Things that Scare Me

Things that Scare Me My classes start at 9:30 every morning this term. If the world operated on my sense of time, then the concept of morning would be applied to a time no earlier than 2 PM. Unfortunately for me, that will probably never happen. Even more unfortunately, I am a ridiculously heavy sleeper who could slumber through the initiation of a massive nuclear war. And now I somehow have to get up at 7:30 AM five days a week. (If you are my stepdad, you are probably laughing so hard you just fell out of your chair. He spent four years waking me up at 5 AM for school, which is a truly Herculean task. Consider it retribution. Or payback. Or both.) Ive been taking the 8-9AM hour at desk every weekday morning for the last three weeks, since Im pretty sure I wont get up in the morning unless Im being paid to do so. When my alarm clock goes off in the morning and Im tempted to cross the room and hit snooze, its like a little voice in my head says, Ill pay you $9.25 if you get out of bed right now. So far, the voice is compelling enough for me to immediately get up, shower, and dress. Its been working out nicely. As Im sure you can all understand, I was thoroughly looking forward to sleeping in last Saturday. I unplugged my alarm and pulled my window shade before going to bed at 3 AM, fully prepared to be knocked out until well into the day. I woke up without any provocation at 7:15 AM. Someone up there hates me. I have been assigned exactly zero problem sets since December of 2007. I realize that everyone and their grandmother thinks I am a lucky bastard. I hate psets seriously, I really hate them so the fact that Ive been able to avoid them for so long means that even I belong to that party. Ive passed on pset- and exam- heavy classes in favor of those with huge end-of-term papers and projects, hours upon hours of darkroom and Photoshop time, lab reports galore, and hundreds of pages of reading each night. Last semester, I had a total of one midterm and one final. I find these projects and reading assignments far more conducive to my learning (and far more enjoyable to do) than psets and exams, so it all works out nicely. This term, however, my luck has finally run out. 7.05, 9.22, 9.59, and 9.65 collectively have six problem sets, four papers, and thirteen exams. I also still have about 60-70 pages of reading per class per night. As you can see, I got served. If at any point in the upcoming months you find yourself wondering Hey, whered that Keri girl go?, I encourage you to read this post again and think about what I could be doing with my life right then. Dont spend too much time doing that, though. You could be off living your own instead. Im off to make myself a sandwich and read about protein folding.