Not Vermillion: Hello, and welcome to Hell Week

     Why is it so hard to stay on top of my work? Why is it hard to stay on top of my schedule? After all, it is my schedule. I know that I am not the first person to have a bad week, nor will I be the last person, but why,oh why, did my bad week happen on midterms week? Fellow students are rushing around, trying to keep their cool about all the projects, presentations, papers, bibliographies, outlines, thumbnails, sketches, and reading assignments that are all due within a matter of 5 days. Not to mention the endless hours of studying terms and concepts that teachers need you to know for their 15 page-long test. Concepts that you didn't understand when they were introduced in class, that you didn't understand when you read-over them in the quietude of your apartment later that day, the same concepts that the 67 people that you asked to explain it to you didn't understand either. And your test is tomorrow morning at 7:30. Wonderful. While on the inside you are crying and rocking yourself in a corner saying, "A mitochondria processes sugars. A mitochondria processes sugars. A mitochondria processes sugars..." over and over and over and over and over again. Not knowing that the few things that you actually do understand about the processes of the human body are not even going to be on that test. But, I digress.

      On the other end of the spectrum, the teachers are having a perfectly easy time keeping their sanity by watching all the little students carry 110 pound backpacks around campus because fellow professors mark students absent when they don't bring their 25 pound book to class everyday. They don't feel the need to email you back promptly. They don't feel the need to try to schedule a meeting with you to help you understand just what exactly they rambled about for 50 minutes the other day. They don't feel the need to push the test back even though they are 5 lessons behind because they talked about their dog too long for three class periods. Oh the joy of forgetting what it's like to be a student.

      Anyways, all of that to say that I had a pretty hard week. Well, I exaggerate when I say "hard." In fact, I've exaggerated this whole time, but again, I digress.

     My friend Sarah and I had this ingenious idea of getting up before the sunrise (6:20) to work out for an hour on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Super, right? Right.

      Monday: Wake up, hop out of bed, work out, go to class, finish project in class, eat breakfast, go back to apartment, class in 2 hours, get work done, go to class, eat lunch, go to homework the rest of the day. Good day.

      Tuesday: Wake up, freeze while going to class, be crabby and antsy in class because you are still cold, freeze on the walk to the next class, be crabby and antsy in that class too because you are still cold, teacher changes the assignment for the project that you are turning, improvise and turn in a badly hand-written note along with project, eat lunch with a friend, go to next class, go back to apartment and try and study - meanwhile you are still crabby and tired and just want to quit school. Okay day.

      Wednesday: Wake up at 3:30am and say to yourself, "you still have three hours to sleep, Libby. Go back to bed." Wake up 4.5 hours later and say to yourself, "holy crap, I missed my workout with Sarah." And then, "holy crap. My class started almost an hour ago and a project was due and critiques are the most important thing to this professor and he just chewed someone out last week for being late and he will make a scene if I go in there now I can't go to that class because I will be embarrassed oh my gosh this has never happened to me before I can't believe I did this this was so stupid of me what will happen I bet I will get marked down for not being there this stinks." And then after all that, you think, "I need to shower." And then proceed to run out of the room, crazy-haired, wide-eyed and say to your roommate in a weak and panicked voice, "WHAT TIME IS IT?" Even though you already know what time it is, you just want further confirmation that you did, indeed, just sleep almost two hours past when you should have. The rest of the day goes strangely quickly, you turn in a project in the next class, go back to the apartment and realize that you have not studied at all for the midterm test that you have tomorrow morning and so you spend hours doing that, you ditch talking to your boyfriend in order to study, you eat too much because you are emotional and you don't go to the gym in the evening like you swore to yourself that you would because you slacked that morning. Not so good day.

      Thursday: Wake up, work out half the amount of time that you promised you would to punish your body for yesterday, eat breakfast, ace your midterm, freeze on your way back to the apartment, pack for home, freeze on your way to your next class, watch a boring movie in class, eat lunch with a friend and have a really good conversation about predestination, go to class, go back to the apartment to find my car door hanging wide open (nothing is gone, but you are still ticked), forget that you left your pillows in your friends' room and realize that it is locked and none of them will be back for a couple hours and you have a hair appointment in an hour and you have at least an hour drive back home so you ditch your pillows, get home, get hair done, and run on the treadmill for the second time that day and end up burning about 700 calories and feeling like you're going to die.

But everything is okay now because you are on Spring Break. I think someone should make t-shirts that say, "I survived the week before Spring Break '11."

Anyways, here are the two projects that I turned in this week.