LETTITOR.

I let my past go too fast, no time to pause

TR TAC ee) LL)

but when.” - Inspector Spacetime

As someone whose concept of time has been drastically, destructively, influenced by pop culture—Back to the Future, Star Trek, and Sliders to name a few of many suspected culprits—looking at time as a linear or even logical “thing” that fits the amorphous structure of my adult life has become harder and harder to do. Days come and go and weeks fly by with one being distinguishable from the other solely by the events, accidents, or other noteworthy blips that occur. This issue, and the weeks filled with exams yet to come, represent one such blip: the end of the winter semester and, in turn, the bulk of our publishing for the 2011/12 school year.

Wow.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but it feels like we’re in a race to 2013. Or should I say a race to the end (insert unimaginative Mayan Long Count calendar joke). A third of the way through 2012 already and I can remember drunkenly ringing in the new year like it were yesterday. So, what gives? Here’s my theory:

Building off of what I said earlier, specifically as students, our calendars are dependent on the rigid Mon - Friday class schedule. The rest of our time is spent studying (hah), working (hah), sleeping (hah), and partying (double hah). Not at all reflective of our respective fields of study, after a month of “the grind,” weekdays begin to become routine and blurry, only bookmarked by tests, projects, and presentations, while (with a little luck and time permitting) weekends function as the reset button to give us the strength to do it all over again. Augmented by years of conditioning leading to our lives as post-secondary students, we’ve been trained to live for our Friday nights, cherish our Saturdays in full, and begrudgingly treasure our lazy Sundays. Case in point: when you get to class on Monday, what do you talk about? The weekend that just passed. When that conversation comes to its no doubt exciting conclusion, what do you talk about? What you’re going to do this weekend. At the end, there'll have been little over a dozen weekends this winter semester. This number represents 12 or so moments in time over the course of the past three months that you can probably look back and say “well, that was fun.” Though freshly christened spring, as we find ourselves heading into the summer, as the fleeting sun taunts the pale and vitamin D malnourished populous, I challenge you to break your routine if you find yourself saying arrivederci to academia this April. In finding your sense of time, perhaps you'll learn to value what little we have just that much more.

This week’s winter finale sees The Other Press crew in solid form, covering stories the likes of the recently announced federal budget, Vancouver’s Cherry Blossom Festival, the ongoing contraceptive controversy in the south, and much, much more. While we wind things down here in room 1020 for the summer, we’ll still be around delivering the business on a monthly basis from now until the fall. Look for our first issue of the summer on stands May 1.

Later days, Crorela hails

Editor in chief The Other Press