Perspective

I complain a lot. I know this, and I try to stop myself when I hear myself start, but a lot of the time I fail. For one thing, it's hard to see that line between useful, socially acceptable venting about a legitimate problem and beating the shit out of an annoying yet inescapably dead packhorse. I fail a lot. And I fail more when I'm stressed.

You see, Slade's response to overwork is to look at the length and complexity of her to-do list, freak the fuck out, tell everyone she sees about her to-do list and how it's freaking her out, and then go read Boing Boing for two hours while pretending said to-do list has ceased to inhabit the same plane of existence she does.*

Some of you may remember the last time I blogged while the third stage of this cycle.

Everything I said in that post is still relevant. It's just me that's changed. Because you know what I realized today?

I'm done with Core. If I haven't failed the class, I am finished with the entire Honors College track.

Finished as in done. Done as in through with. Never again. Gone. By the wayside. Completed, finite, nothing, the end. That's it. No more of wanting to shoot myself in the face during in-class discussion with people who militantly misread all the major points of the chapter. No tri- or quarto-weekly** journals full of high school-style regurgitation of the reading. No Thesis, as in no all-nighter to finish a paper you know is shit in which you're supposed to answer one of the Big Unanswerable Questions of Life that all the profs acknowledge are unanswerable. And best of all, No More Consensus, Ever, Ever, Ever Again. No more am I stuck in a room with 20 other students forced to agree on one, unified, coherent, practically applicable answer to Those Same Unanswerable Fucking Questions. How do we understand art? Suck me. How do we tell the good from the bad? Get the hell out of my life. Must the need for social order conflict with individual liberty? Yes, full stop.

I love the HC; it's been a second home for all my three years here. Some--hell, most--of my best college friends are in it. We have great times, we laugh, it's been a great ride. But there comes a time when you've taken the same class eight times in rapid succession when you are just so fucking glad to be done with that shit. As of this semester, if I haven't flunked Science Core, I'll have completed all my HC requirements, including Senior Synthesis. It's a rush. I can't really believe I've come that far, that (1) not only is there a light at the end of the tunnel, but (2) it is not an oncoming train and (3) I have reached it somehow without even noticing. It's a pretty great feeling.

I just wanted to share that moment with you, the one that's about how close I am to the finish line and everything I've done to get here, instead of all the stupid shit I have to do before I can cross it. Tomorrow there will be dress shopping, and then that will (hopefully) be done too. I like this "all things will pass" thing. It's neat.***


*And occasionally, when you're very good and put away all your toys right away, she blogs about it. Highly productive.

**Now I'm making up words.

***I thought about finishing this post with a notice of my discovery that I can continue to have casual, mature, friendly conversation with someone who rejected me on the dating front due to a prior engagement--the kind that comes with kneeling and diamonds--but then decided against it because I couldn't make "prior engagement" sound less stuck-up. Sorry.

Spring Fever

This is a bizarre time of year. The sun has finally returned to us up here in the north and seems to be here for the long haul till November, even out in dreary Indiana. There is birdsong in the morning again and warmth seeping out from the pavement and the air. The world is gilded with sunbeams. I am happy again.*

However, it is also the end of the semester. Today was my last day of classes. Tomorrow is reading day and Thursday is the beginning of finals week. Next Monday I take my last final, move out of my house in Indiana, and move back into my parents' house for the summer. In that time, I have to write a 20-25 page term paper, take one real final exam,** redye my hair, find an evening gown (and matching shoes, jewelry, and purse), meet with my study abroad advisor to make sure everything is working out for Jordan next semester, finish my paperwork for Cyprus this summer, acquire and fill out job applications for summer, find a rat-sitter for the next seven months (because my mother doesn't want to deal with cleaning Steve McQueen's cage), and pack up all my worldly possessions for transport--twice.

And I am not the only one facing this dichotomy of interest. Check out my flist. Everyone who's in college is posting something along the lines of "OMG SO MUCH WORK JFKDJFKDSJFKDSJFKDJSDSS WANNA GO PLAY IN THE SUN" while the people who are not in college are posting things like "Man, sun rocks. Life is good."

I think the obvious solution to the sun/work dilemma is to make college shorter. Say, ten weeks in a semester. Those ten weeks might be an extra special hell, but then it would be done, just in time for proper spring. Summer classes do something similar; IUP runs three sessions lasting five weeks apiece, in which classes meet every day for twice as long as usual. It's intense and it's a bit hard to get excited about (being, after all, a more intense version of the sun/work dilemma). However, the system works. One of my summer classes was Beginning French, and in this context it was practically an immersion course. My Comics Lit course was similar; for how inept the prof was, I learned a remarkable amount.*** And there was still time for me to complete my final project, a comic script, such that I was proud of it. A shorter semester may interfere with research projects; however, I would gladly put in the extra time and stress every day of getting my research done if it meant I could finish each semester sooner.

What say you? Would you temporarily give up some degree of emotional sanity in order to have more time to yourself in which to cultivate greater inner peace?


*Seasonal Affected Disorder: bitch in the winter, but gods above, if it ain't a treat all summer long.

**The rest are papers. Don't be envious; I'd rather stuff myself with information and then vomit it into a Blue Book than have to pull it out of my ass in a slow, painful, supposedly intelligent and synthetic manner. And I apologize for how disgusting that metaphor turned out.

***In part, this may have been due to my relative newb-ness to comics. I only started reading them in high school, for all that I've fallen hard in love with the medium.

Collision of worlds

Weird shit: getting into a writing kick/zone/high/thing and using it to write a paper. There must be Cartographers for Social Equality around, because it's freaking me out.