Plans for the future tend to be met with shudders and anxiety, but there is one aspect of being out of college that seems promising: no homework. Â No more countless hours of research and work without a real end, and the promise of actually scheduled hours for work that have an end is tempting.
For now, free time is never really free. There exists a never ending to-do list for the rest of the semester. Sure, there are times when I get nothing done and end up watching Netflix for a few hours, but I always intended to do something productive. Â Like read poetry, outline a paper, or try and figure out when I have exams and oh look, one is next Tuesday.
And even if it’s break, there is probably a paper I was supposed to draft or a thesis proposal I should work on or an internship I should have applied for a month ago. And that’s especially fun to mention around engineers or business majors that seem to have their futures down pat, and simultaneously manage to have all of their work done and take a weekend off.
And whatever you do, never mention to your parents that you are planning on doing something. Â Invariably, the very next day, they will ask if you met with that professor or finished that paper yet. Â No, I only learned about that yesterday, why in the world would it be done today? Little siblings are the best though, when they complain about writing a one page paper or doing a dozen math problems. Â Or, the greatest moment, when they mention that they have no homework over the weekend.
But, back to the endless to-do list.  It’s a struggle just to keep my head above water day to day.  If it isn’t reading the entirety of The Crying of Lot 49, it’s programming imaginary darts on an imaginary dartboard, or writing poems that make no sense, on purpose.  Due dates are so spread out, and projects are long term, so there is no actual time when I am not haunted by the specter of homework.  Even a movie night is only justifiable if it starts after 10 pm, is on a weekend, and I bring along some ethics papers to try and read when it gets boring.
And I am positive this isn’t only me.  How many times have you seen a roommate or friend give up and go to sleep, because they cannot justify not being done with a project and being conscious?  To be fair, the intricacies of computer programming errors or math proofs will not be resolved past midnight, and it is questionable how much of even a theology reading can be remembered at that hour.  And then mornings are for lofty goals that never quite get accomplished, from starting to draft a paper to actually doing that theology reading.  All I can do is try not to hit snooze more than twice and have enough time to make coffee.
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