All my finals happen to be next week, which is nice since I’ll finish early, but it’s going to be one heck of a week. Instead of studying, I am writing this article and ruminating.
I have spent about four years at Stevens, filled with love, loss, and learning. Time here has often felt like clockwork, moving forward no matter how I felt. Time’s indifference can be cruel or comforting, captured by the phrase “this too shall pass.” Some moments I’ve wanted to hold onto like lifetimes; others have slipped through my fingers like sand. While time itself is beyond our control, how we spend it is not. I have spent a fair deal of time trying to shape this column into a cohesive series, and that work pays off today as I draw from past topics to explore the inner workings of the clock.
Nowadays, most clocks are digital; they don’t even teach kids how to read mechanical clocks in many school districts anymore. But the nature of this column is what it is, I’ll be writing about quartz clocks. Quartz clocks niftily combine electrical and mechanical components and represent the most accurate timepieces one can get at a reasonable price. As the name implies, quartz clocks house a piece of quartz cut to a very specific shape. A current passes through the crystal via the battery, causing it to oscillate at its natural frequency. Given its precise shape, the crystal vibrates 32,768 times per second, or (2^15). A microchip within the watch counts these vibrations and translates them into electrical signals that drive the hands of the watch through a DC motor. The different hands of the watch have gear ratios tuned so they all move at the proper speeds to capture minutes, hours, and seconds. Typical quartz watches only lose 15 seconds of time over a 30-day period.
Yet for all their precision, clocks cannot measure the weight of the passage of time. Waiting stretches seconds into hours. Hope feels both like stillness and motion at the same time. And it goes without saying that our happiest moments seem to pass in a flash. Time’s rhythm is steady even when we’re not. Like the hum of quartz, it carries us forward through memories and moments, even as we wish some could last forever.
I’ve changed in ways I never expected here. I’ve let go of my perfectionism, gotten more comfortable with those things outside of my control, and learned that some relaxation here and there is far more valuable than constant productivity. Time, in its steady way, carries everything forward — moments, memories, even people. Still, there are rhythms that seem to linger, faint but steady, like the echo of a clock ticking in another room. Time never truly leaves us changed, nor does it leave us the same. Time allows us to reflect on our life’s oscillations. I think we’ll always find ourselves in places we have been before until we reach our own “steady states.” Time gives us the chance to choose how we would like to go forward wherever, however, and with whomever we like. So, my dear reader, never forget the present is named as such for a reason. Make the most of the time you have and step into the new year with intention, befuddling as time may be.
