yyland

Loose ends September 8, 2010

So, final semester. And I’m not going to charge along insanely down ‘i hate my life, why does this have to suck’ alley this time. Nope.

So anyway. It’s Week 5. Next week, I’ve got one presentation and two essays due. Granted, it’s not anything as insane as previous semesters, but this sem it’s seeming so much harder, not only to just get-the-shit-done, but just to take it seriously. Was just reading something somewhere, when I realised (tangentially) that the reason is not that this semester’s modules suck—even though I’ve totally ignored one of ‘em, am kinda bored by another two of ‘em, and feel slightly let-down by one. Yes, I only LOVE one of my classes this semester. But yeah. Even for that one class, there’s no real ‘out of class homework’, since it’s a discussion-centric class.

For the other four? I’ve just been sorta phoning it in. Even though most sems I don’t actually, you know, read exhaustively or completely, this semester, I’m just really not..well, ‘emotionally engaged’. Which makes it sound like I’m talking about some dude I’m dating, but that’s sorta the most appropriate term I can think of to describe it.

And I think I know why. For seven semesters, all I really WANTED to do, to ‘have done as a symbol of my having been in Uni’ was to write a HT. Yes, as a symbol. Cos I’m shallow like that. Cos, well, what kind of Honours Student would I be had I not “Written a Paper”? And then I had to fight my way up the ladder to be able to write it, and tussle with the practical problem (or as practical as we get in this ivory tower of mine) of well, what I was going to write.And then I finally found something that spoke to me, something that I cared about, deeply, and went for it, wrote it, handed it in.

And along the way it stopped being a symbol—it became something I really cared about, something deeply personal, the one thing I’ve done so far that I really am proud of. (Which is, incidentally, why, five months after handing it in, I’m still talking about it.)
[And wow, talking about it like that—someone should write a bildungsroman about my life as an undergraduate! They should make it into a movie! erms.]

But yes. An experience like that? For me, that was the apex. Not just writing it, really, but writing it along with some of the greatest people and minds I’ve met in NUS, having the time of my life. It was painful, but it was also so damn fun. Late nights, dirty jokes, breakfasts, lunches, dinners, suppers. Alcohol. Seriously, it was just—an experience unlike any other. Those three months were just fantastic.

And to go from that, to this? Well it sucks. I feel empty, let-down. Chasing a high that is just nowhere to be found. Phoning it in.

GAH! I want to love school again! I want to LOVE school. So far I only LOVE one of my five classes.

Right now I need to write these papers and get that presentation done. But I just can’t bring myself to care.

RAR.

But ok. No one cares that I don’t care. It’s a whole ball of uncaringness. GAH.

Fucking 1700s shit. *mutters*

*hauls self off to get to work, still muttering*

*mutters some more*