Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Misery

The imp who controls Midwestern weather has, as usual, forced me to eat my words. It may be spring, but it's still cold. It's 40 degrees outside, according to weather.com, which as we all know is also controlled by the same imp, which causes it to lie, suck, or both.

I am now utterly and completely burned out on school. Had a paper due today. Didn't do it. More like couldn't, really. I did try, if you count staring at the computer screen for several hours trying. And I did get about half of it done. But I hadn't slept in almost 50 hours and was no longer capable of coherent thought, so I finally went to bed. Skipping all my classes today. Need sleep. This needs to end, soon. Five weeks now left in this semester, and then four more classes to stick out before I get a piece of paper which will hopefully ensure a job. And when I do enter the working world, who's to say I won't eventually become burned out on that, too, after 18.5 years? I can't believed I've been in school continuously for the past 17.75 years. That's just such a long time to be doing anything. So this is yet another thing to be counting down to. Must count down to May 4, the day of my final for 560, my last obligation for this semester. Must count down to December, the month I graduate from IU.

I am not certain how things deteriorated so much, so fast. I've truly enjoyed many aspects of school for a long time. Even high school, which I hated overall, had its good moments. Once I got the requirements behind me at Knox, most classes were interesting and stimulating. And if they weren't, well, they didn't last long. Perhaps the problem here is that I no longer have the patience to deal with requirements which simply don't interest me. The class that's giving me the biggest headache now, 510, is a required class. And I feel that I should be done with it by now, being used to 10-week terms. This has dragged on now for 11 weeks. Enough! If this paper had been my final paper, I have no doubt that I could have gotten it done and turned in with relatively little trouble. I suppose it comes down to a difficulty in adjusting. Last semester was tough too, when I felt I should be finished and still had six weeks to go. Far worse, though, is adjusting to taking classes that I don't want to take. At least I just have one more of those. The remaining three, two of which will be magazine writing and creative nonfiction, are classes of my choosing. In fact, the upcoming fall semester will consist of just two classes, one of them creative nonfiction and another something TBA. I am looking forward to that greatly. So maybe once I get through the rest of this evil semester, things won't be so bad. That makes me feel a little better. This blog is good for something after all.

A few years down the road I'm sure I'll wish I could return to the safety and security of the academic sphere, but for now I'm ready to leave. I just wish I could be paid to read and write.

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