true to form...

yup. it wouldn't be the night before a paper is due without some stupid blog post. here i am, 11:40 p.m., 12 hours and 20 minutes before deadline time, and i'm sitting on my bed, surrounded by my computer and all of my seminar paper research. you're right -- i should be sitting at a desk or a table or something more, um, conducive to writing. but i don't really have a desk, and my table is covered in clutter.

i was just thinking about dyeing my hair. i know that i shouldn't. it's just that i've now gone a whole year without changing its color, which basically means the stuff on my head right now is the color that nature gave me. but, you see, there may be some grey in there. i can't be sure, but when i look in the mirror, it looks like i've got these stark white hairs contrasting with the normal dark stuff. however, when i pull the hairs out of my head (of course i do!) and hold them against something light in color, they just look blonde. not grey -- just lighter versions of the rest of the pigmented stuff. huh. but i'm 30. it's time for grey, right?

but it's not the grey i want to hide. i think i'm on the verge of a serious oh-holy-crap-this-is-my-life crisis, in which i freak out about having just quadrupled my debt and having wasted the best childrearing years of my life with my nose in a casebook.

oh wait, i don't want kids.

that's not the point, either. the point is that i will never skip another class, write another ridiculous paper that involves fidgeting with fonts and margins to get to a desired page length. i'll never take another job for credit. i'll never wait anxiously for another student loan refund check at the beginning of a term so that i can pay the rent. i'll never keep old notebooks and a bunch of stuff i never use in a locker. i'll never have an annual income that is too low to qualify for federal taxes (please oh please oh please oh please let this part be true!). i'll never get to wear jeans and t-shirts and my blue adidas gazelles in my, erm, "professional" life again. i'll never get another report card. i'll never be a student.

i had to proctor a couple of exams today -- civil procedure for the first years in the morning; russian law and mental health law for the upperclassmen in the afternoon. both exams were in room 113, which worked out nicely for me, because i could spread out all of my seminar paper stuff and not have to move it midday. at the end of that last final, with only about 3 minutes to go, i was watching the clock, watching the second hand move around the clockface and allofasudden the second hand stopped...

STOPPED!

and there was this part of me that thought, "YES! I don't have to go through with this!" as if maybe the horrible weight of all the uncertainty in the coming months had just lifted and i could stay where i'm comfortable, i could continue this beautiful semi-transient life that's measured in semesters. i could become the consummate mentee, floating from professor to professor until i truly feel comfortable with all of the things that i feel like i didn't get the first time around... maybe!

but a few brief timeless moments later, that second hand cruelly jerked itself to attention and continued its journey. as if it had only been temporarily distracted from its duties, lost itself in a reverie... i know the feeling. losing myself in various reveries is something at which i particularly excel.

time went on, the exam was over, the academic cycle draws to its close so that a new cycle may begin right away... sigh... i was so close... thisclose... almost...

and after i had collected all of the exams and put them in order for the registrar's office, after i put my backpack on my back and moved the chair i had been using back to where it belonged, as i headed for the door, i paused and turned around and looked at room 113...

during my first year, room 113 was property law and constitutional law. i was so little then, knew so little, less cynical, less confident. i realized as i stood in that room today that as soon as i walked out that door, i really had no reason to ever re-enter room 113. that was it. time keeps going. i had to leave it for the next class of students.

and my heart broke a little bit...

but what could i do? i turned back to face the door, went where my feet knew to take me, closed the door behind me, and kept going.

it feels like too much. right now, it's just a little too much.