Tyler Watts ’25
They say it’s going by fast. They say we just got here, and we’ll be on our way out soon enough. They can not believe that we are 20 and 21. Gosh, where did all that time go?
I know where it has gone–not to say that this year deserves to be marked as one purely consisting of slow suffering.They think our time is passing by like a narrow and fleeting dart, and they say that because they have not been aboard this time vessel. Our time has been stubborn like thick weeds.
Sophomore year is heavy with everything that it carries. While they think it is flying by, I have lived its slow moments; its painful crawls on all fours. Time does not always move. I have lived through each granule of sand passing down the waist of this hourglass. It is hard to think about what an intermediate year can mean, but it can be counted easily: in p-sets, papers, projects, lectures, sections, seminars, snacks, meals, parties, friends, lovers, staircases, and hours of sleep. I do my best to write my dreams down first thing when I wake up, so that I can remember them.
This has been the year where too much has happened, yet I find myself drawing a blank wondering what has gone on, feeling nothing in particular about it, not wanting anything at all…
I have been a sophomore in slow moments at slow places– laying down on a biopsy table; standing slouched with hands on hips in the cue-to-cue of tech week; looming over a full pot of pour over coffee, waiting for the drips to subside, desperate for caffeine and running late. I wonder how many sandwiches I could’ve made in the time I spent fall semester waiting for grim texts back.
A good thing is that I cried less this year than I did last year, but the cries still came and they felt slow. Good, slow, time-frozen cries that could’ve lasted for longer if I hadn’t had to leave the bathroom stall. And on the flipside was the longest, time-frozen piss of my life when I recognized echoes and realized that the girl in the stall next to me was sobbing, so I did my best to hurry up and get the heck out to give her the peace she needed.
It is a slow and sick and single year, and there’s no one to hold me in bed upon the return of the wet cough and grainy throat of the cold I seem to catch every month. I know I get these colds from being burnt out by the week and underdressed on the weekends. My body protests the way my life exceeds her capacity; she can only withstand so much no matter how many supplements I take or all the water I drink. With each cough my lungs pray for themselves…
This has been a sad essay. But sophomore year is happy too. I was born this year. My friends are my loved ones and I got a job that I sometimes do not like but that I love to have. I learned how to spend less money this year. I wore last year’s clothes in a way that I hadn’t thought of when I lived on Old Campus. I learned how to gather myself to exercise and that feels nice. Sophomore year has made me smarter, and of course, sillier. My future aspirations have begun to take shape in a way that makes them legible, and thus doable. My passions do not look like selling out. Sophomore year I have taken many walks and noticed all the signs and the beauty. I was born this year.
