The other night I was talking to a friend who went to Berkeley. She said that since she graduated it feels like time has moved very fast. I thought that was interesting and told her that, for me, even though we graduated the same year, I felt like time was moving very slow, or at least that it was very dense and full of things that I could remember.
I think maybe the difference is that less changed in her life. She became familiar with the Bay Area during college and even spent some weekends in the city so when she started work in the city, a lot of things stayed the same: her friends, proximity to her family, general geography, etc.
For me, moving from my school in the Midwest after graduation, a lot changed. I didn’t know many people and in a lot of ways I had to go about rebuilding my life. With so much change, my guess is that’s why time seemed more full for me. There were a lot more inputs that my mind wasn’t yet regarding as normal.
So the unsubstantiated and anecdotal hypothesis is this: when there’s a lot of change in your life, time will dilate and seem more full and might even seem to pass slower.