latenight.library.antistress.photos.

DAY 153

Okay, so not the most interesting subject matter, I know.  But when it’s 2 am and your still at the library juggling two massive research papers–one on Nietzsche and Buddhism and the other on Oscar Wilde’s homosexuality and that relation to the gothic in The Picture of Dorian Gray, and you’ve been there since 3 in the afternoon–well, you’re not thinking very clearly, and you get bored. So I opened a new page, wrote some random gibberish to clear my mind, and took photos of the boring objects around me.

This is my ID card. Apparently, if you want to hang out in the library after midnight, you have to prove that you are a UMW student, and then they give you a numbered sticky which you turn in on the way out. During finals week when the entire campus packed up their dorms and officially moved in to the lib, security decided to reduce, reuse and recycle by putting numbers on clothespins. Okay, sure.  That’s fun. Low budget?

It’s actually quite easy to beat the system and manage to avoid getting a number if you really have this burning desire to hang out in the library with a bunch of college students reading so furiously they are going prematurely blind, writing so fast that writer’s cramp has become an actual disease.  Yes, that sounds like the pinnacle of a wild night out.  I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to sneak into the library.  But I guess they have to protect their precious books or something.

So the late-night, stressed-out, mid-paper-writing photography thing might be a fail. That’s okay. The papers weren’t. Solid B+ and A- respectively. I can live with that.

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study parties

DAY 126

My motivation to do work dies just  a little bit more every day.  Today, I spent an hour “reading” an article of Marx’s on the train–and accomplished 8 pages.  Yesterday, I went to this coffee shop with some teammates for two hours–and managed to read one article. On the plus side, I wrote yesterday’s blog entry and created a facebook event for the team Thanksgiving dinner. 

I don’t particularly like statistics (…probably because I almost failed that class.) But if you think about it…there are 8 weeks of classes left, and that includes finals week. (I only have two actual exams, and then just a presentation on a paper, and a game of literary charades).  This means I have roughly 70 hours of classes left.  I only have to attend 6 more philosophy classes (thank the lord…).  I still have a major seminar paper to write, two American lit essays, one more philo paper, and an infinite amount of blog posts plus the exams.  I’ve only got one more Conference championship meet.  After that is the last regional meet, and then that’s it.  Done with college running.  Finish up those last couple of weeks and then done with college, period.

Most people, burned out or not, want to stay in college–that easy lifestlye, relaxed atmosphere, party-crazed weekends. Sleeping in, meals provived, no parents yet a lifestyle that is paid for by them.  

Except for me.  Most  people are scared of the real world.  I am too–but now that I am more than half-way living in the real world, it’s hard to pretend I still go to college.  It all just seems kind of silly now.  All that stuff we raved about freshman year seems to belong to a past life.  Now, I sort of want t0 be an adult. I want my own studio flat, my own job. I want to open my window and look out upon the bustling street below me. I want to do things on my own.  I know that things will be hard, and I know that I’m going to screw up a bunch of times.  But I just want to move on and try new things.  School was pretty good I guess, but I’m so far beyond it that these last few weeks are going to be rough, a test of how much I can manage to keep up with while being thoroughly distracted  by my approaching graduation!

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