Does anyone have an iron? It appears we’ve encountered a wrinkle in time.
February 29 is a leap day. And no, leap day is not dedicated to playing leap frog or rewatching Maddie Ziegler’s ballerina feature film, “Leap!” A leap day is tacked onto the end of February, giving the year 366 days instead of the normal 365.
According to Vahé Peroomian, the director of undergraduate studies at the USC Department of Physics and Astronomy, a leap day isn’t a ripple in the space-time continuum. It’s a deliberate calculation that occurs every four years.
“If you measure how long it takes for the earth to go around the sun, the number you come up with is 365 days and a quarter,” Peroomian said, with the quarter being about six hours. Since six hours is shaved off the calendar during a normal year, those six hours get added back every four years for a total of 24 hours — meaning, an entire extra day.
I’m no Google Calendar fanatic, but I can’t help but acknowledge that I operate on a tight schedule. My timeline often leaves me racing against the clock, and being a fiercely competitive person, a race means I’m running fast to win.
Need to meet? I’ve got you penciled in for 4 p.m. Can’t decide on an outfit? Just call while I’m on lunch at 1:30 p.m. He said what? Dinner and debrief at 9 p.m.
I used to prize my flexibility as a strength, but now I fear I’m simply pliable, like a piece of rubber getting bent out of shape. I should’ve known better than to test time. It’s only when I run out of it that I realize I’m giving it away.
Avery Goodman, my executive producer for Annenberg Media’s social media news show, The Rundown, views her time like I do. “Every week is a battle with how I can manage my time,” she said. “I feel like I’m always grasping for more. Maybe that’s my fault because I overbooked myself.”
Especially at a work-hard, play-hard university like USC, Goodman, like many students, finds herself lamenting: “I wish I had more time.”
Technically, this year she will. So, what will Goodman do with the extra 24 hours of her senior year?
“Oh, I’m probably going to do more homework and prep for spring break,” she said. For her, leap day is just another Thursday.
Bill Rockas, a junior studying cinema and media studies and a fellow Rundown writer, concurred. He says he’ll “get some work done early” and watch “Dune 2.”
“That’s a long movie, so that’ll be, what, like, 21-22 hours left [in the extra day]?” he joked. Besides sitting through the nearly three-hour-long film, Rockas said he’ll also apply to jobs.
Sophia Perez, a senior political science major, said she might go to the beach since she doesn’t have class.
Meanwhile, if Peroomian didn’t have two classes to teach, he says he’d do his “favorite thing:” hiking.
Victoria Mora, a senior business administration major, has two midterms and a full day of classes, so she’s not quite sure what she’s doing.
On the other hand, Taylor Brown, a full-time volunteer at the Church of Latter Day Saints who stopped me on a stroll through campus, knew exactly where one could find him on the extra day.
“Well, I’m going to be doing the same thing I’m doing today,” he said.
“What have you been doing today?” I asked.
“I studied my scriptures today,” he replied. “I studied Chinese today, and then I’m just out on campus talking to people about Jesus Christ.”
I reframe my question for his fellow volunteer, Noah Hadley: “Without the bounds of space and responsibility, let’s say you have 24 hours, a blank slate. Would you shake it up and do something different?”
“I think I want to be here, too,” Hadley said, “just because what we’re doing right now is very special, trying to help people. This is, I think, the point of our time, trying to help people, make people happier. For us to actually land on a year with a leap year is kind of special, right? That’s one extra day we get to do it.”
Even if they could go anywhere in the world for 24 hours, Brown and Hadley would stay right where they are. This grounded appreciation for the present is striking, especially given that the last time a leap year rolled around was 2020, which proved that a lot can happen in four years’ time.
2020 saw the world standing at the cusp of the coronavirus pandemic, right before we delved inward into locked houses, logged in to Zoom classrooms and pulled masks over dry noses. It saw the death of George Floyd. It saw the stock market crash, wildfires blaze through four million acres of California land and Joe Biden defeat incumbent president Donald Trump. It saw communities break apart and come together, families separate and reunite, beloved hobbies come and go. 2020 even tricked me into trying whipped coffee.
The world is still reckoning with the unprecedented (tired of that word yet?) events of the last leap year, which leaves me wondering if we should capitalize on the day while we have it. But like Brown and Hadley, Perez thinks that the value in having an extra day doesn’t stem from doing something new. It’s appreciating what’s right in front of her.
“Looking back to four years, that COVID year has just made me so much more grateful for this specific experience. Even just the simple things like this, right now,” she said, gesturing to the plaid picnic blanket she shared with Mora in Founder’s Park.
“Every millionaire or billionaire ever, at the end of their life and of their careers, has never said they wish they had more money or fame, but they wish they had more time with people they love, and so that’s what I would spend my day doing. Just spending it with people I love,” she continued.
“Now you’re saying that it’s four years, I forget how much has gone by, how quick it felt,” Mora added.
“It almost makes you a little bit scared and a little, like, nauseating knowing that the next time it [leap day] happens, these [next] four years will feel even quicker. It is a blessing to be able to say that,” she said.
Goodman shared the same sentiment, saying, “One more day means I’m less close to graduation than I thought I was. In the next four years, I don’t know where I will be, but I’m happy with where I’ve come since 2020. I’m hoping I’m even happier where I will be in 2028.”
Out in the universe, there’s an endless stream of possibilities. Sometimes, I wonder if I could do more good if I reach into the cosmos with a wave of a hand, peer into our realities and tug on every timeline. In four years’ time, I want to see what’s in store for Goodman, Rockas and Peroomian. Where will Perez and Mora be? Will they meet up every leap year like they promised? How about Brown? Hadley? Myself? The country? Earth?
What about that caterpillar my roommate found in her strawberries this week — will it turn into a butterfly? And the @uscmissedconnection from three years ago that I never discovered, will they still be in love with me? Will the unknown student who got my dream job be my future boss? Heck, what will happen to the speck of a star that twinkles above my apartment in the dark?
My interminable web of questions runs constantly, so I turned to my younger brother — a literalist — for resounding clarity. When I asked what he plans to do with his extra day, he responded, “Probably the same thing I’d do without it.”
Honestly, he seems to be on the right track. I went into my leap day eve excursion believing that people would complain, like I had, that having one more day simply isn’t enough time to finish the deed, to make the move, to do whatever it is that’s left on the list.
But Peroomian says that humans measure time with the idea that it’s never truly lost or gained: “Time can’t be reversed. Time can’t be created or destroyed,” he said. If that’s the case, in today’s culture of hustle and burnout, people constantly yearn for “more time,” which astronomically doesn’t exist.
There’s no use in wondering about the unknown, the next move, the big plan. Rockas said, life “is a continuum of permanent things that happen, and you can’t rewrite the record.” All I’ve ever wanted to do is zoom out, but today, I think it’s time to zoom in. All we ever have is the here and now.
It may be leap day, but I’m not leaping anywhere. As Rockas puts it,
“Who doesn’t like more life?”