Wednesday: a pretty bad day. Well, it actually goes back to Tuesday. As usual (and despite pledges to myself that this semester would be different), I started a paper the night before it was due and had to pull an all-nighter. Now, normally that wouldn’t have such a big impact—but when I’m getting an average of three hours of sleep a night, it has quite an impact.
8:30 AM rolled around, and I woke Jeffrey up for our Phys. Ed. class at 9:00. We checked in, left, and got breakfast at the campus center. It was a beautiful morning; lots of sun, melting ice-snow covering the field, an old man walking his dog across Andrus and literally no one else in sight. I walked across Andrus and up Foss, downing my bacon-egg-cheese-on-an-English-muffin sandwich, with orange juice. I got back, finished up my paper, and then headed off at 11:00 for the class in which the paper was due.
I wore my sunglasses because I wanted to avoid the glare of the sun off the snow, but they also came in handy in class: I kept nodding off and woke up every once in a while. My notes show the troubling results:
I felt really bad. It’s really rude to do that to a professor.
Class ended after an excrutiatingly long 80 minutes, and I headed home for a quick nap before my 1:10 class. I set my computer speakers really, really loud—I use a computer program for my alarms—and set it for 1:00, giving me a cool 27 minutes of sleep.
I slept through it. In fact, I slept until 6:30 PM.
That meant that I missed two important classes: HIST173, my civil rights history seminar, and AMST156, my American literature class. The former really oughtn’t be missed, because, well, it’s a tiny little seminar and participation counts for so much. Plus, I had done all of the readings (and there were many) and I was really prepared for the discussion. I’m kicking myself that I missed it. The latter class, AMST, was equally terrible to miss. Apparently, they got around to discussing Stephen Crane, whose short stories I was so intensely interested in hearing about. He may be one of my favorite authors now. So I’m sad I missed that class.
After waking up, I started off to the campus center, but then realized I didn’t feel like making the trek across the slippery ice-snow that was probably freezing up again. I went to MoCon and talked to Dave and the pizza lady, and sat with Aaron, who found me in line. We talked politics and debate. It was fun.
I came home, tried to do work, and fell asleep again. I woke up around 11:00 and did an hour’s worth of work, then slept again. I woke up at 9:00 Thursday morning, utterly refreshed. Grand total: about 18 hours of much-needed sleep. The consequences: a beautiful, sunny and warm January day wasted, and two (well, really three) classes missed. A bitter deal.
After all that sleep, though, Thursday was pretty good. I woke up feeling awake (what a new feeling!) and cleaned myself up; showered for the first time in a few days, and put on some new clothes (how much of a hippy I’ve become since making Wes my home). I headed off for RELI101 and enjoyed an educational 80 minutes. I talked to Sarah, Hannah, Anna, and a friend of Anna visiting from some high school whose name I can’t now remember (sorry!).
Immediately after was the American Studies Open House for Prospective Majors. Woo! If anything’s gotten me excited to be an academic in the past year and a half, this was it. I talked to Prof. Swinehart (from last semester) and am kinda sad I didn’t take his Anglo-American Masculinities course this semester. He’s such an awesome guy; very commonsensical yet analytical, as well. I’m a big proponent of his history-is-people attitude towards the field. We had pizza and some snazzy desserts, and I talked with Dara and Jon, and realized that there are a lot of awesome people majoring in AMST, and quite a number of pretty females, as well!
Prof. Pfister, chair of the department, talked about the major in broad terms, then handed it off to various faculty in the department. Prof. Romano arrived and stood next to me. I felt bad because she’s my professor for the civil rights class—the one I missed yesterday. She said she really liked the comments I made in my reading response and wished I had been in class.
Me too.
The open house went really well. I think it’ll be good to finally settle into an academic home on campus, and the Center for the Americas is a beautiful place to live, academically. I’m even excited about the honors thesis, even though I have no idea what topic I want to research. But Pfister and Swinehart really got my revved up for my future in the department, and my next few years as an academician. Though I still don’t think I’ll ever really fit the part.
After the open house, I had HelpDesk, and put in a solid 7+ hours. It was a tragically slow day. I registered an Xbox, helped someone out with web publishing, and bounced around some webmail problems. I also talked to Tussy about something other than work, which was a first. I think I’m breaking the surface of sociability with Dan, and Amanda’s shell seems to have cracked as of last week, so it’s no longer silent when working with her. Teray as always is great to be around, and Isaac and Micah were there, which is always nice.
Tom and Michelle stopped by tonight, which I always appreciate. I haven’t seen much of Tom at all this semester; I suppose he’s really busy with work and papers and such. He’s going to a Medieval Studies conference this weekend with Zach and Sarah (he’s a MDST major). I talked some with Jeffrey, and it felt like forever since we’d done so, since I slept basically all day Wednesday.
Now, I’m going to go to bed. I have the gym, class, the bank, a nap, and B. B. King (with Chris, at Foxwoods!) to look forward to today. Mm, happy dreams. Good night.
