Wait

After having finally finished the epic paper saga on Thursday, I have since lapsed into a braindead state.

Friday was filled with icy weather and an anxious mind. I couldn't come down from the heightened state of the last month or more to just relax, plus I had a counselling session which always gets me thinking about the things that cause my anxiety.

Saturday was productive. I cleaned. You see, ever since my first semester at HCC, I have an intense urge to clean, organize, and purge at the end of every semester. It's a therapeutic event. I keep all of my old notes that I think could be pertinent in my future (I even have notes from my sophomore year in high school). I keep all of the essays that I've written in college. So I went through all of that and got rid of pounds of paper, condensed my load. It felt good to let go some of those tests from my senior Honors English class with Ms Groves. I didn't remember this, but did you know that I actually wrote essays in high school about the Backstreet Boys and my penpals associated with them? I was totally all about my KTBSPA license plate. Anyway, I was clinically obsessed. Those essays I don't file with my academic essays, but I have to keep them around so that I can pity my youthful self every time I see them.

Sunday and Monday were pretty much wasted days. My productivity level dropped to .5 on a 10 point scale. I'm exhausted, and my mind just does not want to study for a semiotics final. Plus, the weather is. . .bad, so I can't very well go out. And I don't have any money to go Christmas shopping anyway.

Now that the semester is pretty much behind me, I can look back and see what went wrong. I really don't think that the work load was any more than I had during any semester at K-State. It's the fact that it's graduate school that has skewed my mind. Ever since my senior year of high school, I have set these extremely high standards for myself, and I have met them every semester. I had high standards when the schools didn't expect that performance from me or anyone. But now, I feel like (and it's true) the school does have extremely high expectations of me, and now I have to meet them. It's not just me pushing me; it's me pushing me because they're pushing me. It's a different scenario than I've ever been in. It doesn't have to be this hard, but my anxiety came in to defend against the pressure...and it ended up hurting me. If next semester is going to be any better, I have to calm down and have confidence. Yes, graduate school is more work, but I made it harder than it actually was. So all of my complaining? It's my fault.

There's an ice storm outside. They might close campus tomorrow. That doesn't affect me final-wise--only in that we had scheduled a semiotics review session for tomorrow afternoon. But I do have to go to work. I love work, but it's going to be hard working a lot again. I know I definitely have to, though, because of the money thing. And there are books piling piling piling up for me.

I watched The Hills season finale tonight. (I know, I know. I'm lame.) I want to go to Paris. Again. I always wanted to study abroad, but I never got the opportunity. One of my life goals/dreams is to live in another country for at least a year. I want a vacation.