Right before I sat down to write this I opened a letter (yes because apparently people still send those) informing me that come April I will be able to pick up my cap and gown. I looked at the letter, rolled my eyes, and thought April? Really? Why are they sending me this now when I don’t need to pick it up until April? But still I opened up my Google Calendar and went to plug in the date. But oh wait…what’s that?

April is only two clicks months away.

TWO MONTHS.

That’s shorter than a season of the Bachelor.

And that doesn’t even account for all the days off I have coming up.

Currently, I’m enjoying a five-day weekend. I’ll head into class one day next week, and then two more the week after, and then it’s Spring Break time. And when I get back there will only be three more weeks of March. And then it’s April. A month filled with weeks shortened by Easter and Passover holidays. The month I thought was oh so far away. The month I can pick up my cap and gown. My last month of undergraduate classes. My last month as a college student. Maybe April is closer than I thought. I mean, how did we even get to February already anyway?

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So normally, I try to keep the Weekly Ten a positive place. Best kisses. Best boys. Best ways to spend your winter break. But this week, well, that’s just not happening.

I’m not sure if it’s the bad weather or the senioritis or my inability to focus on any one task for more than five minutes at a time, but I’ve been in quite the mood these past few days. And I’m taking my anger out on February, this too short, unproductive, cold, depressing, and generally annoying month.

So here’s why I am officially hating on February.

10. Groundhog Day is a bogus holiday. Yes, okay. So it’s cute to watch a little groundhog crawl out of a whole and get scared by its own shadow. But is this holiday ever actually accurate? I mean, I’m crossing my frozen fingers that this year it will be; there’s nothing I’d love more this year than an early spring….especially after Snowmaggedon 2011.

9. One month closer to midterms. What comes after February? March.  The month of midterms. The month of study sessions and papers and cramming and procrastinating.  The two week long process of trying to relearn everything you’ve already forgotten. February is cruel even as it leaves us. Read More »

So this semester I’m taking my senior capstone classes. The seminar focuses on literature itself and the reflective tutorial focuses on literary theory and literary criticism. They’re supposed to be the culmination of everything we’ve ever learned as English majors. They’re supposed to extremely challenging, hardcore courses that push our limits. And they are extremely challenging and they do push my limits.

But they’re also really, really annoying.

Because the over-analyzing and the hardcore literary theory and the pages upon pages of papers making a point no one even really cares about is all well and good when you’re spending your life in the world of academia, but when you’re outside of that world, what’s the point, really? Because I’ve been sitting in class these past few weeks listening to people deconstruct these novels I was never really all that into to begin with, and that’s all I’ve been asking myself. What is the point? I’m graduating in four months and I’m never going to think about this again.

For the first day of class, we had to read these New York Times articles, a collection of pieces called “Why Criticism Matters.” My favorite in the bunch was written by Sam Anderson, a New York Times Magazine critic, and a man who apparently fully embraces the art of Twitter. The piece discusses the fact that the rise of technology, the creation of the iPad, and the world’s obsession with social networking is not the end of literary theory or the end of literature. But it is changing the way people access their literature, providing readers with a vast array of options, and challenging writers to get the attention of readers.

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If you’re not already back you’re probably very, very close to heading back to school by now, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I mean there are only so many movie marathons you can watch, so many hours you can sleep, so many fights you can get into with your younger sibling before you realize it’s time to head back to school. That’s all well and good. It’s not the beginning of the semester I’m opposed to. It’s the beginning of classes.

I’ve had a fun few weeks, full of productive days that involved sleeping until noon, catching up on the new season of The Bachelor, and trying to determine the real reason Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal broke up. So I really don’t have time for pesky things like classes, and homework, papers and projects. There are so many other things I’d rather be doing. In fact, now that I think about it, there’s not much I wouldn’t rather be doing than starting classes…

10. Go a week without internet access. If you knew me at all you’d know this is big. Very big. I don’t think I’ve gone 24 hours without internet access, never mind an entire WEEK. It would be pure, unadulterated torture for me to go a week without updating Twitter, Facebook stalking or checking my favorite blogs (Looking at you, CollegeCandy), but I would do it if I meant I didn’t have to go class. I really, really would.

9. Spend some quality time with my professor during office hours. Yes, I would. I would make awkward conversation with my professors in their creepy offices with their creepy things if I didn’t have to listen to them lecture. I would dodge questions about the lack of progress I’ve been making on my thesis, and suck up so they’ll write me awesome recommendations letters. Just don’t make me go to class.

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I am three finals away from freedom. (At least that’s what my Facebook says.)

After months and months of bemoaning and belaboring senior year, the fall semester is almost complete. Half of my senior year is over. My lasts semester taking a full course load is over.  It’s the end of an era, the beginning of something new. It’s what I’ve been counting down to since October. I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit ranting about how I could  not wait until the semester was over, how I needed a break, how I was tired of my professors, how I needed more free time and fewer responsibilities and how I was absolutely certain that this semester was just never going to end.

But now, now it’s very close to ending, and what I hadn’t seemed to realize was that it wasn’t so much my last fall semester of college that I wanted to end, but rather all of the work that accompanied it.

You see, I tried my best to strike a balance. But somewhere along the way the stress of senior year started overwhelming the sentimentality of senior year. It was less about enjoying the experience and more about powering through to the end of the experience. The senioritis started kicking in, and I started freaking out. I was trapped in a of must-get-things-done-now mind frame, worrying about my senior thesis (I don’t know why. It’s not due to April), my grad school applications (Don’t even know if I want to go to graduate school), and my grades (Still important. But now that the papers are done it doesn’t really seem as stress worthy). I spent a good chunk of the semester thinking about what comes next, and while it made sense at the time, that is not how I want to spend the latter half of my senior year. Read More »

There’s a week and a half left of classes.

I have three finals, two papers, and one draft of my senior thesis keeping me from my winter break. Not a walk in the park, but also not an all time high as far finals week frenzies go.  But yet, here I sit, far too enamored in this week’s episode of What Not to Wear to even think about getting any of this work done.

This is not stuff worth procrastinating. It requires no freak outs, no massive amounts of brain power. These papers are not worth the all-nighters they will result in if I leave the researching and the writing until the last minute. They are not worth the caffeine induced frenzy I will face the morning after just to get through classes. I should focus, and buckle down, and power through so that I can be done with it. But yet, here I sit, watching Stacy London argue for wedges over flip flops.

It’s time to face the facts: I have senioritis.

I remember the symptoms from the last trimester of senior year in high school. Lack of motivation. An unwillingness to go to class. The desire to sleep through every single one of my professor’s well intentioned lectures. Reading for classes is a nuisance. Getting up in time for class is a struggle. I have no desire to accomplish anything ever…

Okay, so maybe most of those symptoms aren’t exactly restricted to senioritis.  But right now, they’re amplified. Procrastination is a part of every student’s life, but lately I’ve made it into an art form. I know that I should do these papers, go to class, finish out the semester, graduate, but right now I’m just having trouble seeing the point of it all.  Because frankly, I really, really don’t want to. With graduation comes responsibility, real life, a weekend that doesn’t include Friday’s off, and days that don’t include time slots for naps and Facebook stalking. So I should embrace the chance to be irresponsible while I can, right? Read More »

I ran out of post it notes.

Now to you this may not seem like a moment worth mentioning, but to me this is a monumental deal. You see, back when I was a freshman, fresh faced and eager, I did things like shopping for school supplies. I bought pens, and paper, highlighters and binders, and, most importantly, I bought post it notes. (I’m an organization freak. For my kind, it’s the little things like multi-colored sticky paper that make life worth living, okay?) But these weren’t just any notes. These were the super stack, a 12 pad pack of multicolored 4X4 sticky notes. I was sure they would last me all four years of college.

That was before I started working on my senior thesis.

Thesis projects require note taking. They require page marking. They require a lot of post its. I printed journal article after journal article, photocopied book after book, stuck notes in chapter after chapter. This summer I finished the blue pad. In the past month alone I went through the purple, and this past week I finished the hot pink pad. My post it notes are no more. Seven months before the end of my college career. (I’m a little heartbroken. Don’t judge.)

That alone would be enough to make me reconsider my commitment to this whole “senior thesis” thing, but I assure you I have plenty more reasons. I started this thing back in May. I picked a topic, and wrote out a proposal. Over the summer I started doing some light research, reread the novels I was working with, and marked the important passages.  It didn’t seem all that bad, but this past summer I didn’t have four other courses to worry about. Now I do. Needless to say, things have gotten a bit more complicated. Read More »

I’ve sat down to write the first entry of the column that will chronicle my final year as a college student about fifty a few times now, but I just haven’t been able to figure out where to start. So I figure I might as well start with the truth: I can’t seem to write this column because I’m not really sure how I feel about this whole “senior year” thing.

I mean, sure, part of me revels in the fact that this will be the last year I am forced to deal with pretentious professors and overzealous freshmen. No more writing papers on topics I just don’t care about or being forced to take core courses I have no use for. (I am a currently taking Plagues, Outbreaks and Biological Warfare for my science requirement. I can be bitter.) No more late night cram sessions or midterms. Or finals. No more college.

But no more college doesn’t just mean no more classes, its means no more college. No more college means no more built in, ever expanding social network. No more themed parties or club sponsored events or months off in between semesters. No more college means that I’m going to have to join the real world.

So with that in mind, I’ve decided I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts. I’m a recently 21-year-old, single college girl with way too much to worry about. I have every reason to check out and give in to that oh so tempting state of being known as Senioritis. The only problem? Life won’t let me. You see, it seems that Junior Jenn was much more eager than Senior Jenn. Junior Jenn believed that writing a senior thesis would be fun, that attempting to finish out both of my majors in the fall semester was a great idea, that taking on leadership roles in clubs would be worth it, and that – oh yeah – taking on the roll of tutor in addition to already working 10+ hours a week would be the right thing to do. Read More »

You do it every year without fail. There’s a string of weeks where you’re nice and organized with all your notes in the right folders, laundry done as soon as you’re running low on undies and putting everything where it belongs. And then, you forget your planner and decide you don’t feel like really carrying it, or you’re too tired to do that load of laundry…

Okay, it might not happen to you, but it happens to me.

Barely two weeks into the semester, and my room is still pretty navigatable, but far from clean. I can’t see the desk calendar where I put all of my due dates and meetings down anymore. I just don’t have the patience to be neat. I’m sure it’s a problem – I’ve been messy all my life – but I don’t really feel like fixing it. Read More »