Senioritis

Senioritis is in full swing for me. Right now, I should be writing my capstone and four other research papers, as well as preparing three presentations and a project due in the next two weeks.  Fun fact: I have started on none of the above.  It isn't entirely that I am lazy, or apprehensive, about graduating or what I am going to do after graduation, part of it is a lack of available knowledge on the topics I am researching (seriously, I don't think anyone has ever researched religious practices of the Ixil, at least as far as women's roles in religious practice are concerned; and serious research on gender presentation and performance in video games is probably in the same boat).  

But the most frustrating thing of this final semester is not my research papers, but the busy work I am constantly assigned by my gen-eds that simply gets in the way of any serious efforts to complete my assignments.  Plus, I have the attention span of a gold fish, which isn't helping me at all and I am above taking performance enhancing drugs - regularly.  My fears are probably getting the best of me, but at the same time the ridiculous requirements for graduation aren't helping me either.  When the hell am I ever going to need anything I am learning in my math class - it isn't statistics or anything useful, like balancing a checkbook, but it's all about bead patterns and weird graphs and shit.  Nothing of relevance to me and really a time consumer.

This semester has filled me with doubt: about where I am going, what I am doing, and whether or not I will finish this year even.  But I guess it is alright to doubt, because it can be inspiration to do.  Dale Carnegie once wrote, "Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy."  And if what is beneath is any indication, I got busy - but in the wrong place.

Doubt

I doubt I will graduate.

The focus I tend to possess when I write is

absent,

The cascade of organized thoughts and synthesized

concepts has run dry, with

hardly a trickle left.

I doubt it will come back.

My desk is piled to the clouds with monographs,

feminist theory, games to observe

and report, and a series of articles waiting to

be examined, dissected, and robbed of their

precious cargoes, coerced into confession of vital

information I seek.

I doubt I will get it easily.

My mind is away, back where my heart

remains - wandering the cobbled, narrow corridors

meandering down to the Guadalquivir,

where the rush slows and silences

beneath the ramparts, in my mind.

I doubt I will ever go back.

I desire the serpentine streets of the West

again, and for duty and necessity to fade

and surrender to my desires.  But that will never

be.

I doubt it will ever be.