Negative Nancy

I feel like I should start blogging again, but I'm afraid that little I have to say these days would be positive, and I just feel like a broken record complaining about the same things.

Let's give it a shot.

The things I contemplate hourly:
-A 3BR apartment does NOT include "2 bedrooms and a partitioned living room." That's a 2BR with a partitioned living room.
-Why can't I pack until I get an apartment, and why can't I get an apartment until I get a job, and why can't I even get a job where my college degree is merely "preferred"?
-If you're merging in traffic, you still have to use a turn signal. It's like asking if I'm using the empty chair at my cafe table. I know you want it, but I'm less likely to let you have it if you don't ask.


...yeah, maybe I should stay on sabbatical until I have a regular income.

So done, I don't even feel like posting.

So there.

The cruel and bittersweet truth

I'm supposed to graduate in a couple hours, but I still have two large papers due tomorrow that I have barely started. LAME.

too brain dead for title or grammar

I wonder if the reason we call it "senioritis" is because there is a point in finals week during which you become physically incapable of re-memorizing facts, and it becomes worse to the point where you can barely bring yourself to care about re-memorizing facts. Maybe it appropriately bears the "itis" suffix, meaning "inflammation," as some indication of brain sufficiently swollen to the skull's capacity. And yet none of this pondering is really getting to the crux of the matter, which is, I am 7 days away from never having to experience this again and why does 7 days feel like centuries?

I apologize to any friends, family or acquaintances I will encounter this week. Most of my normal brain functions are currently muffled under a haze of regression lines, normal curve approximations, and expected values (for sum AND percents!). It doesn't help that I currently harbor enough enmity toward my Statistics book that selling it doesn't sound half as much fun as watching it burn.

Senioritis for overachievers

Over my academic career, from kindergarten to the present, I would not be exaggerating to admit to intentionally skipping fewer than 10 classes. Ever. Counting illnesses or field trips, that number goes up only as high as 20. And if I had my druthers, those numbers would be lower, but I am really adamant about missing class only when I absolutely have something more important to do. Like jury duty. Ha.

I think this places me in a special category of Nerd, but at the same time, having opted for a 21-unit final semester, I'm sort of tired. I have 20 days until graduation, by which time I will have written 20 pages worth of final exams, memorized 20 chapters of statistics and applied for 20 jobs (maybe).

I know I'll buckle down and do it, most likely as close to my deadlines as possible, but every single thing I do feels like such a chore.

In my first palpable symptom of senioritis, though, I've been late a couple of times to the class I'm auditing because I wanted a bagel on the way. Also, I don't think it's possible for me to stay up all night anymore. Apathy is better than Ambien.

Jury Duty

It's one thing to be stuck in a room, unpaid, with other unpaid and unpleasant people, none of whom want to be there except the unemployed person trying to feel useful.

It's wholly another thing to wait in the security line outside in the frigid morning breeze for 20 minutes for the opportunity to wait another two hours in a plastic folding chair for your name to be called to go on a break for another two hours, only to return after wandering the streets seeking WiFi to discover the court has postponed our call for another three hours (without telling us or giving us another break), at which point the court releases us because the defendant ultimately decided to settle.

Did I mention I probably would have been excused anyway, given that my parents would likely disinherit me if I served on a jury instead of graduating?

I am so glad the justice system is coordinated enough to waste everybody's time equally. No wonder prisons are overcrowded. If I had been put on a jury after all that, I'd call the defendant guilty, too.

91 days

Every day of my calendar has a tiny speck of pencil in the corner telling me how many days there are until graduation. I was so excited about having added myself to the degree list this semester that I immediately sat down and counted all of the days, which simultaneously made the end seem closer and farther away.

Right now, and probably until at least spring break, 91 days feels like an eternity of pushing boulders uphill. Not terribly difficult intellectually, but definitely requiring a good deal of effort. I declared to everyone who cared a while ago that I would never take 19 units again, and here I am with 21 (formerly 25, but then senioritis hit). It kind of sucks.

And in case anyone was wondering, I don't advise starting and completing a second major in two semesters unless you have absolutely nothing else to do with your time.

All of this is just me procrastinating reading Judith Butler, because I sincerely believe she is part of the reason I closed the rhetoric chapter of my education so quickly and ended up taking many many units and eating pasta more often than I could have dreamed. I guess it all comes full circle.