Green grow the rushes

This week took a turn for the stupid.

Wednesday morning, against my instincts, I woke up and went to my eight o'clock class - or more precisely, my 8:10 class. Our professor, Steve, understands how early eight o'clock is, so he gives us a ten minute leeway.

Being as I am, punctuality is important, at least in making an entrance. I have to time my arrivals so that, immediately after I arrive, business will begin. Not too late or I'll look absent-minded and irresponsible, and not too early or I'll be forced to sit around and make small talk until the activity commences. I believe it's worse to be early than to be late.

When I arrived at the building, however, I found that I was nearly ten minutes early. So I tried to prolong my entrance to class for just as long as I could. I took the stairs, went to the bathroom though I didn't need to, drank from the water fountain though I wasn't thirsty, and did lunges in the stairwell.

At just about ten after, I entered class and took the first seat to my left, next to John. We were supposed to watch Do the Right Thing. I don't know why. There's no point in looking for reasons in this class - there are either none, or too many.

Steve, though even more punctual then I, was not in class as of 8:10. He was not in class at 8:12. Nor at 8:15. John and I dubbed this behavior as un-Stevely.

When Steve decided to cancel class during the blizzard in February, he had posted the notice on the class web site, which no one thinks, or has time, to check before class, or at all. I elected to go to the nearest computer on the fourth floor and check the site, just to see. My hunch was correct - he was sick, and told us that we should do our best to see Do the Right Thing before next class.

I went back up to the class room, turned to John and said, "He's sick." I didn't have to tell the rest of the class personally, because I knew that John would retort with, "He's SICK?" just loud enough for everyone to hear. Everyone packed their bags and left, disgruntled. John declared that he would fight Steve. We had breakfast consisting of fruit, muffins, and a lot of bacon.

I went back to my dorm and watched Azumanga Daioh. Before long, it was nearly eleven o'clock, and I was going to be late for the Languages of the Stage forum. Halfway between my dorm and the forum, it had already passed eleven. The Stage forum was an occasion where being late was actually worse than being early - it's set in an actual theater, so when you enter, you have to find a seat under the scornful watch of about two hundred eyes. I did not feel like being looked at so much, not by so many people at once.

Besides that, I figured that, while I had missed two Stage classes - which is apparently enough for my instructor to genuinely dislike me - I haven't missed the forum once. So I skipped it. I imagine it was just about how wonderful and mysterious theatre is, or how Sam Shepard meant Bradley's wooden leg to be a symbol of the inherent dysfuntionality of American familes, or maybe not, because no one can know what the playwright intended.

The one thing that has been impressed on me more than anything since I've come to college is that I don't know a God damned thing.

I was majorly frustrated by the fact that, all this time, I could have been asleep, and the end result would have been the same. I thought about skipping my development psychology class, too, but that would have just meant I could have been asleep even longer, had I known I was just going to skip the whole day. We watched a Frontline video on the SATs - I guess since we're at the adolescent stage now, and adolescents take the SATs. The video was comforting, because it helped me realize that there is something that I can be sure of - the SATs are retarded. And without hardships like the SATs, we'd have nothing to complain about.

I didn't bother to have dinner that night.

Yesterday, I only had one class, voice. And I skipped it. Our assignment was to make a "river" story, one with images about time and place, and about three of the five senses. I skipped the class because I'm fucking sick of pretending that I understand what the hell the assignment is about, and I'm sick of being lauded for making up senseless flowery shit on a whim. I would spend the rest of the day watching Escaflowne.

Maybe that's it. Maybe it's all the anime I'm watching. But no, if anime affected me in that way, wouldn't I be overcome by the Japanese ideals of hard work and study, as opposed to rebellion and self-righteousness?

At rehearsal, I finally started having fun and really acting for the first time in over a year.

Today, I had only my Stage class. I had already missed it several times, so I wasn't going to mess around today. I had already decided that this weekend would be one of work, so I had to make sure I know what my assignments were for each class.

I went to the classroom. It was empty. At exactly twelve o'clock, the time the class was meant to start, nobody was there. I doubted my sanity for I moment. I asked someone for the time, and asked somebody else what day it was. Twelve o'clock, Friday. I thought about what happened with Steve on Wednesday, so I went to a computer and checked the class' site for the first time. It was blank. Obviously, none of the instructors have ever used it for bulletins. I thought that maybe our instructor took off, as she's apparently really Irish.

Of course. The forum. I skipped the forum the one time that it provided information that I needed, probably about an alternate location for the class today. I couldn't imagine where.

The thing about skipping classes is that it only really works when you have someone who can tell you what you missed. I'm the last person to have one of those kinds of people.

I was bewildered. So I walked. For an hour, I walked around Boston's south end historical district for the first time. It didn't seem that historical to me, but it was nice for a neighborhood I had to cross over the turnpike to get to. I realized that Tom Cruise's ex-wife in War of the Worlds must have lived in the south end. It's kind of weird that after walking east for so long, I'd end up in the south end.

I was getting hungry, and though I wanted to see what the food was like at Charlie's Sandwich Shoppe, which I had just discovered on my walk, I figured that I should be making use of my meal plan, as I have yet to use all fourteen meals in one week. I returned to campus around one o'clock, and went to the dining hall. I opened my wallet in anticipation of finding my ID card inside. A foolish anticipation, for even as I opened the wallet, I remembered that my ID card was the right pocket of my flimsy orange Polo pants, hanging on the post at the head of my bed. I went to the City Place foodcourt, bought some Chinese food, and ate it as I read Watchmen.

I returned to my dorm. Even now, my roommate is still asleep.

---

I had two papers due for my Stage class before break, one on the production of The Goat I had seen, and one on Roy Cohn, who was caricaturized in Angels in America.

For the Goat paper, the guidelines were vague, so I pretty much just mused on what I felt about it, and what I thought it meant.

For the Roy Cohn paper, I copy and pasted from Wikipedia.

I received the graded papers when I returned for break.

I got a D on the Goat paper. She had accused me of not seeing the play at all.

I got an A on the Roy Cohn paper. She said she liked the completely unproven fact that Roy Cohn had a collection of stuffed animals.

I can't tell which grade makes me angrier.