7:30 a.m.—Wake up, go to breakfast. Consider looking up French news for my 8 a.m. language lab while I eat. Decide not to be a lèche-cul. Someone else will have news.
8:00 a.m.—No one has news. Brief, demoralizing silence. French silence sounds different from American silence — more aggressive.
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.—Class.
12:00 p.m.—Lunch. Still feeling grim after French lab so I hit the booths with a library book for some solitude. Immediately spill soup on book and table. Clean soup with napkin. Wet napkin starts to dissolve and shred on table, needs to be cleaned with another napkin. Accumulate napkins.
12:16 p.m.—Student worker walks by, looks at table: pile of wet napkins, wet book, half-empty bowl of soup. Keeps walking.
1:00 p.m.—Detour into James Hall to refill water bottle. While filling, try to identify foreign scent. Decide base note is carpet cleaner. Smell is somehow superior to Cleveland carpet cleaner.
1:02 p.m.—James resident walks in, glances at Second Mile flannel, unwashed hair, grandma jeans. She knows.
1:15 p.m.—Nap time.
2:26 p.m.—Wake up right before class, running late. Whatever, it’s philosophy! My subjective time isn’t the same as yours!
2:27 p.m.— Nah.
2:30 p.m.— Burst into classroom, panting.
3:07 p.m.— Fellow student spends 10 minutes discoursing about personal struggle to understand the female perspective, gets trapped in cycle of destructive philosophical self-awareness. “See like right now I’m talking about not being able to talk about it, which I shouldn’t be, because I don’t have anything to talk about except that I can’t talk about it,” he says, his eyes wild.
5:00 p.m.—Grill shift.
5:30 p.m.—Supervisor calls me over, tells me to check out the grease traps. I check out the grease traps. The stuff inside does not look appetizing. “Think about that next time you’re eating a mozzarella stick,” he says.
5:35 p.m.—I eat a mozzarella stick.
7:00 p.m.—Go to Burling, spend half hour in third-floor bathroom thinking about different hairstyles. Bleaching my hair would be cool!
7:31 p.m.—Maybe not, though.
7:43 p.m.—I could just bleach a piece of my hair, like a paint sample. But then people would think I’m a coward.
7:44 p.m.—Or a trailblazer!
9:00 p.m.—Alien practice with Vera Kahn ’18, Ella Williams ’19 and Ernie Nanetti-Palacios ’17.
10:00 p.m.—In bed, brag to roommate about early bedtime. Roommate calls me lame.
11:00 p.m.—Spend two hours watching TV with Olivia Schouboe Elzinga ’18 to prove I am not lame.
1:00 a.m.—Fall asleep, a little stressed, but edgy as all get out.
