Like a Time Capsule But More Insane [2013/01/30]

Ducklings! Welcome to the new year, the spring semester, and my last semester at Wesleyan.

...Oh god.

I was going to write a post last weekend, I swear I was, and then somehow I got caught up in sulking around my room and flailing a lot about how it is my LAST SEMESTER EVER and THE FUTURE IS DRAWING NEARER and OH MY GOD WHAT IS DROP/ADD WHAT ARE CLASSES WHAT IS SANITY??? and let's be real, that is not something you guys need in your lives (that is not something I need in my life) and then I got distracted because I realised I had written a blog post all the way back in December, on the day I went home, and then never posted it. And it was sort of funny, looking back at it from a month later, so I thought you guys might be amused by a glimpse of my thought process (my INCREDIBLY SLEEP-DEPRIVED thought process) on Sunday, December 16th.

Am I cheating by not writing up something about this week? Hell yes I am. But it's for your sake, ducklings. It really is. Promise.

[Under the cut: Something that's more stream of consciousness than usual. Which for me is, you know, saying a lot.]
Today was the latest I’ve ever stayed at Wesleyan.

Not in terms of the total number of actual days I spent on campus this semester, because A) I’m pretty sure the semester ended earlier than it has in years past, and B) I went off-campus at least twice this semester, which wasn’t entirely usual for me. It’s just that usually I leave a day or two before housing closes, for one reason or another; sometimes it’s because I’m taking the shuttle to New York, and there’s only one of those per “pre-break” period (seriously, what’s with that? This year the NYC/Boston shuttles were on Friday. Exams ended on Saturday. WHAT IS LOGIC), and sometimes it’s because I just… don’t feel like putting it off.

I sort of regretted that decision last year, though, because it felt like I hadn’t gotten enough closure on fall or spring semester. Plus I really didn’t feel like going straight from stressing about finals to hopping on a bus, so after I turned in my final paper on Friday, I took a nice stress-break, finished up some work I was doing in the preservation lab, and chilled with my housemates.

Housing closed at noon today, and my shuttle to New Haven was at 10 am, so the campus was pretty empty as I was dragging my ten million bags across campus. I don’t think I liked it very much. Not because of the emptiness, because I actually like the campus when it’s empty; it feels like the entire world exists just for me. There’s something simultaneously disconcerting and sort of liberating about walking from one corner of campus to another and seeing only birds and deserted buildings. It’s like that series of pictures that one photographer took of New York at rest; it feels like you’re walking with ghosts. What is a city without people? What’s a college without students?

…I would ask, “What’s Sasha without sleep?” but apparently we’re seeing the results of that right now. Learning experiences! When I’m tired apparently I get poetic.

Grand Central, empty. Cool yet unnerving, right? Photo by Aaron Donovan for the MTA.

For all that I normally like campus when it’s quiet, though, trekking from my house to Usdan was oddly lonely, I think because I knew that everyone had left already. It didn’t feel like the world existed just for me; it felt more like the world existed for all of us, and then everyone left me. I was the last one in my house — for about thirty seconds, admittedly, since as soon as my housemates left I pretty much went, “Screw it, I’m not sitting and waiting in my empty dining room for ten minutes.” Still. I’m used to being the one who leaves early and then listens wistfully to stories of wild last nights, instead of being the one who finds out that half of her friends have left campus without saying goodbye. I’m not sure which I prefer.

I think I’m looking forward to coming back early, though. Maybe I’ll go out on Andruss field and just shout and see what happens. And then I’ll lock myself away in the library and try to get work done.

Anyway, I’m on the train right now, along with a duffle bag, a satchel, a backpack, a dress bag, a plastic bag containing food, and a Housemate Katie, who is not noticing the strange faces I’m making at her from across the aisle. It’s okay, Housemate Katie, I still love you.

(Some of my friends have apparently started reading this blog since it got linked on the Wesleyan facebook page. Either that, or they told me they’re reading it but are for some reason actually lying to make me believe that I’m interesting or something. If any of you guys are reading right now: hi! I hope you’re enjoying yourself? See you in the New Year.)

My last post was on Wednesday, so it’s not like much has had the chance to happen since then. It’s been pretty quiet on this front: basically just homework, with a healthy dash of procrastination thrown in for good measure. I actually meant to make winter cookies over reading week — look, I’m sorry, I can’t call them Christmas cookies, I just can’t; some of them are cookies that are traditionally made around Christmas in Christmas-celebrating households, but others of them are just cookies that I generally see in the winter, and anyway a lot of our Christmas associations are bizarre appropriated amalgamations of Yule traditions combined with a very specific Northern/Western geographically contextual history: the religious story of Christmas has absolutely nothing to do with mistletoe and people celebrating in Australia are very unlikely to actually get snow, given that it’s summer there, and it just brings up all sorts of questions about whether they still count as Christmas cookies if someone who isn’t Christian makes them which just brings up other questions about what if someone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas makes them and  —

Um. The point is that, while I’m still figuring out alternate names for gingerbread and rum balls and chocolate hazelnut cookies rolled in powdered sugar and all those other delicious things that I’m not going to be able to make at home because my mom would kill me, I did not actually make them over reading week because I was either doing work or letting the internet distract me from doing work. So it goes. It’s probably for the best, anyway, given that I didn’t really see people over reading week and so wouldn’t have been able to give any of them away, which of course is one of the best parts of making cookies-that-I’m-pretty-sure-come-out-of-very-WASPy-winter-traditions. I’m thinking I might make them in January instead, when I’m going to be working exclusively on my thesis and will need distractions, and when there’s going to be a handful of other people around for me to dump them on.

I like pushing sugar on other people.

Rum balls!

Chocolate hazelnut crinkle cookies!

Gingerbread!

TREES.

I have to say that while I was ambivalent about being left behind, I did actually enjoy being on campus long enough to celebrate the end of reading week with Housemate Katie, Delightful Housemate David, and Previously Mentioned Housemate Natalia; they were working pretty much right up until Saturday night, although DHDavid is the only one of us who’s actually done. PMHNatalia is still working on grad school apps and a paper, and HKatie and I are both still trying to finish up our thesis chapters. Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, though.

[Holy crap, a GIANT crowd of people just came on the train, now that we’re stopped at Grand Central. Ack. I seriously hope that most of them go to other compartments because my dress bag, my backpack, and my food bag are currently taking up about the same amount of space as a small-sized human person would. Also I’m trying to figure out if all of them know each other, because it kind of seems like they do. And they all have Southern accents.]

[Update: no, they’re all staying in this compartment. Housemate Katie and I are now immediate neighbours instead of comfortably across the aisle.]

[Update update: Yes, they all know each other. Yes, they’re all Southern. Yes, one of the Amtrak people told them that there were only two seats taken in the back car. No, that was very very very very very not true. Yes, I am cuddling my backpack right now.

Oh well. I’ve definitely sat next to worse people than Housemate Katie. At least she smells nice. Now all we have to deal with is the fact that the people in front of us are recliners.]

[…as in people who recline their seats, not as in actual recliner chairs.]



[Update update update: Now Housemate Katie is watching 21 Jump Street and updating me on the significant developments, because she loves me.]

Okay, I just checked my wordcount, and seriously? How have I managed to stretch this out to more than 1300 words? I have talked about literally NOTHING in this post, and it’s still longer than the post where I was talking about actually going to do things.

[Fourth update: one of the girls behind me is really excited about A) going home to work on her scrapbook, and B) being able to go home, change into her pajamas, and roll around on her carpet. This is a girl whose priorities I can really get behind. Also now this guy is asking who ate his pastries. I would be very irritated if I were him. Food that one has specifically earmarked for oneself ought to be a sacred object.]

[Also one of the regulars on 21 Jump Street got a mullet between the last episode I saw and the episode Katie is now on. Interesting. I’m not sure it’s the best look for him, but then again I’m not sure it’s the best look for anyone.]

[Ooh, now they’ve all got their guns drawn. This seems exciting! And they’re in a boiler room, which is giving me all sorts of Heathers flashbacks, even if Johnny Depp looks only vaguely like Winona Ryder. Right now there’s steam and red light behind him, though, so it kind of looks like a boiler room from the depths of the underworld. Oh, look, there’s another guy with a gun! He looks scared. He’s probably going to turn out to be a kid who’s acting out in all the wrong ways and just needs Johnny Depp to show a little sympathy. And now there’s a dude giving some sort of dramatic speech to a crowd, probably about how they should all be racist like he he is, but I’m really distracted by the fact that one of the male extras is wearing a leather jacket and a stomach-baring blue tube top. Good for you, dude. Also apparently there’s an interracial teen pregnancy. DRAMA.

Uh oh, now Johnny Depp and Holly Robinson seem to have deliberately made themselves a focus of the racial tensions at the school by pretending to be dating. Unless they’re actually dating. They would be a really cute couple. Or a really cute threesome. Can I go back to the 1980s and make that happen?

…Now there’s a bunch of white people with crowbars. This can’t be good.]

An Appropriate Soundtrack For This Moment

[Now one of the women is going around offering homemade chocolate chip cookies. I’m pretty sure she was about to offer one to Housemate Katie and I until she realized we weren’t actually related to her.]

[Hey, the riot’s getting broken up! Oh man, they got the pregnant girl out of the hospital in a stretcher and her boyfriend’s standing next to each other. I guess she’s giving some sort of speech about loving each other or something, because everybody’s looking abashed. I guess everything sounds more important when it’s coming from a pregnant girl who’s lying on a stretcher wearing a neck brace.]

[Okay, the Jump Street gang are sitting at a karaoke bar, so I’m assuming everything ended okay. Or is it a comedy club? Ah, yes. Fun fact: people singing karaoke badly look very like people telling presumably bad jokes.]

[Housemate Katie’s verdict on the episode: “Surprisingly not bad, for something about race from the 80s.”]

Okay, the episode is over and I’m almost at 2000 words, so it’s probably time to tie this up and go do something else. Good thing Betsy lent me her DVD set of Due South. Mounties in Chicago, here I go. See you later, ducklings!

(This is you guys, obviously.)

[Original tags on this post: adorable things because I am boring,homework, housing,seriously you guys I am not overselling how ramble-tastic this is because I CANNOT OVERSELL HOW RAMBLETASTIC THIS IS, thinktastic thoughts, time capsule time!]