End of Summer Anxieties
September 3rd, 2010 • Academics, Student Life, Thoughts
The fourth day of September- I’d like to echo those around me by saying “I can’t believe summer went so quickly!” but, honestly, it hasn’t seemed unnaturally fast to me. In fact, my previous batch of spring finals seems like a million years ago, and I’m not really relishing the approach of that time of the year again. What a pessimistic thought, huh? The beginning of the school year is always accompanied by such a specific smell in the air. It reminds me of buying school supplies at Staples with my mom when I was in elementary school. That was one of my favourite days of the year.
I was on the B-line the other day going to the gym, and I found myself amongst a gaggle of first years… at least, I would assume that they are new students. Their looks of slight bemusement and thinly veiled excitement at the fact that they had just completed their first trip to Save-On on their own gave them away. (Their plastic bags were replete with laundry detergent, cereal and Brita filters.) Some days, I sort of wish that I had gone through the whole experience of coming to UBC straight out of high school to attend Science One, live in res and go through the typical anxieties and discoveries that come along with being on your own for the first time. (Who knew it was so hard to write a cheque or accomplish a culinary feat greater than Kraft Dinner?) In fact, that was my original plan. I remember quite clearly lying on the living room floor, thumbing through the UBC viewbook and ogling the pictures of light streaming through the stained glass windows in the Harry Potter room.
Despite all this, I still have mixed feelings about school starting in a few days. My courseload is scaring the pants off of me… the fact that I have to take Math 223 (honors linear algebra) alone has been giving me nightmares for real. I keep reading past course outlines that say that Math 223 is “significantly harder, faster and more theoretical” than its non-honors counterpart, 221. Great… Another downside is that only two out of my five classes are computer science classes. To inject at least a modicum of happiness, Cogs 200 should be interesting and I just pray that it’s a little less challenging than my other ones. (I registered in it as my “easy” class for the term, since I simply can’t justify taking Basketweaving 101 or whatever to sandbag.)
Sometimes I seriously wonder why I’m even bothering with honors since all I hear is that it’s too challenging, or there’s no point to it since it doesn’t matter for grad school, or that the only thing you get in return for herculean levels of stress is a meaningless accolade on your resume. But since I’m stuck at UBC for four years in total anyways due to a stupid, bureaucratic hitch that resulted from me being a transfer student, I may as well go the extra mile while I’m here. And I sort of feel like I’d be cheating myself if I didn’t do it, simply because I know I’m capable and to do anything less would be working at a level lower than my full potential. I mean, that’s what I’d like to think. Math 223 could very well prove me differently… haha… ha… sigh.
Anyways. I guess that this is a bit of a morose post and I think that the anticipation surrounding the whole back to school thing is probably worse than getting back into the swing of things. I’m loving the opportunity to read the excitement from my fellow UBC bloggers- especially those who are new to UBC and seeing everything for the first time.
Enjoy your final few days of summer, everyone!
