Finals week was insane. Freshman year was nothing like this. Nothing. I'm going to try to describe the mind-fuck I experienced in its totality.
It all started at Spring-Fall Thesis Parade. It was lovely and I kissed everyone and drank lots of champagne, but specifically I slept with a friend (the boy from Benzos) and told another friend that I had written him a note on one of my many "Mental-Breakdown Wednesdays" that said "you are the most beautiful person I have ever met" and was in a little pouch I sewed and beaded.
They are housemates. Don't worry.
I gave him the note to much heart-pounding and awkwardness. Actually, all that happened was I was working on a Soc project in the ETC, and my partner happened to sit right across from him. So, we did the project and I happened to have the note in my pocket because I'd been planning to deliver it eventually... so I set it on his desk and said "This is for you I'm leaving." He said "Thanks" and smiled a little bit as I walked out. I probably shouldn't have looked back. His smile is incredible. I had an entire dream where all I did was try to describe his smile. This blog deserves a few dream journal entries, they've been good lately.
As for the other guy, we had sex again a day or two later and then the night before I left he came over just to cuddle, which was interesting. I really like him too, I just haven't had 8 dreams about him. We're closer friends though, by a long shot.
So I was dealing with all of this "what's he gonna say?" "what does he want from me?" "will this work" "why am I sleeping with my friend when I'm crushing on his housemate?" "why am I so attracted to ALL of the anarchists? They're dirty and weird..." going on while I had the hardest week ever in terms of school work.
Entry on the hardest weekend, now entry on the hardest week. This is a jolly fucking journal.
In a lot of ways, it was awesome.
I did a Soc final on Friday of reading week. I had kinda let myself go in that class, so I did a lot of studying for it even though it probably didn't require 8 hours of studying and 4 hours of testing.
Then I studied for Multi. I copied out all of the definitions, theorems, and proofs that we were supposed to know. It was six pages double sided. It felt incredible, because as I went through them I understood them. It wasn't that I had memorized them, it was that after all semester of problem sets and classes and quizzes and tests I had internalized enough math that it wasn't about memorization. I could understand these concepts because I understood math better. I could have choked on the test and still been proud and satisfied because of that. The test went okay.
Physics. I studied hard, and had something of a similar feeling as in math. Ordinary Differential Equations are my bitch. Waves and certain other sillinesses are not fully understood. But I think I got the important stuff, and I'll review the rest.
The test was bullshit. I had the math test from 1-4, and then the physics from 6-10. I left at 8:30. I was done. There was nothing else I could do. But everyone else stayed and kept working, even though the professor had told us he didn't expect us to take the whole time. Luckily, I had a bottle of champagne in my pocket and was able to start drinking about 30 seconds after walking out of the building. As planned, I walked into the canyon and yelled "I have of late but wherefore I know not [...] Man delights not me, no, nor women neither though by your smiling you seem to say so" into the calm darkness. I'd had that monologue stuck in my head all week.
Followed my friends around, smoking mugwort angrily, and proceeded to find out that everyone else had as much trouble with the test as I did. They just sat through it and checked their answers. I refuse to torture myself for nothing. I do not apologize.
Then came the french paper.
I slept in the next day, as I had earned it. By the time I got out of bed, I had 28 hours to read the last 30 pages of Proust, and write a 7 page paper in french about the prose rhymes in the book. I had already read about 80 pages of theory on them, and the other 200 pages of the book. Also, I had a thesis, and had put a lot of thought into it.
So I thought, no problem.
I finished the book at fucking 6 pm, leaving me 23 hours. Proust is hard to read, alright. Also, the phenomenon of Reed Releases started during finals week and wasted a lot of my time. They're confessions of love/lust anonymously posted on tumblr and facebook. They're frequently really awkward and juicy. Especially when everyone is to stressed and tied up in themselves to actually interact with anyone. Finals week was a perfect time for shit like that to catch on.
Anyways, I panicked a little bit, and had to go to the ETC. I still didn't feel okay, so I went to Em and borrowed her empty cigarettes and her mullein and lavender. I rolled almost 20 mugwort, mullein, and lavender cigs, of which I smoked at least one an hour for the next 14 hours. I also gave some away. The probably saved me. Finally, I went back to the ETC where I got something of an outline worked out and typed up all the quotes.
At 1 am I laid down in bed. At 2 am I thought maybe I could knock myself out with Death Note. In retrospect I should probably have watched something less TOTALLY AWESOME.
At 3 am I facebook chatted the boy from Benzos, who was still in the library. I decided that if I wasn't sleeping, I may as well be working. On the way back to the library I ran into a few friends who were going home. They thought I was crazy.
When I walked into the new pit Hugh laughed. I sat down and opened my computer, and he left his to sit next to me. He pulled out his fat sharpie that he uses for tagging and wrote FML on my arm. It still hasn't washed off. I laughed. Then I wrote.
The chunk that happened between 3 and 7 am was the best. It was about 50% of the essay. At 6 I started crashing. I went to the Stim table where this kid who's name is weird and I forget it all the time asked me if he could buy whippets. I said "yes, gimme an hour, I wanna do a bit more work." At 7 I was really hurting. I thought maybe whippets were an appropriate study drug in this case. No one else agreed, but it made sense to me. I went to the Stim table again, and we went back to my room. He paid about 50 cents a pop, which is pretty generous on my part, but I was gonna use his cracker so I didn't really care.
We went up to the second floor of the library, just outside of my math classroom. We took turns, sitting on the floor with little blue cartridges piling up between us. The hum final was about to start, and one of the cool freshmen walked by us trying to find a good place to do the test.
The guy was really paranoid, so we hid everything every time we heard footsteps. Still, she's pretty smart.
"Are you doing whippets?"
".... yes. do you want one?"
"Uh, no thanks, carry on."
We did. I had my first really dissociation experience on the ground up there. I closed my eyes, and I felt totally a sort of spinning. I opened them and the world did not appear to spin with me. My legs stayed splayed, unperturbed. I closed my eyes and felt the same spinning. Not a dizzy spinning, just an alternative stillness that had a bit more wiggle to it. And I felt that that space was where I wanted to be.
I did 5 whippets there, and then we went our separate ways.
I got the boy and Hugh and went to buy them breakfast. One of the Commons workers with whom I have a rapport asked me how I was. I laughed and acted like a crazy person. I wonder what he thinks of me.
Eating breakfast was fun. I mostly sat in a sad ball, laughing at what Hugh and boy said. Dylan came over and sat with us, being sad about his finals. GabeJake came over too. He had somehow confused the schedule and missed the math final Tuesday, so he was taking it on Thursday. He was also a bit perturbed. The vague happiness that sticks after a few whippets pulled me through.
I did some more work, but the whippets wore off. I went back to Chittick with Strugz Browne and did 3 more whippets. I also spun my fans a bit, which calmed me down.
Back to work.
Look, the essay happened. It was pretty good, in the end. Maybe I'll post it here after its graded, so I can look back on it. Some of my other essays are lost to dead computers, which makes me sad.
Fuck, finals week was crazy hard.
That's basically all I wanted to say.
No comments:
Post a Comment