Missing the Rush

It's hard to believe that an entire semester at my alma mater has come and gone without me being there to experience it. My girlfriend, also a recent graduate, likens the beginnings of post-grad living to an ongoing summer vacation, minus the blisfully warm weather of course.

According to many frantic Facebook and Twitter updates from my undergrad friends, today is Reading Day at Villanova. Reading Day is the sacred, lone free day in between the last day of classes and the first day of final exam week that students are given to use or abuse at their own will.

While I've always considered myself a pretty serious student, I can confess without shame that I was never really the type to utilize Reading Day to its full potential. Rather than waking up at 7 AM and squeezing my brain dry all day long in front of my laptop, I instead chose to treat Reading Day like any college Sunday: sleep late. Eat an intensely satisfying breakfast at noon. Think about the workload that lies ahead for a few hours before finally hauling it over to the library. Chat with fellow library prisoners. Buy a snack. Sit down and get to work. By the time all of that is said and done, it's already 10:00 PM. Crap. Perhaps this wasn't the smartest or most responsible way to go, but it's how I worked.

Who knew that it'd all be over one day? Of course I knew, but it just seemed so far off in the distance back when I was gulping down cans of Redbull while cramming mozzarella sticks down my throat in an effort to produce a history paper as a solitary, sleep-deprived sophomore. My study habits vastly improved during junior & senior year when I finally realized that working in one's dorm room or apartment is not conducive to productivity in the slightest. Thus, the library became my place of both solace and socialization, and perhaps that's why I miss it so much.

Yes, I said it. And I know what you may be thinking: What kind of weirdo would honestly miss the sterility of fluorescent lights, the graffiti etched into the wood of decades-old cubicles, and the feeling of being doomed to a finals week-related death? Well, I definitely don't miss those things. And I cerainly don't lament the loss of agonizing over each and every word of whatever essay or article I'm in the midst of composing, because, well, I still do that. Oops.

What I find myself strangely feeling a fondness for is the all-out "rush" of the end of a semester. Sure, bitching and moaning about your workload sucks, but it's lot more bearable when you can do it as a collective unit. The shared sleeplessness and suffering caused by a 10-page English paper also brought about feelings of comraderie amongst classmates. We were all such different students and individuals, but for at least a few days (or weeks) we all stood on common ground. Working on an assignment took on a kind of epic meaning, with everyone up against "The Man" that was Academia. Some of my best work was churned out during the last days of a semester, and some of the best discussions I ever had at school took place then too: in the 24-hour library lounge at 5 AM, just when the birds began to chirp, and when consciousness became increasingly ambiguous.

And how sweet it felt to be finished with it all! Clicking the print button, stapling a paper together, and bolting with it flapping in my hands against the wind to a class halfway across campus about to begin in thirty seconds is something I'll never have back again. Knowing that I would soon be traveling back home to New York to a decorated apartment and a family eager to see me was a comforting thought-turned-soon-to-be-reality as well. In short, surviving the rush made Christmas and winter break all the merrier.

Is it true that we always want what we don't have? I don't want to believe that. But as grateful as I am to have a decent job, loving family, and a strong relationship, I can't help feeling at this time of the year that I'm missing out on something back at school... even if it is those blinding library lights.