Walk the Line

Walk the Line

College Town

Video

          For this project, I walked very slowly down St. George Street, then sped up the footage to make it appear as if I am moving at a normal rate, while everyone around me is moving quickly. I wore a Flagler College sweater to signify that I am a student. This is an idea I had had earlier and considered doing for the One Mark Against Many project, but decided it did not neatly fit the criteria, and scrapped it. I was thankful this assignment happened, because I really enjoyed this concept.

          As a college student, or perhaps, as a person who has only recently been thrust into the throngs of adulthood, I am left with an ever-present consciousness of time and its constant passing. I am nearly halfway through my undergraduate education, yet it feels like I just started this year. It's difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that everything I currently know will be gone before I have time to fully process the weight it may or may not have on my future. Everything that happens to me now, every moment that passes is another first and another last. Nothing can remain the same, yet I find myself holding tightly to the things I am comfortable and familiar with, trying desperately to keep a piece of myself I, for whatever reason, fear will be ripped away by the limitation of my memory. I'm terrified of forgetting the things that are important to me. However, in my inability to let go, in my attempt to slow down time and cherish everything around me, I am letting the world pass me by. By gripping so tightly to the past and present, I am not allowing myself to have a future. 

          I don't think this problem is isolated to myself either. I feel as if it is relatively common knowledge at this point that people are taking longer to give up childhood and become adults. Whether it is a fear of change, or responsibility, or otherwise, people, specifically students, I've noticed, are holding onto their childhoods, almost idolizing the things they loved then as sacred, and becoming consumed with a inability to accept the reality that they are not kids anymore. The discussion of whether or not becoming an "adult" or what an "adult" even is does not necessarily factors significantly into my project, but I wanted to comment on how college students, by being trapped in their own past, without a desire to grow up, are being passed by those around them.