Finished

Not actually, but intellectually, emotionally, spiritually... and somewhat physically, as well. Maybe it was the fact that my first term back at school was in the accelerated summer mode - and truncated by a week, no less - but I think I had forgotten exactly how gruelling thirteen weeks of graduate-level work can be, when sleep is the only thing I crave and the guilt of wasting time haunts me like my own personal poltergeist. How I am to get everything done I'm obligated to do in the scant few weeks left to me is quite frankly beyond me, but amidst all of the doubt I cling to the simple faith that my own inner daemon will find a way, that the end of the term will come and I will look back on a sea of completed projects, papers, and mandatory 60-hour internships and give a sigh a relief, happy that the madness of higher education has abated at least for the holidays.

The problem with crunch-time is that it is everyone's crunch-time, so the more and more I need my weekend hours here at the Circ Desk to get things done as the semester draws to a close, the less peaceful and uninterrupted those hours become. This weekend has been a minor disaster in that regard, as aside from a brief lull caused by the Harvard-Yale football game yesterday - the boys in Crimson crushed their opponents, 35-3, sending the Bulldogs back to New Haven with tails tucked between their legs - it's been busy enough to keep me away from my readings for the week. It doesn't help that recent tectonic shifts in the Library's power structure have sent a lot of people scurrying to protect their jobs, as the new regime decides who is necessary and who is dead weight. While I'm not exactly fearful for my own position, like it or not, the paranoia tends to trickle down; and as a result I've agreed to tack another duty or two onto my regular weekend routine that's only further draining the "oceans" of free time I was celebrating this job for just a few months ago.

Now the ocean is more like an inland sea. Or a lake. Not that I'm daunted or anything...