I went to bed at 12:03 last night and probably fell asleep at 1:00.
I woke up at around 5 AM. I'm not sure why I keep doing that.
Anyway, I woke up when I still expected it to be dark. Winter, you know. Early dawn is for summer.
But when dawn still didn't roll around at 6 AM, I started to get confused, and when it still was mostly dark at 6:30 I was REALLY confused. I started to wonder if I had set my clock right.
When a heavy raincloud hangs over the world at 7 AM it's easy to wonder if the sun will not rise. When you're moving onward in life, or you're supposed to be moving onward, and all you want to do is go home, well, there are a fair few times in my life where I haven't been able to see a future much farther than "graduate this institution and go home for a while."
But this time when I go home I'm supposed to finally, finally get a goddamn professional job somewhere, like my sub-culture has been steering me towards, pushing me towards, dragging me towards, my entire life. "Go to college to earn the big bucks" says White Suburban America. "Nope, wait, all the good jobs are only available to people with Master's degrees. Gotta go to school some more."
I will go home in three weeks and worry every day about job-hunting.
At least I won't be worrying about homework anymore. At least, I won't be worrying about grades anymore. My whole life I've been measuring my self-worth on fairly exacting, minute details of grades -- B Plus versus B, A minues versus A. I've been scared that doing poorly at any point will not simply limit my future, but shut it down completely. I tire of this numbers game.
I will, I hope, move into a situation where my performance is judged by someone who has the flexibility to be more forgiving. Someone whose expectations are based on what non-academic people are looking for in their daily lives, instead of standards set by some roundtable of people who are trying to figure out what's best for the children. Well. I got out of that after High School, really -- grad school is much more focused on skills-building. But it still has grades, dammit.
I go home in three weeks, and it is three weeks ahead of one last goddamn set of finals, essays, and submissions so I can (I hope) get out of this place without looking like a lazy jerk.
And waking up on this first day back at school after the Thanksgiving break, I'm disoriented and nervous. So I wake up and wonder when the sun will rise.
8:46 AM and still no sun.