Thursday, February 2, 2012

I Need to Graduate!!!

It's been close to two years. Only a month to go and I'll know if I'll graduate or not. For the meantime, I am struggling with a paper and lots of extra work in the form of transcriptions and translations which seem like an endless task. Whew! These days I'm super stressed, and I think even my students notice that. These past few days, they were telling me I'm always in a bad mood, that I'm irritable and such. I even receive a text message from one of my students. He/she only introduced himself/herself as a student of mine. Anyway, he/she sent me a text message telling me to eat desserts when I'm stressed because STRESSED is DESSERTS spelled backwards. Really cute. I appreciate that a lot. I admire students who can be sweet to their teachers. Because I certainly am not the sweetest person alive. (Though I am understanding and caring, I'm not the type to be sweet to people with whom I spend only a short period of time.)

Today at SM North EDSA's Northern Sale, I headed to Booksale again. It's been weeks since my last visit and I'm itching to browse the shelves and find treasures. And indeed find treasures I did. I saw a book by Michael Shermer, a skeptic and author of a book I once used as reference for a major paper. Back then I was impressed by his thoughts and his manner of writing, which was targeted at the lay person. The title of the book is "The Science of Good and Evil".

And I realized how much I miss spending time alone by myself with just a book in hand. I miss reading on the bed and falling asleep afterwards with the book's contents replaying in my dream. I realized that all these years I have been hoarding a lot of books and yet I only read only a handful of them. That's because the libraries at UP have the best books and I can't help but read them first before I read my own purchases. Just recently, I saw a new book at the CAL library. "Rereading the Stone" is a whole new interpretation of the Chinese classic Hongloumeng or Dream of the Red Chamber. It probably is the best fiction I have ever read. I was haunted by it for months on end after I read the novel. At present, I think it will haunt me again. I look forward to savoring the book while reminiscing about the most tragic love story that I have ever read. Such is the passion put in and found in the novel that I cannot help but shed tears for its manifestation of powerful emotions. And I am not ashamed to say that I was depressed for weeks because of that book.

Aside from books, there are lots of seemingly excellent movies this year that I want to catch on the big screen. For instance, there's Star Wars in 3D, The Hobbit and many others. And I do miss watching anime without a care in the world. I miss the freedom during the old days when life was more carefree and more relaxing. So I have to graduate. Whatever happens, I must graduate. And write my paper I must.

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