Decade in Review

It seems a little bit surreal to me that only ten years ago I was starting middle school. I started the decade 12 and will be finishing it 22, an age range that may contain some of the boldest moments in the development of any person.

As with most things, time is relative. I want to illustrate to what extent it's hard to figure how long things actually take, so I will measure a few milestones in relationship to the length of the decade.

Education

As I said, I was in seventh grade when the 2010s started. In Spain that's first of ESO (compulsory secondary education), a program that lasts four years before going into the last two years of high school, known as bachillerato.

The following year I entered a double degree in Mathematics and Computer Engineering by the University of Barcelona. Although the degree is supposed to be finished in five and a half years (11 four-month terms), I might manage to complete it in ten terms, or five academic years.

That means that I've spent about 60% of the decade in secondary education and 40% in tertiary education. This fact alone boggles my mind because, from my perspective, being at uni still feels new.

Each university credit is equivalent to, in theory, 25 hours of work (counting both work in class and at home). I'm a month shy of completing my ninth term, so I'll count that too. At six credits per course, five or six courses per term, I've almost reached 7500 hours of university study, which is an 8.5% of the ten year period. That's… a lot more than I expected, actually. That's about two hours a day every day for ten years! Or four hours every day if we count only the time I've been attending uni.

For the last four and a half or so years I've also been attending Mandarin classes, about 540 hours or 0.6% of ten years.

Work

Although they are technically not an employment, I'll count the two internships I've taken towards this section because they may not be a job but they sure as hell felt like one.

I started my first internship in late 2017, which means that I've spent the last two years working almost uninterruptedly—except for a month in summer of 2018 and a couple of weeks in June this year. That amounts to about a little under 20% of the decade.

I did some back-of-the-envelope math to figure how much actual time I've spent at work. The rough total is 1770 hours, which is just about 2% of the decade. Could be way worse.

Travel

In the last ten years I've been to the UK, China, Andorra, France, and Germany, for a total of 35 days or 0.9% of the whole period abroad.

Personal life

Although there's always been doubt in my mind, I started to seriously question my sexuality at the beginning of my second-to-last high school year, and it wasn't until 2017 that I finally figured it out. That was about four whole years (40%) of self-reflection, and two years (20%) since then of inner comfort.

As of this week I've been for 41 months in a romantic relationship. That's about 34% of the decade.