I'm trembling again. I noticed it last night, when I was working on my chemistry lab. I was holding my pen, and I stopped to look at the directions, and the pen started shaking. I thought maybe it was the position my arms was in, so I put the pen down, and looked at my hand. It was still trembling. When I was in the hospital, to see if someone's hands trembled, they'd tell you to put your hand out, palm up, and then they'd set a piece of paper on your hand. My paper always moved the most. I tried it last night, sure enough, the paper moved. I chalked it up to too much caffeine and went back to work. But today, they're still shaking and I haven't had any caffeine all day. I used to think they did that because of the medicine... now I think maybe it's me. I had the worst day. I went to residential life to get the housing packet I have to fill out saying who I want to live with next semester... and I looked at it and felt like a complete idiot. There isn't a single person I can put on there. Not one. Basically, everyone I know has already made plans and none of them include me. And I don't know how that happened. And I hate that I care. Because I do. I care way too much. I had just assumed we were going to pretty much all live together next year and then those packets started going out and I started asking people what they're doing next year and they all have set "the six of us are getting a suite" plans and I don't know where that leaves me. And I don't want to care. But I do. It's been a really long time since I cared what someone else thought. And I don't like it. It gives them way too much power, and I don't know when that happened. When did I start caring? And how do I stop? Fall course schedules came out... they've been out for a while and I didn't know until today... Why am I always the last to know these things? I was looking at the schedule... There is not one political science elective that looks interesting. Not one. I need three more politics classes to finish my major, and when I go through the course catalog of classes they occasionally offer, most of them look at least semi-interesting. They're offering all the ones that don't. I have never been interested in something for more than two years, I've been a poli sci major for three. I guess it was about time. I did a little "maybe I'll take these classes" schedule. And it's actually not half bad- politics and literature (which would look much more interesting if I didn't know that most of the "literature" is shakespeare.), legal rights of the disadvantaged (which might not be terrible), and my electives- organic chem I, the literature of the holocaust, and hitchcock films. It occured to me, looking through that catalog, that with the exception of science courses, I could do every single class in there with my eyes closed. That's what I'm doing this semester, studying chemistry and coasting through everything else, and I had a 3.54 at midterm. One class, I did nothing but go to class and I skimmed the chapter summarys the night before the test... and I got a 92. It was the third highest grade in the class. I hate that, I really do. I have no motivation. The only time I'm motivated is when it's at least a little challenging. Like with chemistry, I like studying that. And calculus last semester- I couldn't've spent 6 hours straight on one assigment for any other subject. I didn't care enough. I'm ready to be done with this. I can't imagine how someone could spend four years at the same college. It's hard enough to do two. ...but I can imagine doing this for three more years (for a masters degree) much easier than I can imagine what I'd do without it. I'll have a bachelor's degree in a year and six weeks, and that is where my plans come to a dead halt. And it is the shortest my plans have ever been. My plans always had "and then four years of college" tacked onto the end of them. And really, I'm almost done with that, and I can't even imagine what to do next. A couple months ago, I was in the car with my dad and I was telling him how I was pretty sick of political science and that I'd realized I'd never been interested in anything for more than two years, and that I couldn't even imagine a job I'd be happy in for my whole life.... and he said he thought I should think about a job I could do for ten years, because then I could always go back and learn a new job. My reaction was, of course, "Ten years?!?" I can't even imagine doing the same thing for ten years. I figure a lifetime job would be fifty years... that I can't imagine because I can't imagine being alive for fifty years, let alone doing the same thing for all of them. I can imagine ten years, I can remember ten years ago. (well, a little, anyway.) ...and in those ten years I've gone from elementary school in the little kids wing to elementary school in the "intermediate" wing (yes, there was a huge difference) to middle school, up at the high school, to high school (for a little while) to home school, to community college, to here. Middle school lasted three years, that's my record length and I was crazy by the end of it. And for all those years, I had summers off. I went to day camp, kids college, two different sleep-away camps, and then there were the summers I just stayed home and read... The point? I have never done the same thing every day successfully for longer than two, two and a half years. And I have never done it at all without summers off to do something different. I have no passion at all at this point. I didn't read a single book over spring break. That is an absolutely incredible thing. I can rationalize to myself why I wouldn't read books at school... I'm too busy not-reading the assigned stuff. But I had a whole week off. And I didn't open a single book. I read magazines, of course, but I didn't even go to the library. If I had gone to the library, I wouldn't've known what to look for. I used to spend hours and hours going through the upstairs (non-fiction) books, and I always found something fascinating. Now I can't even imagine that. I remember sitting there, feverishly going through every book I could get my hands on about some subject I'd just discovered. I can't imagine actually doing it again. Is it possible to be burned out at 17? previous index next