It's a cold, and it's a broken...

I just finished (basically) my last large assignment for my first year of graduate school, and it feels great. Honestly, it’s been a pretty superb month so far. For some reason third quarter weighed on me. I felt grumpy a lot. I felt like I was more on edge with my students. I felt all around negative. I’m not sure if it was the impending doom of winter, third quarter drag or something else. But it’s gone. And fourth quarter feels like a cool spring breeze. And I mean that as a simile and as something very real.

And with all of these good vibes flowing, it seems strange to be entering Holy Week, a week of solemnity. But it’s hard to be somber with life bursting forth from everything around you. Maybe that’s what makes it more important to recognize the serious nature of Holy Week.

Maybe that’s something to talk to my students about this week.

And I can’t help but think that some of this feel-good business has to do with the looming summer ahead. I don’t want school to be over. It’s not that I’m tired of school. It’s just that it’s so easy to look back at the summer, to look back at college and kind of yearn for that. I have a great deal of pining for being in college. This doesn’t feel like college, and I don’t think it’s supposed to. It’s kind of something to bridge the gap, and I keep reading that my generation needs that. We think we need that. I think I need that. So, it only seems natural that I pine for living in a dorm for a couple of months, for walking around campus, for procrastinating on homework a little too long. (That paper I mentioned before, the one I’m finished with, it’s not due until April 25. I don’t think I’ve ever finished something so early.)

I guess the only thing left to do is ride this feeling out, to hold it for what it’s worth (and it’s worth a lot), to make the most of the time I have. This week it’s two track meets. Then it’s finishing speeches. Then it’s a band concert (Surfin’ USA.) Then it’s diagramming sentences. Then it’s a couple of tests. Then it’s a couple of field trips. Then it’s all over. And thinking about that just got me a little milky in the eye department, something that I didn’t expect but kind of love.

But now... now it’s sleep.