Breaking in the new year

J.R. Grant

Well a fine hello again to everyone. I hope you all had a wonderful break and are enjoying this nice weather.

It’s Wednesday so that must mean another semester of that guy from Ohio.

I will begin the first column of the semester saying that if you would like a break from that boring lecture you’re about to sit through or something to read with your coffee please continue reading.

My only goal in all of this is to brighten your Wednesdays with a little comic relief that I need in my life just to make the mundane ritual of academics a little more bearable.

This being a new semester and a new year it seems only fitting that we all should look ahead and make some resolutions for the upcoming semester.

I’m sure that most of us looked at the little green computer printout that has our schedule on it and decided this would be the semester that everything would fall into place. After all, even organic chemistry looks easy on that green paper.

So as I sat there staring at my classes, I went through the usual beginning of the semester goal setting:

I will go to all of my classes everyday, even the one at 8:00 a.m. and the one Friday at 4 p.m.

In theory this is a great resolution. It usually works the first week or so of classes.

But soon the weather starts to break, the snow quits falling and you feel that you deserve to spend some time outside or just one FAC. So you rationalize missing one class.

You decide it’s alright to sleep in late or hit the bar a little early just this one time.

The next thing you know you’ve missed a whole week of that 8:00 and you show up to find that you have a research paper due the next day that counts for 40 percent of your grade.

On to the next resolution.

I will keep up with my daily reading assignments and try to study during the day so I won’t have to cram for every exam.

Yeah right. This never works.

Unless you are one of the most organized people I have ever seen or maybe one of those damn speed readers, it always seems like you end up staying up late studying.

Every single day and night before exams you end up trying to learn three weeks of material that you won’t remember by the next night anyway.

It’s like trying to shove a basketball of knowledge into the Coke bottle that is your brain.

I will go to bed early so that I can get up and go to my morning classes, and I will not party during the week.

This, perhaps, is one of the noblest of dreams, but it is just that, a dream.

There are far too many distractions that seem to rip you away from your desk, not allowing you to get stuff done and get to bed.

Whether it’s heading off to Welch Ave. Station to watch the Kansas, ISU game or that band at People’s that demands your attendance much more than that chemistry class, there is always some alternative to studying.

So around midterms you decide to just try and survive the last half of the semester.

If you need to go out at night to keep your sanity, do it. If you need to miss that 8 a.m. to sleep off the previous night’s festivities, then go right ahead.

In the end, the only goal that I set for myself that I accomplish is the goal of having a good time and being able to rationalize everything that goes against all of my resolutions.

Good luck this semester and I will see you in a week.


J.R. Grant is a junior in journalism and mass communication from somewhere in Ohio.