Maybe I Ought to Upgrade My Video Player.. Maybe Not

Not to sound all spacey and introspective but time is weird.  It is always dependent on your perspective and the whole thing gets a little crazy when your perspective is not constant.

Some of my favorite people, Welcome Week 2010:
Amy, Mike, Xinwei, Chhai and Ben (photo courtesy of Van)

Tonight was the first meeting for Revelle's Welcome Week Ambassador program.  I participated in the program this past year and knew it was something that I wanted to do again.  It was great seeing some familiar faces from last year and catching up with people.  About halfway through the meeting, my mind started racing.  I just couldn't believe that just over a year ago I was sitting in (probably) the same conference room with a few of the same people about to plan this annual event.  The idea baffled me and, for a time, I stopped listening to the meeting completely and tried to fathom how a year can go by that quickly, how so many things can change and how many things can stay exactly the same.

People generally agree that a year is roughly 365 days.  College students can agree that a year is three quarters (two semesters) and a summer.  My mind began acting like an old, kind of broken VCR.  No, not a DVD, Blu-Ray or other sort of digital media player.  A VCR.  It hit the rewind button (you remember when you could see the video playing backwards with all of those lines across the screen) then it stopped, abruptly, and began to play.  The year that had passed played back with intense clarity.  I remembered going to these meetings last year with the girls in my dorm and a few of the people in my building-- we just had to walk downstairs really.  I remembered all the people from freshman year, the Bible studies, clubs, classes, the biting cold, beautiful beach days, new faces, old faces, our obsession with pool at Roger's Place, Plaza Cafe food, and the discovery of coffee.  Time kept moving forward and I remembered the end of freshman year and summer.  I thought of this blog and was thankful to my old self for recording snippets of my experiences and I remembered all of the feelings of summer.  Finally, this year became super clear.  I remembered Welcome Week at the end of summer, starting school again, Christmas... then the 'video' came to a screeching halt in the present.
So much has changed yet so much has stayed the same.  I started thinking about how I am still surrounded by some of the most incredible people I have ever met and how I still miss home (and the rest of the most incredible people I have ever known) and how people have changed.  Then I found myself in that room again, realizing it was really time to start paying attention in the meeting.
So, in a way, a year ago feels completely intangible.  So far away and so full of memories that it is almost like watching a movie of someone else's life-- how could all of that happen in just one year??  In another way, however, I am still dumbfounded at how it is possible that an entire year has passed.
I can't complain.  I hope time continues to confound me whenever the opportunity arises.
"It's like my IPOD's stuck on replay" --Iyaz