This week is the cusp of a home stretch. “Home” doesn’t quite fit the description though. The weeks upon us are not exactly a journey home. For a lot of us, this is home.
Who decided four years was the allotted time to get this degree thing done, anyway? I know adding more time sounds like a cop-out; an avoidance of responsibility. But that’s already been done. Generations ago, I could be solidly married with at least one little idiot me running around already. That actually sounds kind of hilarious. Maybe it’s a good thing we aren’t there yet.
What if we all just decided to become super seniors? That’s right, I’m saying we become a bigger group of rejects than we are now on purpose – just for sake of continuing to be as selfish and destructive as this chapter of life encourages.
There’s also the constructive side to what we’re doing at Fairfield. Someone just said, “I really want to see what’s in this new course booklet.” Can you believe that? I can. I have never felt like more of a nerd than I do right now. I’m excited to see what kind of classes I can plan for senior year. But it demands attention: our want for more of this. The weekly tides of work and play qualify as the most extreme some of us may see ever. Is it natural? Possibly not. More on that later.
I consider the week of Easter to be a turning point. After Easter, everything is a big deal. You can barely find a weekend without a significant event (Clam Jam just being the gold standard).
Then there’s the academic heat. You can barely think about school without scheduling meetings under class registration pressure.
Spring is exotic. So is this summer. If you’re not an education major, this summer vacation is huge. What makes it more exotic? America. Our friends abroad will tell us how chill the work schedules are around the world. So that’s it. Our schooling is tight. Our work is tighter.
And they wonder why Fridays resemble a war. It is a war. It is a war against not society, but our internal self; the part that decided to play by 90 percent of the rules. You know who might be winning that war? The super seniors.
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