The month of February has practically flown by. True, it is a little shorter than the other eleven months, but the whole month passed by in the blink of an eye. I have a white board calendar in my dorm room, and at the end of each month I erase all of the dates and activities I participated in that month and replace it with a whole new set of numbers and important to dos. Each and every month that I've replaced the calendar, without fail, I've turned to my roommate and said, "wow I can't believe how fast "insert month" went by." We were both flabbergasted about how fast the first semester went by (seriously, how did four months come and go so fast), and the second semester is turning out no different, in fact, it seems to be going faster. The halfway mark on the semester is closing in, and spring break is just a stone's throw away (the gym even has a countdown, which doesn't help my workout). So the question I always ask myself, is why does time fly by so quickly in college?

For that question, I have a two part answer. First, each month that I erase my calendar, I erase with it all of the club meetings, interesting events, dates to remembers, and everything else important that I'd written down. For February, almost every day had something written down to signify something I had to do or wanted to go to that day. Having schedules so crammed full of activities and events is one of the reasons I think college goes so quickly. There's not a lot of time where you're sitting around twiddling your thumbs, but you always have somewhere to go, so it doesn't seem like you're lying there bored watching the clock. I focus specifically on my life one week at a time, so things seem to go even faster, especially when you have deadlines.

Secondly, the amount of stress college students feel on a daily basis probably accounts for a lot of the fast pace. Time seems to go extra quickly when you have two big papers due or multiple midterms or assignments in just about every class. Unfortunately, time seems to speed up when you have a ton of things to do, specifically exams or assignments or just school-related stress in general. This past week I wrote about my stressful weekend which culminated into a very stressful week filled with midterms, lengthy homework assignments, readings, and much more, and I'll tell you that week flew by. So if you're to tell me that you think college is going by painfully slow, let me ask you, a) what are you doing with your days (i.e., are you just sitting in your room) and b) are your classes so easy that you feel no stress at all? Because that must be the only explanation. So while college stress may not be fun in the least (it is actually horrific), at least it makes everything go by a little faster.