I should be sleeping...

Still consolidating...

Most of the Plan II Junior Seminars (TC 357s) take place in the two classrooms in the Joynes Reading Room in Carothers. I’ve been seeing old dorm friends from freshman year around the Quad a lot lately, and it’s always fun to chat for a couple minutes and catch up before they head into class. “Which TC are you here for?” I’m always asked at some point in the conversation.

“I’m not in one this semester, actually,” I respond. “I, uh, I still live here.”

Now, granted, I’m an RA, which means that I have my own room and that I live for free. But I live where I work, I can’t cook my own meals, I can’t have friends over past 11:30 p.m. on weeknights and 1:00 a.m. on weekends, I share my bathroom with fifty-five other dudes, and I’m put under house arrest a couple times a month.

I got hungry last night at around one-thirty in the morning. I considered my usual feast of Teddy Grahams and peanut butter, the only food I currently have in my room, but instead, I walked over to 7-11 and bought myself a ham sandwich. Jury-rigging a meal out of leftover snacks isn’t as appealing as it used to be.

I’m taking fifteen hours this semester, my usual load, but school doesn’t consume my life the way it used to. I go to classes and do all my homework, but that can only take up so many hours of a day. Maybe it’s because of the job, maybe it’s because I’m spending more and more time off campus, away from this whole academic world, or maybe I’ve just stopped caring altogether, but classes have started to seem more like just another part of my life and less like my life.

Every Thursday night, I meet up with some friends at the Crown & Anchor Pub for beer and cheese fries. The bouncer has stopped checking our IDs because he sees us every week. We go through a few pitchers, shoot the shit about our weeks and plans for the upcoming weekend, joke about sports or politics or girls, and then go our separate ways to finish whatever residual homework we might have. Nothing particularly exciting, just another way to pass time on a random weeknight.

Maybe what I’m trying to say is that things that used to seem new and exciting, things I used to look forward to, aren’t anymore. Every high school senior looks forward to moving into a dorm, living on his own and meeting new friends, but the time when living in a dorm is “cool” has come and gone for people my age; I usually don't bring up where I live unless I'm asked. I don’t dislike it and I don’t wish I were somewhere else, but the whole experience is familiar enough that it’s lost its original appeal. Kind of a “been there, done that” attitude by now. The same goes for the RA gig, midnight snacks, school, bars, friends. Nothing I do excites me – it doesn’t depress me, but I don’t feel like I have anything to look forward to, either. It is what it is, for better or worse.

I used to believe that growing up was a lot like hair growing – you get it cut short, you notice it’s short. You see it in the mirror every day and don’t pay attention to how it’s always getting a little bit longer. One day, months later, you compare yourself in the mirror to a picture of the day you got it cut, and you say, “Wow, I look totally different.” And maybe I still believe that, I don’t know. But now, I’m starting to think that growing up happens in distinct stages. I think you know you’re moving from one stage to another when you realize that you've gotten used to everything in your life. Every aspect of it is familiar, comfortable, commonplace. And I think that that’s a good place to be and all, but sometimes, you need something exciting on the horizon to get you through the day. That’s what I'm lacking at the moment.

But I think realizing that that’s what I'm lacking is half the battle.