Dear students,
It will soon be the end of the year once again. It feels like this year has progressed at different speeds for each of us, even though everyone was kept on their toes by Corona. Some flitted from deadline to deadline, others patiently plodded through literature, dates and texts, whilst others changed tempos and switched between speeding up and slowing down. Since time immemorial, the days of the year have been the same length, but their psychological experience varies, and time always seems to be short.

Being short of time is risky, not only when caught in traffic. A Homo sapiens' sense of time is tactless. He forgets, he overestimates and he is impatient. This causes stress. In the short time available for decision-making, the familiar is preferred because there is no time to stray from the well-worn paths of thought. You rely on the information you have before you, and don't look for new sources of information. One communicates with people with whom one can quickly come to an understanding and not with those from whom one expects time-consuming disputes and new arguments. In this way, decision-making processes are accelerated, the level of expectation is lowered and the quality of decision-making deteriorates. Stress, it can be said, makes you stupid.

Our days are numbered. That time is given. We just don't know it. And so we create what we can. Some set the rhythms, others swing along. The time schedule of some becomes the time diktat of others. Some have time, others live in the moment. Some make the time regime, others administer it. Whoever has control over time is in charge. In ancient Egypt, it was the astronomers.

Corona has taught us that time can have very different qualities: flexibility, speed, punctuality or duration. As the old year draws to a close and the new year begins, I wish us all good times, health and fulfilment.

Season’s greetings!

Bruno Staffelbach, Rector