Prioritizing

I worried about this as a senior. Would I be happy with just two science classes a semester, or could I tack on a third? Should I take such-and-such a class for a grade or not? What classes would get me an easy A? Did I want to write papers? Did I really have to take that class with the four-hour lab? Would I have time for sleep, food, and myself? I thought about all this as I cooked little meals at my little dorm kitchen. It was so much to choose from, and it confused me. I almost wished I could just be told what to do, to take some of the weight of the constant cost/benefit analysis off my shoulders.

Hahaaa.

Little did I know that, come next year, I'd be dying for just the tiniest taste of the uncertainty that comes with having choices.

Things are completely different now. Long, long gone are the days of choosing between this difficult class or that one, this easy class or that easier one. Every class and lab I take has been chosen for me, and every single one is something I would never voluntarily have taken as an undergrad. I spend five days a week in a building from 9 -5, listening to overly dense lectures or gingerly flaying strips of rubbery skin and stringy muscle from a formaldehyde-soaked cadaver. I didn't choose the hours, the classes, or the professors. I will say that I expected it. I understood that this was to be a part of it. But I didn't expect ALL of it. I don't think anyone did. When exams draw near, I have time for nothing. Being able to sit down to eat is a luxury. A hot, home-cooked meal is an extravagant impossibility.

Remember to eat, just enough to live. Toast, toast, toast. Peanut butter.
Remember to drink enough water, or else my nose will bleed. It's happened.
Remember to get coffee on the way.
Remember not to shudder when I see an unfamiliar, wan face in the mirror, each eye carrying its own little bag.

Life pushes down from all sides until there's just no room for me anymore. I must shove "me" to the side, shove it underneath a comically mammoth backpack, piles and piles of papers, mismatched pairs of shoes and socks. I will take care of it after the exam is over.

Now my problems have nothing to do with choices. I know everything I must do. What I don't know is how I'm going to get there.