Back Up your Work

So it's been a while since my last entry, mainly because my hard drive crashed. I remember it clearly, 4 December, at around 9:20 PM, when my computer betrayed me. I lost all my work I had done on two final papers worth huge chunks of my grade, and nearly 30 pages of notes. Anyway, a few emails and extensions and a professor's new baby (Congratulations again, Professor Murdoch!), I finally finished and handed them it.

Then comes the wonderful time known as finals week, in earnest. A time marked by the awesome Primal Scream, which is when we all go out on the Quad the midnight before finals begin and scream away the stress that accumulated over the past weeks, and maybe even months. It's basically just legitimized insanity, at least for a few minutes. So, after a Chinese exam and one of my Palestine-Israel Conflict class (on my birthday, which shaped up to be an awesome birthday present), the pain and the agony was over.

Anyway, so as I began to write this latest entry, I'm in the city with my cousin down in SoHo, just chilling. I've finished all my preparations to go abroad: I packed all my stuff away into storage on Thursday, dropped off keys, library books, my basil plant, and everything else that needs looking after, and left this morning. It's odd to think that I won't be back at Vassar for another six months, but at the same time it's kind of exciting. I've been away for summer, doing crazy things in crazy places, but I think this will probably trump all of them. Mind you, rediscovering my family roots in rural South China was fairly awesome, and I think that's the only exception.

As I look back on the semester, it's been a great one, full of every kind of emotion there is. Well, I'm no girl (my suitemates would probably hit me at this point, along with every Vassar woman) but I've gotta say it's been tough. Between surviving papers and stress, pulling crazy hours in the library, and running off pure tea, I'm still around, and it feels pretty good.

This entry has been dragged out over a few days since I'm not really in student mode, therefore my word per minute count has dropped severely. I'm back at home in the Bahamas now, chilling in shorts, talking to my friends who are trapped in New England under a few feet of snow. Man, small town island life sucks, but it's better than being in New England this time of year. Oh well.

So, to all of you that are still trapped in the great north, my sympathies. To everyone else, Merry Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa and whatever else may happen to sideline you in terms of holidays. Happy new year to all and to all a good night!