When I was in high school, I used to look forward to holidays, because I knew they were days where I could relax. That’s what a holiday is for, right? Relaxing and taking a break so that you can go back to your studies (or job) refreshed and recharged. Once I started working full time, I thought back to when I’d have long holidays (what seemed like all the time) when I was in school and I’d wish that we could do the same thing in the Army. Granted, we got a lot of days off in the Army, but there was nothing like getting a week off at a time. Not unless you used your paid vacation time anyway.
So, when I started going back to college full time on the Post 9/11 GI Bill (which pays my full tuition and living allowance), I thought I would get a chance to take advantage of those breaks again, and that this time I could really put them to good use, and savor them, because I know what it’s like to not have them. So, I was looking forward to this Spring Break and hoped to use it to spend my days at the museums, in the parks, or just doing whatever I wanted to do, and it almost happened.
I say almost, because in one of my classes we were assigned a huge project over Spring Break. I can understand being expected to complete the reading for the next scheduled class during the break, but who really sets up a huge, time consuming project to be done over Spring Break? The project culminated in an essay. The essay itself wasn’t that hard to write, and didn’t take much time, but gathering the data required interviewing 20 people. I also won’t say that it wasn’t interesting, because it was, but it just seems like the timing of when it was assigned was just so… awful. This project could have been handed out and then turned in the week before the end of class. To get that many interviews takes time!
If you’ve ever been in the streets of New York, or maybe anywhere, you’d know that you can barely get someone to stop for a moment to give you directions, let alone ask them 15 minutes of questions. Further complicating the matter was that the people answering the questions all had to be within a certain age range: old to older. By that I mean they had to be 55+, at the least. I had a lot of issues finding 20 people in that age range to answer questions, especially since the weather wasn’t good the first 6 days of the break. I find that old people tend to stay home when it’s cold and rainy out. I finally managed to get my last interview done yesterday, the last day of Spring Break. Then I had to rush through the essay, which I turned in today.
This project was hanging over my head the entire break, drowning out any possible relaxation and enjoyment with constant worrying over whether or not I could complete the interviews, and how I would form the results into anything meaningful enough to be called an essay.
This Spring Break just wasn’t what I was hoping for.
It wasn’t all bad though. I got to spend some quality time with my mom and went with her to her church’s Easter production. That was entertaining. I got to finally start watching the series Lost. Ya, I know I’m a few years late on that. I also got to see the premier of Game of Thrones. It looks awesome, and makes me wish I’d read the books. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the next episodes.
The weather finally took a nice turn yesterday. It was actually 82 here. Today it was a bit cooler. I think it peaked at about 72. Hopefully it’ll stay warm this time. On my way home from class today I had dinner in Union Square Park and walked around a bit, taking photos, before I went into Barnes & Noble to browse around. I wanted to take a look at the Nook Color. It somehow just doesn’t feel as natural in my hand, or on my eyes, as the Kindle does.
Bradley Farless 