Distractions
My first final exam falls on the 12th. My final paper is due on the 19th. And it takes a tremendous concentration just to keep my eyes on my notes for over a minute. It's not entirely about school. I am having trouble doing just about anything these days. The idea of cleaning my room takes effort and i'm lucky just to have dragged my ass to the gym for three consecutive days in a row. I'm also on my 4th day of no alcohol. I won't go so far as to say I miss alcohol, but it does provide quite a feeling of relief from stress. And the associations i have with a beer would be tough to give up. I'm quite certain i can give alcohol up for as long as i need to, but doing so without increased reliance upon another crutch (girlfriend, smoking and even more life damaging habits) is tough indeed. In fact, the only crutch I've started is this writing on a far more consistent basis that i used to. And it is a crutch, abet one with only current as opposed to future side effects.
Part of the problem, of course, is that this is one of the more stressful periods of my life. I'm going into an exam period of 3 final exams and 4 papers, one exam or paper for each of my seven classes. The first paper is due tomorrow, and i have satisficed enough on it. It is being turned in as is. This weekend should see the completion of another final paper, this time for election law and the real fun begins: I start of studying for the ever-forbidding "Wills, Trusts and Estates" which will eat my soul next Friday. Then comes the statute-intensive Environmental Law exam the following Monday, three days later.I will round out the exam period with the jurisprudence-intensive First Amendment exam only two days after that and in between the two i will have my professional responsibility interview. At some point i will have to fit in my "International Mergers and Acquisitions" course, with god only knows what on it.
I have my date for taking the Presidential Management Fellowship Exam. It is January 28th, thankfully not during my cousin's wedding and far enough away from the bar. Oh... and then there's the bar.
Liz gets married on the 6th. I know that I was the one who broke contact with her. I'm fairly certain it was the right move. Yet I'm still sorry for the loss of her as a friend. We parted paths after leaving for college and became different people. And, frankly, I never quite got over her. Probably never will completely. I was not invited to the wedding either because i was a liability or perhaps out of a wounded pride from being shunned. Or perhaps it was pettiness. I don't blame her for it, though again I feel the loss of her friendship. I wish that we were on such terms that I could have been invited.
And in some absurd incongruity of ceremonial closure to a life in emotional turmoil, on Friday i get my law school hood.