We can all see the light at the end of the tunnel. Everyday it gets brighter and brighter, but at the same time even more and more elusive. We can hear beer cans popping, we can see perfected tan lines, and feel the comforts of home; summer is right around the corner, making it that much harder to focus on finishing up the semester strong. How can I be expected to focus when all I can think about is home cooking, sleeping in until noon (or maybe a little past that), and the freedom from the trillions of e-mails that Harvard likes to bombard me with?
When we exist in a bubble, we create little microcosms. In these microcosms we then create sufficiently dramatic personal relationships to provide us with a false sense of purpose. Each microcosm is around 50 people and everyone knows what everyone else is up to, even though that defies the law of passing class. The special thing about these microcosms is that their balance rests on the ability of the people who make them up to keep from killing one another for intervals of 3 to 4 months. Now, the spring semester doesn’t have the most positive influence on these miniature worlds of existence. The academic pace is always ramped up in the spring, the frustrations of having to choose between friends and that paper due in 2 hours is amplified and the parties in need of attendance, multiplied. We’re all tired and want to keep up with our academic and social lives, but how are we supposed to do that when all we want to do is burst the bubble, screw the balance and go kinda crazy, employing the excuse of summer?
The truth is, we can’t and honestly I’m an advocate of letting loose and throwing caution to wind. There may be some backlash later on, yes, but I say deal with it then. Maybe it’s because my attention span is as long as an intake of oxygen, maybe it’s the fact that on my birth certificate the word “procrastination” is delicately situated between the bookends of my name, or perhaps it’s the fact that the recent shining activity of the sun has distorted my perception of academic life. Either way, my head refuses to descend from the sky’s ninth floor.