XVI. "I can scare the stupid out of you, but the lazy runs deep."

Oh, Gilmore Girls. When I heard Paris Geller make this remark, my first response was to pause the episode, sit in front of my laptop, and stare at the screen. I was contemplating the validity of this statement and if and how it applies to me at all.

All of this was happening during my allotted study-break time to be specifically spent watching this episode of Gilmore Girls.

Tick tock tick tock -

During the Ivy days of Penn college life, I noticed that I have become lazy. It seems to me now like the days during high school were optimal - as though I had reached some sort of self-actualized pique - as if I had gotten very close to perfection…

I used to force myself to do abdominal crunches, one hundred a day, while watching television- before I got dressed, and before I went to sleep.

I used to be able to study and daydreaming was kept to a minimum. I reserved those desires to daydream for the dreams that would occur during the sleep that would follow the completion of my homework.

That’s it!

I don’t really sleep hence I don’t really get to dream, hence my need to day-dream that in turn causes me to take a longer time to finish work, and therefore creates less of a chance for me to sleep.

You probably think I’m slow. I was slow to come to the conclusion that us college students are sleep-deprived. AS a result, we have become lazy.

Perhaps; Yet how does one explain the laziness that persists after months of not being on campus, and when you instead are once again living in the safe haven that is your beautiful home - where you, and I too, had thrived during high school?

I’m too sleep - derived and busy to mull over this question and so I move on….

I’m sitting in front of my laptop screen, ten minutes left until my study-break is over and I have to recommence reading the hundreds of pages, single spaced, and in a font-size of ten (or less), for each class where the professor is under the false impression that we are taking just his/her class - that his/her class is the sole color blocked out on our schedules.

Those teachers rounds out to about…. one for each of my five classes. These fools think that there is only one yucky pastel green, yellow,or pink block of time, multiple times a week, that ordains our schedules (Reference the figure below.)

Many a time I had begun to think I was stupid. Was I not reading quick enough? How do you pass an exam if you don’t read everything? What if I miss something important while skimming? What is happening?

You must be stupid.

No. No, I’m pretty sure I, you, us - - we’re not stupid.

We clawed our way from pre-school to twelfth freaken grade to get into <Insert Name> University.

We knew we had failed once in a while - (Failed ourselves mostly; Not so much an actual exam otherwise we wouldn’t be this pensive about the possibility of being stupid and/or lazy while in college.)

But we also were keenly aware of how our resume and transcript were shaping up.

We knew that at times we created magic at that desk of ours, in our room, dangerously close to a comfy bed and falling asleep. And yet, we never fell asleep.

In contrast, the desk in our dorm rooms next to the bed is just that - a desk, (unused), next to a bed (used instead of being unused while we’re studying.)

Stupidity and Laziness does not explain why we cannot finish our work to such an extent that we do not have to have the syllabi for all our classes plastered to our forehead so we can start on the next assignment. Why can we not have that time after completing the readings for Tuesday to revel in happiness, before thinking about the readings for another class that meets on Wednesday?

Answer: We have to go back to the Tuesday class, because it also meets on Thursday, and so we have to read once more Wednesday night, for the Tuesday class that also meets on Thursday aka the next day.

Why can’t we get the opportunity to read for class the next day instead of reading for the class that met last week?

The answer: TIME.

This study - break allotted time went way over… time.

Time is like nature - it can’t be managed.

Still we can’t help but be gracious that we can say that we have time - that we had a past full of memories and experiences. We have a present that is stressful, but we also have a future - why? Well, because time is ahead of us and keeps moving and our present keep changing.

In conclusion, go with the flow homies - it’s all good yo -

Yaya for Gilmore Girls words of wisdom!

Holler at your homefry -