth as much to a 15-year-old as it is to a five-year-old. Ironically, the closer we feel to mortality, the less we can enjoy life, because we are more concerned with not “wasting” time.

This all makes growing up a mixed blessing. The passage of time is inevitable, but sometimes it seems like I can no longer come up with the great ideas that I had before. Unfortunately, it seems that in gaining maturity, we have to sacrifice creativity.

— Alex Zhai