all in a 28 hour day..
Now longer and even more bitter!!11
To some, college was a beautiful experience they'll never forget for the rest of their days. Either they were in business school, or they've forgotten what it's like in the trenches. To illustrate, I've included a graph below so that you, the reader, can gain some insight into the positive and engaging thoughts of one engineering student;
(figures are approximate)
Now that we're on the same level, the following depiction of a typical day in my life isn't really meant to be taken as an actual day I've ever had, and isn't really meant to describe any particular campus. It does, however, eerily resemble the University of Colorado at Boulder, which I may or may not attend.
8:00-8:59
- GOOD MORNING SUNSHINE! (it's morning, for sure...) Wake up. You lay in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, hoping that's not your alarm clock. It is, though, since your roomate doesn't even own one. Now, raise one arm and... smack the living crap out of the thing making loud beeps. Picking up the remains of your latest victim, you realize that classes start in exactly one minute ago. Wipe the crap off your eyelids, then curse to yourself when you rip out multiple eyelashes. There's the further realization that you still need to get ready before running to the bus stop. Curse again.
- Rush out the door. By the way, you forget your circuits homework. Don't worry, though.. you'll remember.
...In about ten minutes.
- Push the elevator button as many times as you can, because it's going so damn slow. This helps, really (It doesn't). The elevator cheerily *pings* away every floor it passes, but curiously stops on floor three.. Some hippy-haired bum assclown gets on and jabs at the button for the second floor. You rip his heart out, your clenched fist taking a short detour through the kidneys, and let loose a primal scream, metallically reverberating in the dimly-lit tuna can of an elevator car. (...well, maybe in a Stephen King novel...)
- You're contentedly sitting on bus to campus. About.. *now*, you realize that your circuits homework is sitting on your desk. You consider sinking in the seat and clutching your face in despair, but instead settle for cursing. ..under your breath, of course.
- Run to class.
- Panting, you glare at the sheet of paper noting that your professor is doubtlessly doing some vital research or something, and that, at least for today, "CLASS CANCELD". Well, it looks like that, because your proffer apparently writes in Hieratic script. You spend the next half hour aimlessly wandering the halls, avoiding scary nerds that strike up awkward conversations with even more awkward pauses. Use newspapers and clusters of foreign grad students as cover. Bonus points for inciting an Indi-Paki fight.
9:00-9:59
- Stumble into your Circuits classroom. Today's lecture is only slightly more interesting than watching grass dry, but you still spend the next hour looking for something to cut your eyes out with. Failing this, you dig out a plastic spoon and mechanical pencil from your backpack. A second later, "Now, vite dzees down, bekass eet ees goink to be on zee eksam next veek !!"
10:00-10:59
- Thank <deity-du-jour> that class is over. The nagging feeling in your stomach is called "hunger". You figure you ought to do something about it, but "sleep" takes the priority. In a glucose-deprived stupor, you stumble back to the bus stop.
- The bus still isn't here. It's cold. Very very cold. The person next to you quips "At least it's a DRY cold."
You: <forced laughter> "haha, yeah, at least it's not that wet cold." <mumble> I hate you. </mumble>
- You fall out of the bus, followed by the ten other legions of people you squashed to get in. On the way up, you're stuck in an elevator with 5 people chatting on their cellphones. As the doors close ominously, almost on cue, people start shaking and tapping their cellphones against the railings and wall paneling. Yeah, that's right; "Because when everything else fails, shake vigorously!". Assclowns.
11:00-11:59
- You had planned on sleeping, but for the last hour, you've been trolling message boards on the interweb. And, as it turns out, staring at the wall is a national pastime, enjoyed by.... well... you.
12:00-12:59
- You've been enjoying your favorite pastime for the last half hour, and now it's time to get that sleep!
- X-TREME POWER NAP!! Up next, eating is a high priority. You find your shoes and walk out the door.
- <thirty seconds later> A shirt, backpack, wallet, keys, watch, jacket, and cellphone might be useful. Skip down merrily to the cafeteria, and trip along the way. Lunch today is grilled cheese sandwiches and Campbell's tomato soup.. Haut cuisine for sure. The fact that you're paying $6 per meal to eat in what amounts to a homeless shelter doesn't seem to bother you, since the food is unusually edible .
13:00-13:59 (1 pm- it ain't rocket surgery)
- You pull a Forrest Gump getting to a class on the other side of campus, and walk into the room. The only open seat is in the middle of a row in the middle of the class. Swear under your breath, and get ready to get kneed more than a barrio gang initiation.
- You pull out your cute little red swiss army knife to take care of a hangnail. Girl behind you gasps. You resist the urge to snap open the 3.5 inch semi-serrated, spear-point, zytel handled knife in your back pocket. If discretion is the better part of valor, you deserve a friggen' medal.
14:00-14:59
- You have another class in an hour, but as it stands, you're cracking jokes to yourself about finding a tall building overlooking lots of pedestrian traffic. It's been a long, hard, day, and you're calling it quits early... waiting for the bus, you decide to hike it to the next stop, where the math building's got heating while you wait. Halfway there, the bus whizzes past. You know the drill.
15:00-15:59
- Sitting at your desk, you revive the lost art of "carefully scrutinizing vertical planar structural elements". Staring at the wall, for the uninitiated.
16:00-16:59
- All right! So you've decided that it's CRUCIAL that you study for that very important test tomorrow. Get out the books, the calculator, the coffee, and get to work. Right, you're going to PULVERIZE that material.
17:00-17:59
- You're at it again, but manage to snap out of it to post crap to more internet forums.
- Lookie here, a visitor! Oh, seems they need help that only a person of your considerable skill can provide!! They need help with... Microsoft Excel?? Feigning ignorance is truly a skill; especially if you can get away with your reputation.
18:00-18:59
- <music> It's the most. wonderful time... of the day! Pigslop mania, your dorm cafeteria is cookin' up another sizzlin' international night, with exotic foods from such far corners of the world as... Mexico. With crazy and unheard-of new foods like.. Tacos. Eat up kids, the resemblance in taste and sight of the "pulled pork" to a partially-decomposed body covered in maggots isn't by chance. The muscle strings even have delicious mucous sauce!
- Taking off your MOPP gear, you make a sandwich. Variety is the spice of life, and white bread sans crust is the pinnacle of excitement tonight.
19:00-23:59
- Because I'm lazy, and because it's happened before, you go back to the dorms and sleep for five hours.
- ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzZZZZzzzzzzzz
00:00-00:59
- Having woken from your coma, you sorta have the energy to take care of your schoolwork that needs to be done. Since you're still groggy, though, things take much longer to do. You're off to a bad start when you spend five minutes filling in the blank to the prompt "Name: ________". Caffeine pills bring you up to speed, at the cost of odd nightmares when you finally go to bed. Finishing up your work, you surf the net and chat with friends in countries so far away that it's lunchtime there.
04:00-04:59
- You sit at your computer typing up some ridiculous page for your website, in hopes that someone goes there for more than thirty seconds. Disaffected, disgruntled, and tired, you turn off the lights, set the alarm, crawl in bed, and get ready for another day of battle. Only 2.5 more years!!