Pray for me...

...because I have a giant paper due tomorrow and I haven't had time to do much of it. This is partly because last week I spent every waking moment trying to do my Hitchcock annotated bibliography (which I finally finished on Tuesday - it was due the Thursday before) and partly because life is just crazy. And also partly because I am just TIRED.
So I'm in the library and I'm ready to spend the next several hours here, and probably most of tomorrow. Wish me luck and a miracle.

I know I'm dead on the surface, but I am screaming underneath...

I am started to wonder how I will get through this semester.
I don't mean to be melodramatic, but I thought that once I figured out what was going on, everything would be okay - still stressful, but in a normal sort of way. Instead, every day I feel more overwhelmed, and every meeting we have that is supposed to clear things up makes me feel more confused, because everyone talks as if we should already know all of this and they're just giving us a reminder. I can't keep up on my reading, and soon the projects will start pouring in; I have a lesson plan on grammar due on Tuesday and a huge reading strategies project due next Friday on a book I've barely had time to crack open, let alone finish and begin to create teaching methods. I swear they move up the date that the student teaching application is due every day (now it's supposed to be in on Monday so that we can get all of our requests for placements, and I haven't even found it yet). I come out of my teaching classes clenching everything - stomach, jaw, fists - and listening to my iPod in an effort to prevent myself from hyperventilating.
I hate feeling guilty after a good talk with my roommates because I should have been reading, and I always fall asleep doing my reading anyway, because I can't ever seem to get enough sleep. (Yes, I realize this is largely my fault, but I can't help it. Mostly.) A lot of my roommates have all kinds of crazy things going on in their lives, and I feel like I can only give them a tiny part of the attention they deserve, because part of my brain is always trying desperately to find a plan that will enable me to accomplish everything in time without some kind of spontaneous combustion during midterms.
It would also help if I didn't feel like half of what I have to read is utter crap. This comes directly from one of my books: "Educators must help parents understand prenatal brain development. these future children are also future students."
Wait. Are you telling me that I need to track down the parents of children who haven't been born yet so that I can tell them how to nourish their unborn child's brain so he or she will be a good student 16 years down the road? Why am I wasting my very limited, very stress-filled time reading this, not to mention the drivel about seating charts and aquariums? Leave me some time for the things that will actually help me and stop drowning me in things that will probably be easier to learn in practice or from real teachers anyway!
This is that time of year when I wonder if I picked the wrong major, because I don't want to do this!
In happy news though, I like my job as a very part time nanny (even though I had to change a diaper of the greenest poop I've ever seen yesterday) and my Hitchcock and Poe class is every bit as amazing as I thought it would be, even though I never have time to get through all of the reading assignments.
I'm going to go and eat breakfast and then write a five paragraph essay about whether or not we should teach the five paragraph essay. Figure that one out.

See you in April.

My Psyche Hurts

This semester is going to be great and terrible at the same time. I'm taking 9 credits, and two of those are Lit classes - Lit and Film, and Contemporary American Lit (at least I think that's what the class is - our first book is the English Patient whose author doesn't seem to be American, but it is very postmodern, so whatever.) Anyway, I am supposed to read a 200 page book about the psychology of romance by tomorrow and The English Patient by Friday and I am going crazy already. Thank goodness Phoenix is in my future to keep me sane.
That said, the reading I've been doing is very interesting; apparently romance can be an addiction just like anything else, and I believe the symptoms are running rampant in Provo. So for your enjoyment (drumroll)
YOU MIGHT BE A ROMANCE ADDICT IF:

• you are more concerned with the idea of being in love than with any actual person, i.e. I need a man.
• "someday my prince will come" is not a fantasy but a real expectation
• you are more concerned with romantic setting and situations than with the actual person opposite you in the situation
• you live in the future
• you believe that if the situation was perfect - cute meeting story, romantic first date, etc. everything will work out
• you have low self-esteem and believe that if only you were more perfect you'd be able to attract that perfect prince or princess
• you believe in instant intimacy - love at first sight, "our eyes met and I just knew he was the one I'd been looking for all my life," "we just had this instant connection."

It really is a pretty facinating idea, especially since I hear stories all the time about people who knew they were in love in a matter of days and weeks. I guess it happens sometimes, but I often worry that those people are just in love with the thrill and will wake up not knowing the person to whom they are married. There are real things that need to be discussed before marriage, because it involves a lot of things that are not romantic at all, like changing diapers and washing dishes. If you haven't formed a lasting relationship based on trust and real love (not "romance") then how will you react when the glass slippers get buried in the backyard by the dog, who then proceeds to track mud all over the house?
This also made a lot of sense to me as far as my friends who disappear off the face of the planet when they get married are concerned. In class we talked about how romance is exclusive and causes you to remove yourself from your reality, while real love is inclusive. It has always seemed to me that the most well-adjusted people I knew were still around from time to time while they were in a relationship. (Props to Lili, Jonathan, and Miri - Miri was AWOL for awhile, but she seems to be back to stay now, and we're so glad to have her. Y'all stayed alive and in a relationship at the same time - impressive.)
My other favorite point was that in order to have a whole person to offer to another person, one must establish his or her own unigue identity. How can you come to know a person and let them get to know you if you don't know yourself? I've always thought that this was an important concept - I'm glad that I have some psychological backing now.
Anyway, I'll stop boring you with my findings, but don't be surprised if you see more posts about my classes and books, because they will basically be my life for the next few weeks.
Speaking of which, I'd better get back to the crazy person who is explaining to me why understanding the Jungian reading of Tristan and Iseult will save Western culturen and my own sanity. Sigh...