“How does it feel, studying for your first exam of the semester?” My sister Annick dug at me, via Facetime.
“Oh, I’m miserable and no one even knows!” I exclaimed excitedly.
I already miss summer’s sense of infinite time and space, and life on the lake, with its big, wet, melancholy summer rains. But most of all, I miss the travel and delicious, swirling, excesses that form the dark side of long holiday freedoms.
I’ve been called excessive, I accept that and I have to check that aspect of my nature, from time to time.
“Don’t you have any brakes?” My roommate Leong once asked me, like I was some runaway train.
I remember last summer, how we almost eased into fall. As summer had faded, things changed and slowed down, as the European students turned back to their serious, ordinary lives. The bars and streets became deserted, carousels stopped spinning, arcade games were turned off, yachts sailed away, the eager summer wait-staff vanished from the elegant hotels. Brightly lit, summer-gaudy Saint Tropez became just another faded seaside town, where the paint everywhere suddenly seemed chipped and cheap.
This year, we sped up, by spending the last couple of weeks in flashy, frantic, fluorescent Manhattan - oh, man.
Then BOOM, we were dropped, as if from a great height, back into university life, back to cafeteria lines, shuttle buses and the scholastic gridiron - which oddly enough, has a lot in common with the teenage world. It was going from a-hundred-mile-an-hour adult freedom, to dealing with all the old teenage issues, like homework, tests, studying, the endless clock-watch scheduling of to and from classes - you know, the physicality of academics.
It sounds rough, I know. We’ve been told that as seniors, we can expect an even more important and frenetic emphasis on social life. Yep, we’ll be stepping things up to a whole new level this year!
Woot!! Maybe I’ll even get to wear some makeup!
.
.
A song for this:
September by Earth Wind & Fire
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 09.05.24:
Gridiron = A football field or other challenging arena.
