So, starting another year of school, and I thought the day would never come. It was always hovering in the distance, impending but not too threatening; suddenly the first day is here, and I wish I could push it back. If there were a way to project myself out of my body and just watch myself on the first day of my junior year, I would do it. Then I could simultaneously be present in class and also savoring the fact that I’m halfway through college and moving quicker toward the end point, so quick I can’t even remember each class. I want to watch myself learning, to find out how I should grow and what I should know about my life that I never notice.
Unfortunately, I will wake up tomorrow morning, probably a little later than I wanted to, run out the door, sit in class with my heart thumping against my desk and hardly notice as an hour and a half speeds by. Then after lunch, it will begin again, more enjoyably because I will be reading and studying Children’s Literature (oh the joy of a creative writing major), and by the end I will be thanking heaven my first day is over. All this time, I should really be savoring and observing this time as a period of freedom and parent-funded ecstasy, as my father will point out.
I am making a pact this year, a pact against the schedule-loathing-weekend-obsessed syndrome, which I am very prone to get: instead of living with all thoughts turned toward the weekend and a dread of the next time slot, I will find something in each day of struggle to enjoy. No driving rain will govern my entire day, for what is rain but falling water? If soldiers can run through rain and knee-deep mud away from life-threatening danger, I can walk to class without a cloud of gloom accompanying my actual cloud of NW mizzle. Entering this year as a battle actually sounds better than taking it on as a wonderful youthful experience, something that society hounds college students on way too much.
So if I clock back in and it sounds like I’m losing the war, that’s okay because Churchill lost some battles, too. But he never stopped fighting until the war was won, and he probably didn’t fantasize about the weekend all the time and dream of flopping on couches and watching BBC hours on end. But I don’t know: maybe he did.
The Caterpillar Question 