6:45 a.m.: I woke up this morning to a torrential downpour that is seeping a tad through my roof. I have to love living in an apartment without air conditioning that is 20 minutes away from campus. Sigh.
6:55 a.m.: I checked my outlook app for my first round of emails. Yet again, no one has requested to meet me during office hours. Guess I don’t have an excuse for slacking on my thesis today. Intense Tetris cravings will have to suffice. Sigh.
7:17 a.m.: I hopped out of my precisely 17-minute long shower. I had a particularly good contemplation of the roots of cultural hegemony while there. I think I would be able to hold a more thorough discussion with only myself than with my 8:50 a.m. section. Sigh.
Best, worst buildings to have in fall semester include ghosts, swivel chairs
7:30 a.m.: My Dunkin Donuts K-Cup is finally brewed. My aunt gave me a whole pack of these when she learned I would be moving away from my esteemed ivy-clad undergraduate college to this strange place, where there is only one Dunkin Donuts. Since I’m used to having one per city block, this loss is most outrageous to me and the K-Cups are the only things keeping my shreds of hope alive. Sigh.
8:40 a.m.: I cross Park Street at University, trying to wade through a sea of students clutching their Colectivo coffees and wearing their filled backpacks. One such backpack nearly handicapped me as an anxious freshman trying to get to the engineering mall crashed into me. Sigh.
9:40 a.m.: Once again, no one talks during this section despite my ingeniously devised questions. I guess this week’s reading selection wasn’t too stimulating, as it was clear from their notes that the majority of this section actually read the book. Color me impressed, but sigh.
Student believes 8:50 a.m. lecture begins at 9:30 a.m., regrets everything
10:00 a.m.: Lunch time. Sigh.
10:15 a.m.: This is when I really felt popular. I never see people more happy to see me than when I am taking attendance for my sections in lecture. It would be nice to get this attention some other times, like on my Tinder profile. Sigh.
11:30 a.m.: Another lecture, another 75 minutes spent looking at a student’s Macbook screen trying to determine how a human could watch videos of cats jumping off buildings for 72 minutes straight then immediately sense when it is 11:29 and start packing up their things. Sigh.
11:50 a.m.: Quick break to munch on a Nature Valley granola bar. I thought I wanted to be an astronaut once. Sigh.
1:05 p.m.: Another discussion section down. This one was talkative, almost too talkative. As a section discusses material more, without linking anything back to the source material, the higher the likelihood the section did not read the material. I doubt anyone got past page 15. Sigh.
4:00 p.m.: Office hours complete. Tetris was fulfilling. I did have about seven students show up to complain about their quiz grades and the wording of questions and thanking me immensely when I gave them half a point back. Again, this is one of the times I have felt most loved in my life. Sigh.
5:15 p.m.: Tried the new poke joint of the week for dinner. The spicy tuna was a great compliment to the spicy memes I saw about my mentor on the university meme group. I still wish there was more spice in my life. Sigh.
6:15 p.m.: I returned home to relax with my fish, Crandall, and sifted through a pile of rough drafts for a minor research paper. 75 percent of them used “effect” instead of “affect.” Sigh.
9:00 p.m.: I concluded two hours of light reading on my thesis topic while watching Crandall swim in his tank. Crandall, it seems, contemplated life much as I did today. I wonder if he too came to the same mundane conclusions. Sigh.
10:00 p.m.: I set my alarm for the next day and snooze my email notifications so I pretend as though Canvas is infallible and no student is having trouble accessing the online quiz, despite many frantic messages to the contrary. Perhaps tomorrow will be filled with more intellectual pursuits. Sigh.
