You do it every year without fail. There’s a string of weeks where you’re nice and organized with all your notes in the right folders, laundry done as soon as you’re running low on undies and putting everything where it belongs. And then, you forget your planner and decide you don’t feel like really carrying it, or you’re too tired to do that load of laundry…

Okay, it might not happen to you, but it happens to me.

Barely two weeks into the semester, and my room is still pretty navigatable, but far from clean. I can’t see the desk calendar where I put all of my due dates and meetings down anymore. I just don’t have the patience to be neat. I’m sure it’s a problem – I’ve been messy all my life – but I don’t really feel like fixing it.

I still haven’t written a word of my thesis. Mind you, since I’ve been on campus I’ve gotten countless articles and books and am in the process of picking through them, but that whole thought-on-paper process has yet to start. The first chapter is due in about two or three weeks (I’d tell you the due date, but right now it’s beneath a plate of stale chips). It’s not that I’m out partying or working super hard in my other classes (sure, I have a fair amount of work that I need to do, but it’s not overwhelming); I’m just having kind of a rough time settling into my senior year.

Already, at least five or six of my friends have looked upset at the fact that I’m graduating. Because I transferred in, a lot of my friends are graduating next year and assume that I’m doing the same. My future isn’t really a topic of thought for me, since I’m much better with living in the present. Still, it’s kind of unavoidable now.

On top of that, the construction means that the campus is shaking, rumbling, clanging, and groaning like drunk revenge sex from seven in the morning until six at night, so I’m having a hard time finding a quiet place to study or even to sleep. With the influx of first-years, I feel like I don’t know anybody. I almost feel like I’ve transferred all over again.

All of that together has the tendency to make me a little depressed when I sit and think about it.

I have to admit, though; I’m impressed with some of the freshmen, even if most of them are less like people and more like five-year-olds finding out all they can do without mommy and daddy around. A ton of them are getting on-campus jobs, especially the less pleasant ones like working in the dining hall. I definitely didn’t make the attempt to get a job on campus until last year, so kudos to you, freshmen. Well, the responsible ones, anyway. (Not the ones who do not go to poster sales and ask, “Is that photoshopped?” when looking at a poster of Warhol’s Cambell Soup Cans, or say, “I thought these were carrots!” while staring down at a plate full of shredded cheddar.) Between me not know what I’m going to be doing in a year and freshmen not knowing cheese from carrots, I don’t have high hopes for the future.

Despite all that, though, I’m not upset or depressed. School is life, and though I have yet to decide if it’s an amplified or understated allegory, it’s definitely there. And with things like friends, fall show premiers, and alcohol to distract and comfort me, how upset can I really be?

[Photo courtesy gettyimages.com]