Another Finals Week has come and gone at the University of Pittsburgh. A lot of my friends have been counting down to the end of the fall semester the way children count down to Santa's arrival on Christmas Eve. I should feel happy that for 17 glorious days there will be no more 25 page papers or 2 hour exams to prepare for. But I don't. I feel incredibly bored. Let me explain what I mean...
Over the last 2 weeks, I've read 3 novels, one textbook debating the conservative movement, hundreds of pages of online criticism, and about 50 pages of drafts for various classes. I lived off of canned corn and frozen hot dogs. I only cleaned my bedroom in order to find drafts of papers I wrote the night before. And I loved every second of it. Finals week always gives meaning to my life, as pathetic as that sounds. Yes, the degree by which the Bible calls Christians to be environmetally conscious may never come up in casual conversation. But learning how to organize material, find my voice in a sea of criticism, and meet a deadline will. Even though finals week is exhausing even to those less inclined to procrastination, the end result is exilerating. I've proven I can succeed despite your crazy demands. Take that academia!
So how to explain the boredom? I've got an entire season of House to catch up on and a pile of do-not-even-think-about-picking-up-until-Christmas-break books on my book shelf. I'm not bored because I lack things to do, I'm bored because I lack meaningful things to do. While only my poor social philosophy professor will read my rant about Christian environmentalism, that paper was more important to me than House marathons (sorry Hugh Laurie!).
During finals week, we college students live off of coffee (or in my case hot chocolate) and pure adrenaline. When the week ends, we lose the adrenaline high. We have nothing to look forward to but Stephanie Meyer and Nora Roberts. We are then expected to go home to our familes as if wrestling with Aristotle and Foucaut didn't change our worldviews. We go home to a house that feels foreign though little has changed. Then we realize that home is exactly the same. It's the pitt undergrad that's foreign.
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I can sympathize, but that's not how I feel. Granted, unlike you I am basically a slug, but I've got too much work (school, library or other) to have much of an adrenaline high. Except for my brother becoming increasingly bizarre I quite welcome the comforts of home, even if it's for just a few weeks.
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