time

They were leaders on and off the strip. Both had already faced an abbreviated or nonexistent season early in their collegiate career. With the pandemic continuing to raise questions about the upcoming season, all signs suggested it might be a good move to take time off. For juniors Teddy Lombardo and Natalie Minarik, however, taking a leave of absence would usually mean restricting contact with their fencing team.

At 9:30 p.m. in Seoul, South Korea, the sun has long set, and Erin Chung’s parents prepare for bed. But for the Columbia College first-year, who woke up only a few hours ago, the day is just beginning.

For just about seven months, I’ve existed in a temporal limbo. In March, I was a little over halfway through my first year of college and still figuring some things out. Now, I’m a sophomore, but it doesn’t really feel that way. From birthdays to final exams, the events I typically relied on to convince myself of the passage of time didn’t happen. But the one rite of passage that managed to push through was the one that I perhaps dreaded the most: the removal of my wisdom teeth.

With the University going virtual, most students are studying from home, tuning in to their classes from all across the globe. Although some students never had to adjust to a time zone difference while in New York, many students have been recalibrating their hours to EST since last March. Whether you are living three hours behind Morningside Heights on the West Coast or 11 hours ahead in East Asia, here are some tips to guide you through this tough time.

The Zoom call—an excuse to drink and laugh and talk after a day stuffed with online seminars—ends for me at 9 p.m. My friends have work tomorrow, or school, and it’s two hours later for them. I have school too, but nine feels early. I wander downstairs, break squares from one of the chocolate bars my mom keeps in the back of a kitchen cupboard, and take a short walk through my dark neighborhood, searching for signs of stars behind a curtain of haze.

We all have that one friend who never makes it on time to anything. Perhaps they always arrive late for dinner plans confirmed the night before, or tell you that they’re on their way to meet you when they’re still at home doing who knows what. It might be easy to feel disrespected when this happens, but as much as you know, there is no malicious intent behind their lack of punctuality.

A tiger and a bear wanted to become human beings. A god promised to make their dream come true if the tiger and the bear went to a cave and survived only on water and garlic. The tiger quit, but the bear persevered and was transformed into the first Korean, going on to create the aboriginal generation of Korean people.

Valentine’s Day: The holiday connotes heart-shaped chocolates, awkward dinner dates, and making love—all events that occur between people. Yet “love” is a feeling, a state of mind that isn’t constricted to solely between a lover and a beloved. Don’t worry, we at Spectrum aren’t here to remind you of Lit Hum or Foundations. Instead, we just want to remind you that love takes on many forms besides those reflected in conventional Valentine’s Day celebrations. One of these is self-love.

At the beginning of my 1:10 p.m. journalism class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the room’s sole clock displays the time as 12:04. Whenever I check the time in that class, I have to remember to do the math to figure out the correct time. Adding 66 minutes to the time in my head isn’t hard, but it would be easier if someone could just fix the clock.

If there’s one archaic saying that almost every Columbia student understands on a painfully personal level, it would probably be the phrase “in a New York minute.”