Post-Vacation Apocalypse
Hi guys! I swear I didn’t forget about you. I’d like to take some time on this Monday night to write about the unpleasant phenomenon that I like to refer to as, “Post-Vacation Apocalypse”.
Let me set the scene: It’s Monday after Thanksgiving break and you just lugged your laundry basket stuffed with clean clothes and an ungodly heavy backpack up the stairs to your dorm room that’s been vacant for the past six days. The shades are drawn and your entire room looks like it’s been overcast by a shadow. Significant amounts of dust have somehow gathered on all open surfaces. You flop onto your bed, fresh off a week of overeating and watching more T.V than you have all semester combined, and tick off everything you have to do in your head today.
Two classes, fine.
Work, you can handle that too.
Wait, do you have an exam in your 2 o’clock class? No professor is that heartless as to schedule an exam for the day after vacation, right?
You definitely have a paper due in your other class too. Goddammit.
Not to mention you register for classes tomorrow, what are you taking again?
Oh, and at some point you’re going to have to think of something interesting to write about in your blog. (Why did you start a blog?)
And you didn’t even get to eat breakfast this morning. A travesty.
If you’re like me, you humored yourself and brought home some books and stuff to do homework over break. Then you got home, took a nap, ate unspeakable amounts of food at Thanksgiving, and hid your backpack in some dark corner of your house, not to be seen or thought of again until you arrived back at school Monday morning. Here’s the issue with getting back from breaks on Monday mornings: you are plopped back on campus with hoards of responsibilities that you’re not even remotely mentally capable of handling. You were at home two hours ago! How are you to be expected to transition into the mindset of fast-paced productivity to deal with the impending doom of finals? You’re in no way prepared for this.
Without option, your day begins. Here are some tips that I used to get through this Monday.
- Take five minutes, curl up into a ball on your bed, and listen to a song that’s comforting. I picked We Will All Be Changed, by Seryn. It was nice.
- Make a list with boxes to check off. Either it’ll all be put in perspective and you’ll be wildly relieved or it’ll seem marginally worse. Either way, the boxes are fun to check off.
- Hug your roommate (thanks, Hann).
- Consider that, even a week from now, these worries will all seem distant and silly.
- Deep breaths.
I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings and Hanukkahs, I’ll talk to you next week!