December 04, 2006

Everything hits at once.

If the next eleven days don't kill me, I will feel like I've earned my college degree in sheer stress and frustration. If the next eleven days do kill me, it might be an act of mercy.

I have a 15-page research paper due Friday. When I turn that in I'll pick up a take-home final for the same class, due Monday. When I've turned that in I'll have an in-class final the next day for another class. Three days after that I'll be turning in a final project for my remaining class.

My grandfather died yesterday. I'm going to LA on Thursday for his funeral. When I talked to my mother this morning and heard the tears in her voice, suddenly the zombie-rights patches that I spent the weekend making for another class seemed unfathomably tasteless instead of clever. I got five hours of sleep last night because I was up late being argumentative and bitter about losing the election for kitchen manager, and the cold that I thought I'd fought off is coming back. And I panicked at room bids last night, so even though I could have easily gotten the basement room I wanted and waited to pick a new roommate, I wound up staying with my current roommate and his smoke and bullshit and we're in a room where I can't have my cat.

I'm going to bed for the next 40 minutes, going to class and prostrating myself for a paper extension, and then coming home and pitying myself as hard as I possibly can. Hopefully by 6:00 I'll be able to go to my evening class and talk about my patches without bursting into tears. The key here is manageable goals; dealing with the rest of the semester, or possibly even the rest of the week, is a bit out of my range at the moment.

Posted by dianna at December 4, 2006 12:52 PM
Comments

i'm sorry about your grandfather and how much stress you're under. maybe someone got a basement room and doesn't want it and you can switch? only 11 days left, dianna, you can do it!

Posted by: michele at December 4, 2006 12:59 PM

There are a couple of weird things about the room situation. One is that my roommate and I turned out to have the most seniority of anyone, so we got the most desirable (except for the absence of cats) room. So if we change our bid, it'll change everyone else who bid. Also, he doesn't want to live in the basement, so we'd be bidding separately and each winding up with half of a double and waiting for someone new to move into it next semester. Technically the person who got the room I wanted did the same and so half the room is open, but neither my roommate nor I would be willing to live with him. So I can't just swap out with him or move into the room. Then again, if I take myself out of the good room I got, and everyone shuffles up into nicer rooms, that person might vacate the one I want.

So far I'm planning on bringing up a motion at council (cats have to be approved by the house in addition to being confined to the basement) to have my cat live with someone else in the basement. I don't know if people will think that's sketchy. Hopefully they won't.

Realistically, the worst thing that's likely to happen out of any of this is that I do poorly on my finals and get Cs in my classes, the house denies my cat, and I make them all re-bid so I can live in the basement and bring up the motion again. I can probably deal with that.

But I should have fucking been kitchen manager, damnit. The incumbent kitchen manager spent half this past semester not even tracking what we were spending out of our food budget, but nobody knew that because the one person who did find out about it didn't tell anyone, so VERY VERY SLIGHTLY more than half the house re-elected her without even knowing how fucking disorganized she was. That makes me really damned irritated.

Thank you, come again.

Posted by: Dianna at December 4, 2006 01:34 PM

I'm so so sorry about your grandfather.

Posted by: didofoot at December 4, 2006 05:17 PM

p.s. and everything else obviously. one problem at a time seems like a good strategy. hope things get less stressful soon.

Posted by: didofoot at December 4, 2006 05:19 PM

I'm very sorry to hear about your grandfather. Please send my regrets/condolences to your mom & the rest of the family. And give me a call if you feel like either talking or just hanging out.

Posted by: Jacob at December 4, 2006 08:37 PM

Dude,

All of this explains why you might not be picking up your phone, now that I've finally caught up with current events and am trying to get ahold of you about funeral schedule and flights and shit. It's Friday and Saturday, not Thursday, which might still allow you to go hand in your paper and pick up a final to do at the funeral, where I will be sitting next to you grading a stack of finals. It's going to be nonstop good times. I'll try calling you in the AM.

Posted by: katie at December 4, 2006 10:57 PM

Nonstop good times indeed. Did you find out when your evaluations are due? Like right smack in the middle of when you don't have time for them, as usual?

Thanks for letting me know about the date. I'm flying down there at the same time as you on Friday and coming back Saturday night, which means I have time to not fail my classes. That'll be nice.

In any event, my pity party worked wonders. I have returned to my usual state of obstinate competence and once again feel capable of both short- and long-term survival. Thank you to everyone who participated in the pity party by, variously, commenting, calling me, saving me dinner, showing me delightfully appalling poems about Santa Claus, and handing me fuzzy chinchillas to hold. Seriously, those things are so fucking cute.

Posted by: Dianna at December 5, 2006 02:44 PM
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