By Anthony Biondi (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: February 22, 2012
I wake up every morning at the crack of dawn to the sound of chirping birds, and it’s not even spring yet. I look outside to see another dreary Vancouver day with grey skies and the promise of torrential rains. I have to take an hour-long bus ride at ungodly hours of the morning just to reach the school where I succumb to the early morning haze of mental cramming in early classes. I stock up on caffeine and candy just to keep my blood jittery enough to retain my awareness. And I don’t even have it half as bad as some.
Winter semester has always been a time of long days and deep mugs. I wonder why this time of year is always the most stressful. I don’t know how the Christmas season does it, but it seems to be only just enough time to recoup from the semester just before. Winter is my long haul, with little sleep and less patience.
As we emerge on the other side of spring break (a half-remembered dream of a week) our hopeful notions of gaining rest are quickly squelched. The stress of winter semester accumulates and continues to build as if the week never happened. Midterms lie in wait just around the corner. I can almost hear the voice of Admiral Ackbar shouting: “IT’S A TRAP!” into my ear the Sunday before classes began again. Whatever rest or sleep I had managed to obtain has been for naught. The shield generator is still up, and I couldn’t buy Han more time.
It’s no wonder, then, why my grades tend to dip in the winter semester. The morale is low and the seasons are changing. I would love to blame the irritatingly chirping birds and the rapidly changing daylight, but I don’t think it would get me anywhere. My only hope is to fight through the dread of work, pick up my pencil with white knuckles, and force myself to do the things I have paid good money to do. The last thing I need is to bring down my GPA because of low morale.
If I were marching to war I would have a commanding officer motivating me with a deeply masculine gravelly voice. I have to be my own gravelly voice, my own strike team on the moon of Endor, and get up off my ass and stop wasting the time that I think I don’t have. Reading break was great, but reality is always a bitch.
