The Eye of the Storm

You know that feeling at a restaurant when you see your food leave the kitchen and there’s that gap in time before it gets to your table? It’s an odd feeling, right? All you can think of is,

“That’s my food! That’s it! I SHALL BE EATING THAT!”

But your brain has to correct itself and go,

“Woah there cowboy. It’s not here yet. Just sit tight and act cool. Pretend to look at the martini collection or something.”

So you end up just sitting there looking anywhere but the server’s eyes, waiting for the last second to turn and be startled with joy at the arrived meal, as if eye contact would ruin the taste.

That’s what my life is like right now. Because of my finished papers, I have the enthusiastic spirit of a young boy aching to bounce on a trampoline eating Nerds candy screaming “We Are The Champions” loud enough to receive a noise complaint. But because of the impending finals, I feel like one of those squirrels paralyzed in the middle of the road, caught between this side and that side, not knowing where to go, busily working away all in prep for the bountiful winter that lies ahead.

It’s a definitive zone I’m in right now for sure, a remarkable aura of post-paper exhilaration and pre-exam terror. On one hand, I’ve just emerged from the heat of battle, defeating History and Philosophy papers that threatened the very livelihood of the great kingdom Decentmarksville. On the other hand, the great task of finals lies ahead of me, my first on the 12^th, also threatening the very same kingdom. If only I had not chosen the sword of Procrastination, I would probably feel better right now.

There’s no real way to describe this feeling, in between this academic storm and that academic storm. My best comparison is that it’s like a zombie movie when the “gang” is restocking, getting all packed up for the inevitable waves of further zombies to “re-kill” (I never did understand how zombie-ism worked). And the only weapons against this army of scholarly zombies are the chainsaws of 24-hour libraries, the crowbars of hastily eaten food and the shotguns of, appropriately, 5-hour Energy Shots.

So, with such an oddly placed zombie reference and the mountain of finals facing us, I’d like to skip the “Happy Holidays” for now and just say this:

Hang on to your hats UBC. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.