Two Weeks of Classes Left

The following is an un-editted, quasi-stream of consciousnes. It has no real point, but I feel like I haven't been blogging enough lately, so here goes.

Try wrapping your mind around that. If you’re at college, you probably have your finals the first week of May, meaning you’ve got about three weeks of classes left. At ND, we get reading days, so we’re done on April 27th. I know it sounds silly to give us that much time before our first final on May 2nd, but trust me, I’ll have a lot of work to be doing, such as playing euchre, sitting on the quad and watching Buffy.

But I’m already scheduling my classes for next year on Monday (haven’t looked into that yet – probably should), just got our room picks for next year done (quad on the first floor – not bad for not having any choice, despite being a dorm away from the 110 guys and Tommy) and I’m not even done with this year yet, probably because it doesn’t feel like I should be even close to done.

Even more so than in high school, college is spent waiting for the next break. How long til Fall Break? Then how long til Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then you’re starting the next semester and it’s segmented up again, only Fall is Spring, Easter takes over for Thanksgiving and a three week Christmas break turns into a four month gap between two semesters, although they already have you rushing into the next one before the last one is over. It’s a weird feeling, like I’ve been here forever and not at all at the same time.

How else do you explain the fact that I’m not really sure if I’ve learned anything – other than that I’m pretty sure I’m a John Stuart Mill expert and could calculate the future value of a continuous income stream, as long as you aren’t taking it to infinity – or if maybe I’ve learned so much I think it’s just been there all the time. People say they go to college and change, and I’d have to say I don’t think it happened with me. I’d always made it a point to at least appear well-educated, yet still more concerned about pop culture and sports, and now that I’m here with a lot of really smart people, I just concentrate more on the other stuff and ski on the classes. I’m pulling A’s and B’s, and I’m not really sure if I could be doing better or not, but I’m content and the parents are content, so why mess with a good thing?

It’s weird to think that I’ve only known some of the people here since August. Brendan makes fat jokes about Dill when people are around who never met the guy. Matt rightfully brings up Van Helsing anytime I’m getting too full of myself. DK knows that “One Shining Moment” will make me bawl like a little girl. Patrick realizes that Shane is completely and totally insane, and loves it. Seven of these guys have been in my house, signed the Big Fish board and made fun of me with my mom. Trying to think back that as of last July they were only names on a roster of other freshmen who would be in my section is really hard.

The weirdest thing is, I know when I go home, it won’t really seem like I’ve been gone for that long. Probably cause it’s only been a month or so, since Easter Break just happened, but I mean that I haven’t been gone for long at all overall. The seniors will be graduating, and that’ll be weird ‘cause it makes my sister a senior, but other than that, I’ll go back and work at PennDOT for the summer, make fun of my dad with the same guys from last year and go down to Pirate games every time I get the chance. It’ll be basically the same as last summer, except now I’ll be on the cell phone a lot more and making a few weekend/week trips to visit people, along with occasionally hosting a person or two. Andy MacKrell is easy. He’s a two hour drive, so if I went to head up to Casino Niagara and gamble for a weekend, fantastic, and when we have Chris-A-Palooza and the ladies of West Shamokin want to see his fabulous hair, that’ll work out well, too. I won’t miss the classes, the winter or the rules, but that’s about the extent of what I won’t want to be a part of while I’m back home.

Considering there’s no way to combine the two, as having everyone over all the time – my fabulous high school plan that did me well – doesn’t exactly work when it would require coordinating flights from Jacksonville, Taos and Boise, and I can’t have all my friends from home come to Notre Dame – due to the cost, distance and admission requirements – I just have to enjoy the time I have at both as much as possible. So that’s what I’m doing now, as time winds down, spending time playing Euchre on the night before a Calc test (Got a 90 on the test, so it paid off) or forgoing getting ahead of anything in order to lounge on the quad or watch episodes of Arrested Development for the 29th time, just for the one joke we all know is coming.

Maybe it’s different if your closer to home, or maybe it’s exactly the same, but for some reason, wherever you’re gone from, you miss it, and whenever you return, it feels like you never left. I think, and I’m not sure, that it’s a very good thing, almost as if you have two homes, two bases of friends, and anytime there’s more people in your life you have inside jokes with or feel comfortable tackling or cursing at randomly, that’s a very good thing.

So despite the fact there’s only two weeks of classes left, it doesn’t feel like I’ve been here for only nine months.

It really feels like I’ve been here forever, and since I don’t feel like that means I’m any farther away from everyone back home, I think college six hours from good ol’ WS has been a very good thing.

Tomorrow: CornHole goes national...