Focus Meets Train

I made a Facebook status sometime last week that detailed the fact that my Focus, my beloved Murfee, had more or less eaten too many cookies, rolled down the back hill, and was subsequently hit by a train as it passed by the house.

That should give you an accurate picture of how my semester has been going. Between two education seminars, four classes, a minimum of 20 hours community service (which, honestly, is actually 45, due to where I'm living), and three labs a week, I'm impressed that I'm still upright, mildly functioning, and haven't given myself a massive heart attack due to my caffeine consumption. I am, however, out of my meals provided by the Colleges courtesy of my meal plan, which isn't a big deal as I have a house with a kitchen, and thank sweet baby J that I have a coffee maker otherwise life would be more difficult than it already is on some days.

There is, however, a light at the end of the tunnel. That light is next semester's schedule - which I've already registered for - and it is glorious. No class on Mondays and I'm done on Fridays by 10:00 am. Essentially a four-day weekend my senior spring. Which brings me back to this happy fact:

I registered for my last semester of undergraduate classes.

Which prompted a whole string of thoughts, most of them involving four-letter words and something that sounded very similar to I don't give a shit what this semester turns out like as long as I pass everything with the minimum grade required to have it count for my major.

It's kind of sad, really, as I started off the semester really hoping that I'd be able to pull of a solid 3.0. At this point in my life, the more realistic goal, however hard it is to swallow, is that I'll be very lucky if the hard work that I'm putting in this semester results in the minimum grade required to have all this shit count for my degree. It's not like I'm slacking, but having three chemistry courses all over 300 level is, well, not only time-consuming but soul-sucking in a way that you haven't really got a concept of until you actually get there.

I'll be amazed if I have any sanity left at the end of the semester. That's when I'm assuring myself that I'll be able to sleep, while my sister assures me that I can sleep when I'm dead. That's true, too, but I'm hoping to hold out on that for another couple of years, at the very least.

In other news, I was at a Ben Folds concert this past weekend and it was absolutely epic. Truly one of the highlights of my senior year and I'm really glad that I went. He's an amazing musician - and a piano player that words can't adequately describe - and it was an awesome experience.

The fact that my 22nd birthday is coming up in 11 days hasn't really registered, either, because it's not like I'm going to spend it relaxing. I'm most likely going to spend all of Black Friday - my birthday - working on my curriculum project: lesson plans, assessment criteria, rubrics, the whole nine yards and whatnot. It's going to be painful on multiple levels, but it absolutely has to get done because there's only so many weeks of class left.

It's not supposed to go this fast.

So, now that I need to prepare myself for my analytical class (don't get me started), I'm going to spend the next few hours of my life trying not to freak out about the fact that I flat-out forgot I have a lab write-up (thankfully not a formal) due today and the mother of all formal labs due tomorrow. (But maybe we can convince her to change that to Wednesday.) Couple that with an exam tomorrow evening, auditions for the winter and spring shows on Wednesday (with a prepared monologue, too) and this week is going to be fairly busy, culminating in another exam next Sunday and a project for Econ on the Tuesday before break. With all of that is who-knows-what coming down the pipes in the education courses and, really, people are wondering why I drink the amount of caffeine that I do? How else do you expect me to get through a week where my hours of work have bypassed the hours in a week?

But that's more or less what I've been dealing with for three months.

So damn difficult to think through that it's almost over. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Here's hoping it's not an oncoming train.