finals "week"

"week" in quotation marks of course because the last three weeks of pretty much every semester all glom together into one horrific jack-bauer-esque day wherein the standard human ideals of linear time and cause-and-effect become indiscernible and perhaps even non-existent thanks to lack of sleep and overabundance of brain-paralyzing work.

that said, i realized today that this is one of my favorite times of the semester, quite the opposite of the beginning of the semester, which is always my least favorite part.  starts of semesters always involve tons of inane paperwork that you've filled out thousands of times before, getting to know your students' names and going through the whole process of introducing them to your class(es) - which you've also done hundreds of times before - memorizing your schedule, buying books, etc.  the minutae is enough to drive me absolutely fucking bonkers every time.  i mean, i end up with a to-do list with about 25-30 things on it a day, and each of those things takes about 10 minutes to do.  that's pretty much my worst nightmare.  end-of-the-semester, on the other hand, (or "EotS, OTOH") means there's one thing on the to-do list, and it takes about 3 weeks.  sure, it's stressful to have all your grades basically come down to 20 page papers, and to have to write 3-4 of them in a three week period every semester, but there's something calming for me in knowing that (for the most part) i can come into my office every day for the next three weeks and have very little between me and a huge pile of books and notes that i need to transform into seminar papers through sheer force of effort and clever outlining.  it's fun.  the writing part is the part i like absolutely the best, better than teaching, or reading, or anything.  it's why i became an english major in undergrad in the first place.  it's just hard to find time for while you're doing a million other things and i have to be forced to do it even when everything else is done.  that doesn't mean i don't love it.

maybe it's my long history of playing video games, but i like the idea of just having one last, huge, all-encompassing obstacle in my way.  if i'd been in jurassic park, i would have died like nedry, not like gennaro: the tiny, swarming things eating me alive instead of the huge, lumbering t-rex.

i feel like i should be more stressed, but it's hard for me to get stressed about big things, just little things.  i mean, ultimately, what happens if i do a shitty job on a paper, or don't finish on time?  i mean, the absolute worst thing that could happen at some point would be that i don't graduate.  and even that, on a larger holistic-life scale, is pretty insignificant.  i mean, i fully intend right now to do this job for the rest of my life, but in reality it probably won't happen that way.  i've lived (if i'm lucky) less than half my life at this point.  i can't imagine i'll be doing the same thing 30 years from now that i'm doing now.  the world just doesn't stay still for that long.  so if i have to get a different job, i don't see how that's a completely life-crushing happenstance.

of course, i don't see getting fired or anything actually happening in reality, i'm just talking hypothetically, from the "why get stressed because what's really going to happen if you don't come through?" standpoint.  i want to come through, i fully intend to, but if i don't...what?  the world won't explode.

not for another 3 years, at least.

and even if it does, we can rest in peace knowing that john cusack survives.