Driven

Day 5: A week ago, I began Spanish 3.

Class starts at 8 AM and runs for 4.5 hours. I'd say 4.5 hours straight but we get a ten minute break at the two hour mark. Each day starts with a quiz on the material from the previous day. We took our fifth quiz today. Midterms are Wednesday.

Things. Move. VERY. Quickly.

Missing an hour of a summer session class is the equivalent to missing a day's worth of class in a normal semester. And yet, there are kids in my class who have shown up late, left early, and one who, just plain doesn't do homework even though it's an easy 15% of our grade. It doesn't have to be correct, it just has to be done. You could write just about anything and get 100% credit. Still... *shrug*

Class began a week ago and Midterms are this Wednesday. Finals are next week. I'm enduring all of this with the unblinking courage of a robot gorilla.

Class began a week ago and we're already more than 1/3 of the way through the course material.

Class began a week ago and my teacher still calls my "Strew". I know because that's how she spells it as well.

I'd correct her but it sounds adorable.

Class began a week ago and I'm a lot more confident since then. I can't wait for midterms. I may just end up with an "A" in this course. Until the final bell, however, I have a lot more work to do.

The holiday makes this into a 3-day school week. 'Tough' just got 'tougher'.

*opens lunchables* Bring it, Spanish.

Estoy listo.

Pre-Vent

Day 0: One of the messy truths about my going back to school is summer classes. The "messiness" specifically refers to the unwanted interruption from laying on the couch all day with a hand in my pants reading The Hobbit for the fourth time (ironically, of course) while sipping room temperature beer.

The "truth" part is self-evident.

...mostly.

I can feel a childish tantrum lingering just at the back of my throat, a tickle that won't quite become a cough. I want to complain, to rally against this horrible injustice of summer school - the very antithesis of all things free and young and fun. Even though I can intellectually justify interrupting my summer "vacation" to go back to school (necessity notwithstanding), emotionally it's still a tough sell. Granted, I understand that I wouldn't have had much of a summer vacation otherwise (and by "otherwise" I mean "if I was a normal 30-something holding down a 9 to 5) but it still sucks. Conceptually.

Tomorrow begins six weeks of summer courses - Spanish 3 and Spanish 4 respectively (and consecutively).

Espero que vaya hacer bien.

Here we go again.

The Gradient

The Aftermath: It's 11 AM and I'm in my underpants. I'm home alone. The TV is on but I'm not watching it. Even though I've cued up a show on the DVR that I've been dying to watch. Even though the volume is most of the way up. I can't focus on it. I can't commit. I'm not here.

The dust has finally settled. The noise is gone. The stress has melted and even the lingering cool water of the aftermath has begun to evaporate. I'm in a new place, enjoying the fruits of my hard work. And by that I mean sitting in my underpants in the living room and eating Oreos at 11 AM. I'm gloriously unburdened and reveling in the temporary wonderment of it all. It's glorious. It's miraculous.

The Oreos are double stuffed and I am unflappable.

I took my last final almost two weeks ago ((Day 84) and, if I'm being honest, I was only vaguely engaged. I had gotten over the most difficult hurdle and had already breathed my sigh of relief and begun to relax, despite the fact that there was still work to be done. I studied nonetheless and showed up to campus to had breakfast and center myself beforehand.

I showed up a few minutes early and only about half the class was there. Exam time came and a number of students were still missing. The TA cleared her throat. "We'll wait a few more minutes and then we'll begin." By the time the exam started, three students were still MIA. I finished early and left the room. Exiting the building, I passed one of the missing students rushing on their way to the exam. "I overslept!" he said. I kept walking.

When I decided to leave college more than a decade ago, I felt awful about my decision until I walked out of the Wilbur Cross building. At that moment, the clouds parted, the sun came out in full force, and I couldn't help but smile. I don't believe in signs but, at the time, it sure felt like one. I held on to the memory of that moment for years, recalling it whenever doubt began creeping in about my decision to leave school.

This day, I earned a new memory.

I walked outside, grinning ear to ear. The campus was still littered with sleep-deprived ill-tempered students but I could care less. My book bag felt lighter.  The sun seemed a little brighter. I walk/danced over to the library smiling at strangers like an insane person. I got halfway up the stairs before it occurred to me that I had nothing left to do there. I went up anyone, skipping stairs along the way.

I was done.

Q: "So, how'd you do?"
A: Straight B's. 

So, I earned a 3.0. Hooray for me! Right? Well... mostly.

On the one hand, I'm very happy with that outcome. I worked hard and earned above average marks in every one of my classes. 15 credits worth of B's is not a bad showing for my first semester back after over a decade away.  But on the other hand, I'm a little disappointed with myself. I expected to blow the doors off the semester and walk away with a helpless 4.0 wriggling in my merciless bloody maw.

I think now that I'm back in the swing of things (read: acclimated [read: fully matriculated]) next semester will be easier. And by "easier" I mean that I'm entirely comfortable setting the bar higher than 3.0

In just a few weeks, I'll be starting summer course work and, shortly after that, fall course work. And I 'll blog the whole bloody mess. I promise. Because, honestly, I can't help myself.

For now, though, I've got Oreos to eat. And bunny slippers on my feet. And something else that rhymes with sleep.

And something else that rhymes with sleep.

Until the summer, gang...

#onedown

Finals Week: Prep Work

Day 80: I woke up this morning nervous, scattered, swatting at the alarm clock. My eyes were glued shut. My tongue was a dead wet thing. I yawned and rubbed my eyes, hoping that it was Monday and not Tuesday.

It was Tuesday.

I stuffed my notes and textbooks into my bag and headed out the door.

Campus was the same strange version of itself that it had been the day before; students studying, weeping, wandering in a daze, the air thick with tension and worry. I avoided the library and headed for the Student Union instead, hoping that it would be less... theatrical.

A young woman sat near me, wrenched open her laptop, and began reading things aloud.


"Ok one... one fiiiiifty-three... ok terminal point... and the modifier... ok ok .... wait... wait what about... oh there it is, there it is. Whew! Ok... ok ok..."


She never completed a sentence or an idea, just spouted sentence fragments into the ether, hoping, perhaps, that they'd instigate something helpful. Every now and then, she'd look up from her laptop, scowling, her eyes darting around the room.

I changed seats.

I was staring down the most difficult of my three exams. I had been to class (all of them), done my homework, and studied hard. Very hard. And, still, I felt entirely unprepared. The day before, I had gone to two Final Exam reviews for this class. This particular class is a survey course comprised of 25 sections of about 20-25 kids a piece, so I arrived early hoping to beat the rush. Including myself, there were 4 kids there. Four. As in 1-2-3-4.

For those of you playing the at-home game, that's less than 1% of the total population of students.

The absence of the other students was so profound, I had trouble concentrating. I kept thinking, "Am I in the right review? Is this for MY class?" One of the four of us there wore headphones nearly the entire time.

The instructor for the review scribbled things on the white board and declared things in the nonsense language that I was to be tested on less than 24 hours hence. I was nervous and wrote everything down. And then a strange thing happened. He got something wrong. I pointed it out and, after a few seconds, he apologized and sheepishly erased and rewrote the example.

And then it happened again. And again. And AGAIN.

I stopped being subtle about pointing out his errors and, instead, showed him my work. The other students began shifting in their seats. I started giving unsolicited advice on how to more simply solve some of the problems. The students started asking me questions directly. The instructor turned a shade of red I'd never seen before.

The kid with headphones finally took out his notebook when he realized that the session was nearly over and, of course, by then, it was much too late. We packed our things and wished one another luck on the exam. I thanked the instructor on the way out the door.

"You don't need luck," he said. "You're more ready than I am."

Despite the fact that he was probably (read: demonstrably) right, I went to another review session that evening, this one hosted by the professor. A couple hundred kids (240+) showed up this time. The room thrummed and buzzed with scuffling feet and sidebar conversations. After about an hour, most of the students began packing and leaving, one by one. 90 minutes in, the group was reduced to about 75 kids. The questions became much more specific and practical. Without the din of the departed disinterested students, everything was clearer. Students tapped one another on the shoulder and explained things. The professor smiled more.

All too soon, the professor looked over her glasses and asked, "I think that's it. Are there any other questions?"

We rose and left.

30 minutes before the exam, a few students began to gather outside the door. 15 minutes before the exam, there was a chattering mob. 3 minutes before the exam, the professor arrived, flanked by TA's carrying boxes. I jumped up from my seat on the floor and pulled the door open for them. The prof smiled at me.

10 minutes later, I was face-to-face with the exam. 90 minutes after that, I was done.

I wouldn't face another exam for two more days but I went to the library anyway. I took my time walking, reviewing what had just happened, asking myself over and over if I had done my best, if there wasn't something else that I could or should have done. "I did my best," I said aloud and smiled, because it was true.

I had done the best that I could do.

Finals Week: The Student Body

Day 79: I arrived on campus at my normal time and immediately noticed a difference. As I usually do on exam days, I drove past the fire station (for luck). Most mornings, there are  handful of joggers and strollers, women with their hair tied back, chubby men with noisy strides, and the like. This morning, there was no one. Things were so desolate, I double checked the date on my phone to be sure I hadn't shown up on a Sunday:

Mon, May 6, 2013

I parked and noticed the garage was conspicuously bare as well. I easily got a spot near the door and, again, checked my phone, sure that I had arrived on campus extra early:

7:58 AM

A few groups of people wandered the campus in packs, similar to the tour groups that began popping up a few months ago but comprised of much older folk. An older woman in one of the groups smiled at me, her lips parting on a yellowing set of uneven teeth.I got the feeling that she knew something that I didn't. I did my best to smile back.

I ate breakfast in a strangely deserted Student Union, now slightly nervous, now checking the date and time on my phone every few minutes, now double and triple checking the exam schedule. To calm myself a little, I   browsed my news/blog feeds. When I looked up a few moments later, the place was packed - PACKED! - with students, silent, eager, desperately sweating students.

Two young men stared at their textbooks then at one another. "Lambda equals h over p," one of the young men said, unsure, squinting. The young man opposite him squinted back, as if trying to see something that wasn't there. They stayed like this for a few moments before returning their gaze each to his own textbook.

A young woman to my left fidgeted with her cell phone, mumbling to herself, writing things down and crossing them out seemingly at random. Her phone rang for only and instant before she answer breathlessly, "Jenna thank GOD! Did you take notes? Can you bring them? I'm at The U." There were a couple of beats of silence before she followed up with, "I know he's gonna screw us with this exam. [pause] Right? He's such an asshole." After a few more choice words, she hung up the phone and returned to her ritual of scrawling and scribbling.

A young man bumped into me and began apologizing profusely. "It's ok," I said, distant, confused. His eyes were red and cloudy with great dark circles around them. He kept talking, a man in a dream, walking away, speaking to no one.

I'm usually alone in the library with my secret crush for an hour or so before class. Today, every single PC was taken. Moreover, students had situated themselves in piles all over the floor, against the walls, draped over couches, stuffed behind doors and in chairs. They were dressed in PJs, old t-shirts, their hair in disarray, their eyes moody and distant. I remembered a sign on the way in that read, Library Open 24/7 during Exam Week. Good Luck! "My God," I thought to myself. "Have they been here all night?"

All around was the smell of panic and nervous sweat, a dank metallic aura of fear and regret. They mumbled to themselves and one another, rocking slightly, hunched over text books, babbling, chanting, praying.

One girl spontaneously burst into tears. A few students situated near her looked about helplessly, unsure, their fingers holding their place in their textbooks. But her tears lasted only a moment. She cleared her throat and swiped at her face, running her fingers through her hair. The other students returned to their textbooks, pretending not to have witnessed her indignity.

I left the library.

I arrived to my first exam 20 minutes early. Here, too, the floor was lousy with lounging students, students propped against walls and dangling on the ends of stools and chairs. Some were fast asleep. Some looked insane. One was reading the textbook and taking notes. I steered clear of him.

Five minutes before the exam, we were seated in the lecture hall, waiting, praying, counting down. A student behind me used the free time to pepper the TA with questions. After a minute or two, I turned to him and said, "Kid, if you don't know it by now, you don't know it. Relax and earn your grade."

The TA smiled meekly, shrugging a bit. "He's right," she said. The student began chewing his lower lip, marking the time with wet, weasel eyes.

When I finished the exam, I headed to the library again. Even before I entered, I saw an explosion of students strewn about, desperate, tortured, fretful. A beautiful young woman walked by outside the library, talking on her cell phone, uncharacteristically cheerful and carefree."I could care less if I get a D or whatever," she giggled. "It's Daddy's money!"

She smelled like a Chanel no. 5 commercial.

Fit

Day 71: A few months ago, I broke my glasses. The lenses themselves were just fine, but the hinge on the right arm came apart. My insurance only covers new glasses every two years and I was still 4 months short when I sat on my glasses. Thus, I was forced to make do by taping the broken arm in place and waiting. My glass constantly slid down my nose, off my nose, into my lap, onto the ground. Sometimes the tape would fail and the glasses would fall apart. Once, that happened while I was driving. On top of that, the arm was taped on in a way that provided stability, but rendered the arm unfoldable and the glasses almost entirely unadjustable. The glasses did not fit well, and would not fit well. But I got used to them.

A couple weekends ago, I lost my broken glasses at a wedding. I am able to see short distances without them, but, without them, driving becomes dangerous during the day and entirely impossible at night.Thus what was once just an annoying situation became an altogether impossible one.

I went to the eye doctor for an exam and walked out with semi-expensive replacements. I liked them. I liked them so much, in fact, that I didn't particularly care when a woman said to me, "Drew... they make you look so... nerdy. Like... more nerdy than usual." An insecure Drew would have openly questioned her ill fitting cardigan and discount hair dye. That day, however, I only smiled and said, "Well, I like them." And I did. I do, even. But then weird things started to happen.

The glasses sit just where they're ought to without pokes from pointer finger or encouragement by way of nose crinkling. They behave as they should. Yet that doesn't stop me (even as I write this) from occasionally reaching up and pushing them here and there, adjusting them, taking them off and looking at them, rubbing my temples and shrugging my nose. They fit perfectly and, because of that, they give me headaches. I can hardly keep them on for more than an hour or so before taking them off. I can see much better with these than I could with my broken (and now missing) glasses, but, still, they're a pain - literally. The points at which they press upon my head are particularly uncomfortable.

I find myself missing the broken, ill-fitting, dangerous glasses, even though I see better with my new glasses, even though these new glasses are aesthetically superior. The old dodgy glasses, however, are familiar. I'd learned my way around the brokenness and had even come to expect and welcome it. When it went missing, I lost the standard that I had adapted to, a comfort I had worked very hard for. The new glasses are superior in every way, but they're not mine. Sure, I own them and use them, but they aren't yet personal. They're not a part of me yet.

That pretty much sums up the entire semester so far. I spent much of the time expecting things to fall apart and get tougher and more impossible, just as they had before. This time, though, things are much easier. Not only am I much more focused, but I'm less burdened and distracted by outside concerns than I was before. On top of that, I'm keeping at it, pressing through the tricky spots, saying no to beer and yes to homework (each when I have to [and ONLY when I have to]) and find myself now on the cusp of having had a successful semester.

And that's horrifying.

I know what it's like to fail. I know what it's like to grunt and strain and try with all your might to lift only to walk away with a gut full of hernia and a heart full of shame. All of that is as familiar to me as the sound of my own voice. I didn't glory in it or celebrate it at the time, and, had you asked me back then, I would have told you how much I hated it.

But this new way is unknown, unfamiliar, and sometimes that feels worse. I'm not familiar with this trajectory and, other than hearsay, I'm flying blind. I don't want my old glasses, and I don't want to go back to the way I did things, but I miss them both. I miss knowing.

I have two and a half weeks left of classes and finals and am already in the thick of planning and registering for coursework for next Summer, Fall, and Spring. I'm exhausted and on the verge of burning out, but I've still got some gas in the tank. I'm good for at least one more round.

This new path is lousy with unfamiliarity but I've eyeballed my grades and they're looking pretty good. I see them and say to myself, "In no time at all, you'll be used to these new glasses. The headaches will be gone, you'll forget you even have them on half the time, and you'll forget all about those old ones that weren't anything but trouble. In two weeks or so, you're going to see just how worth it is was to stretch those underused muscles and try lifting again."

I'm worried about the money, and the time, and the everything else, but can't ignore how good it feels to be trying - trying and succeeding, even.

Almost.

And only "almost". We've still got two weeks to go. But, if the last 13 weeks have been any indicator, in two more weeks, we'll be adding a "W" to the books. And I'd say that'd be worth the price of new glasses.

My New Specs

_____


Full disclosure: Wearing my new glasses, I called the reception hall where I'd last seen them, hoping that someone had found them. They had not.

#destiny
#outwiththeold
#noturningback

That Day

Day 51: It begins well enough in New England.

In September, young college men arrive on a campus positively lousy women - supple, buxom, flirty, eager, curious women, many of whom are, for the first time, without their parents supervision. Their shorts are shorter than expected, their hair softer, their eyes beckoning, their staunch inhibitions faded to vestigial mores by an insistent summer sun.

These college men, each of them, are paralyzed by the veritable galaxy of dazzling women, taunted and moved, indecipherably inspired as so much secret flesh dances from quad to quad, winking, like a promise, like a dare. The young men would act if not for the sheer improbability of the spectacle. Is it a trap? Are they the predators or the prey? Where do they begin? HOW do they begin?

But all this hesitation is mere pretense, masking a most profound an unadulterated feeling of gratitude. They  don't deserve this, but... they will take it. And, as the hesitation gives way to adventure, pursuit, hunger, and fantasy, they break from their fragile prisons of insecurity and begin the game that's been in play since time immemorial.

And then, winter comes.

To be sure, there is a necessary pass through Fall, but, here in New England, fall lasts no more than a week or two - ample warning for the natives, and an object lesson for newcomers. It is warm enough to go without a jacket until it isn't anymore. And, by then, you best be prepared to shovel.

And at that, all the young things that danced about, heedless of convention and daddy's unwavering moral standards, cocoon themselves in voluminous jackets and long pants, neutered by necessity. "Male" and "female" become play words, incidental abstractions, rumors. The once fertile land of opportunity and promise is, almost at once, rendered fallow and inert with ambiguity.

For many months afterward, the game lingers in hiatus. The men and boys, no less inspired than on the first day, are forced to funnel their energies elsewhere; football, basketball, Call of Duty. The vixens hide in plain sight - the men see but do not see, smell but do not pursue. Thereby this hesitation, coming from without, is worst than the first. They know what they want, yet cannot know. It is barren. It is confusion.

And then, winter goes.

To be sure, Spring happens, but, here in New England, it is a cursory greeting lasting just long enough for the birds to return. But, in that time, there is a day - the first upon which the long dormant sun first announces herself, compelling the and the old snow to flee and Earth to give up her green things.

Also on that day, - here commonly known by all men as That Day - they emerge.

The long legs and slender fingers are loosed from pants and gloves. The hair falls from beneath the wool caps , tender earlobes uncovered from earmuffs. The androgynous play of heavy coats and collars fades away, in an instant, as if it were never there, as if it might never return. And the shorts - the wonderful, heavenly, gift of shorts - they return.

A thousands limbs and lips and eye try out the sunlight, as if for the first time, and every male so inclined and inspired by the promise made by Fall, watches as the promise is fulfilled before their very eyes, a parade of eager songbirds drenched in the first tethers of honest sunlight strolling across the quad, unaware yet aware, winking with their hips, beginning the game anew.