Ever since I came to college, I have been completely bombarded with something that is more stressful than I could have ever imagined: I have way too much time in my day.
I have about two to three hours of classes a day. So, considering that I go to bed at roughly 2 a.m. every morning and wake up at roughly 8 a.m. every morning, this means that three hours out of 18 are spent constructively, and that’s assuming that I’m paying attention in class.
I feel like it’s unfair for me to talk about how I have all this time in my day without telling you what I do with it, so here goes. Buckle up. Get ready for the ride of your life!
On an average day, I wake up, jump down from my top bunk and subsequently hurt my ankle. Then I make my way to my coffee machine. In the morning, making coffee can be quite an endeavor. I am addicted to caffeine, and before I have coffee I am like an angry, mumbling cave man.
This means that my dexterity and mental capacity are also limited to that of a cave man (or a cave baby, sometimes, depending on how out of it I am), so making my coffee in the morning is a horribly painstaking pursuit.
Yet, the reward in the end (steamy, frothy and aromatic coffee) outweighs the amount of work necessary to produce it.
After my coffee is done, I zone out completely for about an hour until my classes start.
This is usually the most delightful part of my day because this is when I think of really weird, far-out ideas. Sometimes, on my bad mornings, I will have consumed four to five cups of coffee even before leaving for class.
Consequently, I’ll end up sitting in class twitching and sweating like a nut case. Because of this, I tend to choose seats in the back of the room.
Once my classes are done, it’s usually around noon, so I eat. This part of my day can be interesting, because it’s a complicated mind game, kind of like trying to figure out what you want to wear for the day.
For example, you don’t want to go up and down your hall, begging people to eat with you, because then you will feel like a loser.
Instead, you might want to play it cool and wait until someone asks you. Then, when you’re finally asked, you’re like, “Oh sure, I’ll eat-I guess. I was going to wait for a friend but what the heck.” The reality is that you’re really ecstatic about eating, but you want to play it cool.
On the bad days though, no one will ask you to eat; then 3 o’clock rolls around, and you’re pretty stinking hungry, so you settle for some Ramen.
The most entertaining parts of my day are the sporadic friendly conversations I strike up with people on the elevator. The range of interactions that can be instigated in the elevator is really just incredible.
Think about it; You’re standing in a big blue box, surrounded by stressed-out college kids who are only going to be on the elevator for a minute; yet, during this minute, some sort of intellectually stimulating conversation can always be started.
Whenever I start to get bored due to the silence on an elevator, I’ll spew out something like, “Man I just flunked a really important chemistry test.”
However, since these are people I don’t know, they don’t understand that I don’t take chemistry. I know this and take full advantage of it. So I’ll elaborate a little more, talking about how I am only here because of a scholarship, and how my chemistry grade is so bad that it will force the office of financial aid revoke my scholarship.
My point here is that you can push the boundaries to these stories as far as you wish, but as soon as that elevator door opens to your floor, you can leave with a simple, “Haha, I was totally kidding about all that! See ya guys!”
That, my precious few readers, is my day in a nutshell.