What Grinds my Gears: Welcome Back

Moving Back In: The first thing I felt was a sense of déjà vu. The next thing I felt was, “I wanna hurt you.” While I was moving in to my residence hall at the beginning of the fall semester, it seemed every RA wanted to lend me a hand and make the move as easy as possible. This time, I received no help at all, except from the occasional door-holder. What is it that makes this move-in so much less important than the one in the fall semester? Maybe it is just because I did this already at the beginning of the school year, I should have the hang of it by now. Well, you want to know something? The load has not gotten any lighter from last time. Heck, it has gotten heavier and bigger, so could I get a little help here?

Reconfiguring My Appetite: I don’t know about you, but I spent a week of my Christmas vacation on a cruise. I dined on some of the most decadent food I may ever lay eyes on. The problem with having this fine food during break is that I have to come back to school and get used to eating Sodexo food again. I’m going from having roast duckling with cranberry sauce to having a half-baked chicken quesadilla. It’s hard enough I have to get used to shoveling this stuff down my gullet, again, but I also have to get used to eating it at a different time because of my new schedule. Speaking of segues…

My New Schedule: This change of pace is a nightmare and a quarter. My previous Tuesdays and Thursdays had me waking up early to make it in time to my 8:30 class, but now I don’t have any classes until 11:30. While I guess it’s nice to not have class until later in the day, I will still wake up early to get breakfast. I’m not sleeping in, nor am I staying in my room, so this amount of excessive free time seems rather unfitting for me. Well, perhaps it is not completely unfitting. It did give me time to write this. Perhaps I will consider it my “What Grinds My Gears” meditation time. A time for me to sit back and think about all the worries and apprehensions in my life and not let them go. Ah, how relaxing.

New Professors: All of my professors this semester are different except for one, so now I have to get a readout on all of these new personalities. My biggest problem with this is the change it brings to my work schedule. Last semester, in my COM class, I had to write a paper every week, and I divided up my free time to make room to write all of these papers. Now, however, my COM class is the easiest one I have in my schedule, and the only paper I have to write for the whole class will be 800-1000 words. Meanwhile, in one of my INST classes where I barely had to try to get an A, I now have to write for every article I read in the class. My workload has become all topsy-turvy because of my new professors, and I can’t tell if it is just the way it is going to be or if this is only the way they will act at the beginning of the semester. Even worse than all of this is the thought that I will have to work again. I was away for a whole month to relax and let go of my cares, but now I have to get used to being uneasy and tense from all of these upcoming writing assignments, projects, and exams, again! Not to mention, I have to buy new textbooks! I had managed to let go of all this anxiety while I was sunbathing on Deck 12 reading “Sherlock Holmes.” And somehow, I found a way to give up all of my misery when I set foot on the shores of Belize, but not any more. My school wants to put all of these frustrations back into my system. Well, if that’s what they want, then that’s what they’ll get!

GUESS WHO’S BACK, AND GRINDIER THAN EVER?