Sunday, June 22, 2008

How I'll Spend My Summer Vacation

So. I've decided to take out my very first student loan ever this summer so that, instead of getting a job as I normally would, I can stay home and read for my orals in the fall. After just about a week I've learned one thing: you can get an ASSLOAD of work done when you don't have anything else to do. I've been pulling at least 200, if not 300 pages a day. I've been eating nutritious homemade food. I've been to the gym 6 times this past week. I've been sleeping 7-8 hours a night. MY APARTMENT IS CLEAN. I don't know how long this utopia is going to last, but I'm hoping for forever.

The only problem is that I've become sort of a recluse (or, you know, more of a recluse than normal.) I wake up around 7:30, lounge around reading until about 3, head to the gym, come back, shower, and get back into my jammies to read more until I go to bed again around 11. My motivation to leave my apartment to do anything else (even go to a cafe) is practically nonexistent. During the normal school year, for example, the logic that I use to assess whether or not to go out goes something like this:

1. How much work do I absolutely need to get done tonight, and can I realistically get most of it done if I go somewhere else or run an errand? (Do I need to teach class tomorrow? Are there papers to grade that I've promised to hand back? Am I meeting with a professor, and do I know what I need to know to not look like a complete noob?)

2. Is (whatever I'm running out for) just a want (chocolate, ice cream, apples, root beer), or is it a need (toilet paper, coffee)?

3. How much time will it take? (Anything less than an hour has a good shot of making the cut.)



Lately, this process has been modified and substantially streamlined. Before I go out, I ask myself these two questions:

1. How bad do I need (whatever I'm running out for)? and

2. Does it require pants?


A "yes" answer to #2 is usually a deal breaker. If I can manage to just throw on something baggy, comfortable, and sporting an elastic waistband-- fine. Anything involving zippers and buttons-- practically unthinkable.


So this is how I'll spend my summer vacation...hope you all have a chance to take it easy, too.

2 Comments:

Blogger candice said...

Greetings from me and Mr. Right! hehe

Kat! More than 4 hours of sleep in a night?!

I'm *so* happy for you.

I promise you will get tons of reading done here in NY too, at swanky coffee shops, where there are coffee snobs or literary snobs or frightening hybrids of the two!

10:38 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hehehe, you do some of the same processing that i do. does it require public presentability (especially considering there are only 2 degrees of separation in this city and a guarantee i'll see someone i know)? is it across town (all 8 miles of it)? hm, if i drink some beer or wine that will end the question immediately - i will no longer be able to drive. ha! i do kind of envy your ability to stay home and read (even if it is more or less assigned) and i tend to fill my free time with active activities cuz i'm tired of sitting in front of a computer. blah (and yet here i am).

8:29 PM  

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