Sin Fronteras Spring 2018 Sin Fronteras 2018 | Page 37

These Days
Manuel Arias
Time is something I will never be able to master. There are three hundred
sixty-five days per year, twenty-four hours a day, and sixty minutes every hour.
It seems basic, really. But in situations like this, when our life is about to take
a drastic change, this is when time really messes with us. I’ve been enslaved
by the same routine for almost eight years now. Chugging down breakfast while
getting my things ready, after finally winning the battle against my pillow.
Getting dressed and heading to school to endure more than six hours of static
education. For the most part, my days consisted of quick napping, doodling on
textbooks, and figuring out ways to get out of class. A presence of restriction
and prohibition haunted the hallways, making me feel like I was always on the
verge of doing something wrong. Every day, it was a constant struggle to make
it to two-thirty. It was my good luck that the rest of my generation felt the same
way.
I used to whine about how hard classes were and about learning useless
content. Now that I reflect on my time at this school, I can clearly see what we
have become. In times of desperation, we were taught to remain strong and
stay close with one another. This was especially true every morning, when the
eighty something of us would rally up close to share each other’s homework.
Or during finals week, where the creative switch in our brains turned on and
we came up with impossible ways to turn each evaluation into a group activity.
Even through tough times, we managed to team up and survive as a family. We
thought that every class was an hour and five minutes of algebraic equations,
or history lectures, when we were really being prepared for life. The strict due
dates and lack of time for test taking challenged us to try our hardest, and that’s
something not every school offers.
And now, after all those years of “suffering” I am just a few days away
from becoming a high school graduate. All my wishes of speeding up time and
finishing classes early are now being granted to me. Days go by faster and
adulthood is closer by the minute. The thing is, I don’t want that anymore. It
seems like time always runs contrary to my desires. That annoying brother that
does everything except what you asked for. A younger version of myself aspired
to be as close to graduation as I am now. The idea of finally being freed from
hours of homework, eternal projects and frequent all-nighters was nothing but
a dream. A dream that stood hundreds of days in the future, but now it’s here,
and I fear it. The feeling of uncertainty and nostalgia blurs my vision of what’s
next to come. My brain has reached its potential here, and although I don’t want
to, it’s time to go.
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