My Monday Night

Funny things happen when you've got 3 days left before break. And mid-terms are starting. Combine those and well, funny things happen.

It all started when I discovered my brain completely shut-off during "Tempered Steel" in Sym Winds. My fingers were moving, but I wasn't even thinking about what I was playing. This was the first signal that it was going to be a long night of studying MCP.

This was followed up by several "what's what she said jokes" around the dinner table. I swear those things slowly kill your intelligence. Then someone starts saying "that's what she said".....after his own jokes. Then you know that your college education has really gone down the tubes. The worst part - you actually laugh at him.

Following a dress fitting, I took a 30 min nap, to wake up to the cruel reality of the course called Music in the Christian Perspective.

First I started off with studying the essay topics with 2 other girls. Grouped up on the floor of my dorm room, we confessed our inability to understand any of the topics completely. It was then that I needed my caffeine kick. At this point, I'm tired, but still relatively sane.

At 9 I headed over to the music building for a study session with some other people. Luke led us on a discovery of the secrets of identifying the music example correctly. While we were trying to find connections, I ended up relating Bach back to the tax code at one point. Obviously, this isn't a good sign. But I'm starting to feel a little less tired (looking back, another very bad sign). I ran back to the dorm to grab my power cable and wheat thins (as discussed with Mitch....music majors live on moutain dew and wheat thins)

Close to 11 Luke and I decided to switch our papers. Mine provided great entertainment - apparently my writing abilities decrease if I write the first half, eat dinner and then finish. And send it to someone without having glanced at it. If you ever want an example of how to NOT write a paper, just ask for that rough draft. Continuing to review and work on notes, various discussions came up regarding confusing parts of each of the books.

At this point, I'm wondering why on earth I'm in the music building past midnight and pondering how lame I am. Physically I feel completely awake, which just doesn't make sense. My brain is slowly shutting down and refusing to work. I've decided that the carpet in the music theory room is really comfortable compared to the carpet in the dorm room. We've got the listening music playing in the background and taking time to identify it. Luke correctly identified the first movement of Beethoven's 5th. Then about 2 min later, he said that the song playing was the 4th movement of the Mozart Symphony. I gave him a really confused look, and explained that it was the epic Beethoven finale, and he had just correctly identified the overall work, and earlier in the evening said something along the lines of there not being any way to miss the "epic 4th". Right after that, I tried dotting my "u"s in my notes. At that point, it was time to give up. So as we're packing stuff up, we start discussing socialism, because that's what every music major does at about 12:30 in the morning after studying for several hours.

I get back to Gillette, and of course I can't find my ID. I call Hannah to come let me in. We go crash in her lounge as I go through my backpack, then spend the next 15 min or so tyring to retrace my steps to find my ID. The sad part - it's about a one minute walk from my dorm to the music building. Finally, we wlak over there one more time, and see Luke. The conversation:

"Are you sleepwalking?"
"What?"
"I said, are you sleep walking?"
"Yes. Back over to the music building. With another person. I'm looking for my ID. Are you sleep walking?"
"What?"
"I said, are you sleep walking?"

I found my ID in my music mailbox. I go back to Hannah's lounge and we discuss life's great mysteries. Including a conversation from lunch:

"I'm thinking about voting socialist in the election"
"Well, that does make sense. I mean, we're going socialist either way"
"But I can't see you doing that"
"Hey, I could be a closet socialist and you wouldn't know"
*lady ahead of us in the line whips her head around*

I'm pretty sure I solved most of the world's problems last night. But I couldn't remember anything. And people (in general) become really blunt jerks that late at night, but usually we preface this with "I become a jerk at about such and such a time, so sorry if this seems mean...." You also have a really good ability to view yourself as a complete idiot (at least I do) when it gets that late. I managed to survive the exam, but I've pretty much been going through my day with my brain half functioning. Again, I don't really feel tired, but I'm just not fully here. It's an interesting feeling. Another interesting observation: even if people they believe they're being jerks, overall my perception of my friends is dramatically improved when my brain shuts itself off (aka they're really super nice people and are completely hilarious.....we can argue later how much that applies when I'm not tired) Surprisingly, I never went through that with IB (just plain old confusion). I'm looking forward to going to bed tonight (I'm not even taking a nap today), but it seems so far away.

I'm also in the stage of thought where I could draw some great theological concepts out of this. But they would end up making no sense whatsoever, so I won't even go there. This is more of a record for my own sanity, so perhaps I'll budget my time a bit better. Or learn to drink coffee. Perhaps a combination of both.