The Monkey is Off My Back

Flashcards, textbooks, study guides, music, and if you look very closely, Youtube, are what got me through the week.

Life is busy. Assignments this past week piled up faster than my plate at Thanksgiving, and for a little while I thought I wouldn’t see the light of day until Winter Break. I was wrong…I survived. To be honest, I’m not sure how I did it, but one midterm, one paper, one quiz, and one test later I’m standing on the back end of a crazy week, completely intact. In fact, I had a good week.

When I sat down last Saturday to plan out the week ahead I grabbed my syllabi and dove in. As soon as I was in, though, I wanted out. A midterm on Monday? A paper due Thursday? Double exams on Friday? I’m usually a ‘glass-half-full’ kind of guy, but this time around I was having difficulty imagining any possible light at the end of the tunnel.

Sunday night was dedicated to perfecting an oral presentation for the next morning, and by 9 am Monday the midterm was over. The celebration was short, however, as I settled in to work on my paper that I knew couldn’t wait until Wednesday night. Work study in the dining hall swallowed up six hours between Tuesday and Wednesday, and before I knew it I was setting my alarm for class on Thursday morning. I felt a weight lift off my shoulders as I handed in my paper, but I sagged once again when I realized that I still had two hurdles to clear (a quiz and a test) on Friday.

At 1 pm on Thursday I entered my dorm room. I studied until class at 5:30, grabbed a dinner on the run after class, and was back to my studies at 7. The next time I looked at the clock it was 11:30. Where had the night gone? For that matter, where had the week gone? I felt like I had blinked once and four days had gone by.

When I stopped to think about it though, I realized my week had been a good one. I got to the gym a couple of times, I got my nose dirty in some intramural football and floor hockey (though I’d rather not discuss the results on a public page like this one), and I somehow found time to watch my beloved Celtics open up their season with three convincing wins. Combine these activities with studying, regular homework, time spent with friends, and several late-night ping pong matches, and you get a complete week.

So even though I sat down a week ago and felt the looming burden of a week full of studying, I’m sitting in the same spot now, battle tested and completely unscathed. It’s like when you come to a door that looks heavy so you push really hard, but the door is a lot lighter than you expect and you end up slamming it against the wall. Now that I’ve burst through this week’s door, shaken the Homework Monkey off my back, and taken a deep breath, I think I’ll sit for a few and relax. And do nothing.

For now at least.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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