A Little Run-Down, But Hanging in There

This is always kind of a tough part of the year. Spring Break's long over, and yet there's still more than a month left of class. Not much more, granted, but you know what I mean. It's just kind of an exhausting time of the year. Finally through midterms, which is always helpful, but although that does lead to a lull in activity, it doesn't really mean much time to rest. Not to mention the fact that I have to register for my fall classes in less than two weeks. As I talked about last semester, it always seems to early to start scheduling next semester. I think I'd feel like it was too early if we picked classes in August. It's especially stressful knowing that if all goes well next year will be my last year of school. And, another thing I've mentioned before, I really have no clue what I'll be doing either a) this summer or b) (more importantly) after I graduate. I kind of feel like I'm running out of time.

And this has just been a long, long week. I was sick Monday and Tuesday, which never helps. Tuesday night and Wednesday night I took part in the College Week Live online college fair thing. It was a pretty cool thing, and at least once they got their act together on the second day it was very productive, but it definitely ate up some hours. Which of course means I was left last night with 200+ pages of reading for today. Fortunately most of that 200 pages was in a book that I'm enjoying and that is a very quick read, but a sizable chunk was in Assia Djebar's almost unreadable Fantasia. I am so glad to have finished working on this book. It's my second encounter with Djebar this school year, and hopefully my last, at least for a long, long time. Reading about 50 pages of her painful exercise in postmodern meta-textuality took about as long as reading 150 pages of the other book I was working on. So needless to say, I'm tired.

Let's see, what else? Last Friday I attended a really interesting event. It was a panel on "Paving the Road for Israeli-Palestinian Peace." It was quite enlightening and refreshing to actually hear people talking about the possibility of a peace agreement in the relatively near future and what needed to be done for one to be reached, as opposed to the general pessimism that usually surrounds the topic.

I don't even want to talk about my Commodores' showing (or lack thereof) in the NCAA's. Shameful.

OK, that's it. I'm done talking for one day.