We move into the halfway point of this fall’s theatrical performance of the 2012-13 school year. Fifty years of integration and a new football coach, record enrollment and an election year: This show has quite a bit going on. So if the whole world is a stage then why is intermission (fall break) not until three weeks before the show’s over until spring?
I understand we get the whole week off for Thanksgiving, but it seems like a misappropriation of off-days to lump them so close to the winter break. The worst part is that during those staggering nine weeks between Labor Day and fall break everything gets all jumbled up towards the end.
A sort of neurosis sets in that disables me where everything melts together into a word salad. I’m already starting to feel the symptoms: talking off topic, finding similarities based on word choice and not content, confusion, loss of motor functions, temporary paralysis during lecture, walking into the Tuesday class on Wednesday, excessive recreational activities and apathy toward the +/- system.
As we all know, the weeks in late October and early November just turn motivation and classroom performance to sludge. Most of us start slipping, breaking focus as we continue on like we’re marching through the Russian winter. Is it really worth it to have that whole Thanksgiving week off when the winter break is just around the corner? Would it be possible to cut down the fall break from five to just two or three days and shift those days around to sometime in October?
I’m thinking too hard, my head hurts now and-and-and … This song’s chorus is brill … Ant climbs on the water faucet and walks close to disa … Stir that liquid concoction in the Dixie cup until the mind is bl … Ended with a tribunal and a guy named Cass … Is ‘us’ what you call this relationship, more like a machi? Nation can’t exist without land, in feudalism the people became like pro … Perty smile from that buck-toothed grandma we always for … Got my golden ticket to the asylum, but then I gave it to my m … Other people always knew when he’s on a b … End her self-esteem with the words, “it’s not you, it’s me,” then she’ll be … be … OK. I think I’m better now. Sorry, that neurosis just happens. I’m back on topic now, focused, steady.
I’m sure that people go home for Thanksgiving week and that extra time makes it enjoyable, less stressful, but to go that long without a break during the semester as we are getting our heads crammed with knowledge, does this not seem impractical? Very few of us can maintain that rigorous momentum from start to finish. For most, like myself, I just turn into an information blob trying to keep everything from becoming a cut-paste routine with tests and essays.
I hate the idea of regurgitating information for a grade and then dismissing … issing … ing … Bling doesn’t sparkle with Charon on the banks of the riv … “Err on the side of caution,” that’s the graduate school di … Rector asked me what I thought of my future and I replied a toilet b … Owl can see quite well at night but for a brain has a spaghetti n … Oodle my way through a group presentation, my palms were like duct t … Ape-quality machismo arrives even before everyone’s sucked the tap c … Lean on that smart person in class because I’m too lazy to be a good stu … Dent an ex’s car with a baseball bat during a drunk ram … Page breaks let me know how many more trivial rants left to go on the es … say … OK. Just had another moment of overload. I can do this. I can be strong and say my prayers to that great academic being in the sky.
Who will hear the poor’s complaints?
Daniel Purdy is an English senior from Oxford.
