It's Tuesday?

I'm closing in on the last part of what has undoubtedly been my most difficult university. I am literally, at this very moment, discussing end-of-semester plans with a friend who is attending university in another city. I've written four essays in the last month, and have to write another four before we break for final exams. I'm currently reading my way through Pride and Prejudice for one English class while I almost-weekly read a short story collection for the other (covered so far: Stephen Leacock, JG Sime, Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro, Thomas King and Alistair MacLeod. One left; it'll be my first experience with Margaret Atwood.) This is only the second semester that I've worked and attended school at the same time, my parents are currently away on vacation, leaving me to do a little more fending-for-myself than usual, and I've been trying (mostly failing) to squeeze in time to write.

So you may be able to understand how I managed to forget it's Tuesday until approximately fifteen minutes ago, at which point I had to put aside my own writing and write this post!

While I can say I'm not sure I like being so busy and rushed all the time - mostly due to school - I can say that I actually care about (most of) what I'm learning for the first time in my post-secondary education. In elementary school, I was your typical, smart-geeky kid. By the time I reached junior high, I lost the "smart" and was your typical geeky kid of average intelligence. If you asked me in high school, I would probably tell you that I hated school, although looking back I can say that it wasn't that simple. I didn't [i]like[/i] school, but that's because I was an angsty, socially-awkward teenager with very little confidence. I may not have gotten excited about any of my classes, but I was interested in French and English and any class that had a decent person teaching it.

When I got to university, though, it just didn't click. University French seemed like a repetition of high school French, because it mostly was. English was alright, but nothing more. Psychology was easy but boring, History was dreadful, Earth Sciences was the absolute worst class I've ever taken.

But now, I can honestly say that I appreciate what I'm learning. One English class I'm taking focuses on the Restoration and Romantic literature; difficult, sometimes hard to get excited about, but at least I feel like I'm learning something of value, especially since I don't read much on my own that wasn't written within the last ten years.

My other class focuses on Canadian short fiction. I've paid much attention to whether a writer was Canadian or not, and I've always read more novels than short stories, but I have to say it's been extremely interesting to explore the short story form as written by some fantastic professional writers who also happen to share my home country.

The French course I'm doing has me in class six hours a week and sometimes writing essays for twice that, but for the first time in a couple years I feel like I'm making [i]progress[/i] in learning the language. My French professor occasionally makes the class want to haul our hair out, but French-the-llama, I have to admit he's a fantastic teacher and, admittedly, a great person when he's not being intentionally horrid to us in the goal of making us learn the language.

I also decided this semester to go into Education after I finish my BA, so maybe that's got something to do with my renewed interest in academic learning; I've got a destination now, a path ahead of me to follow rather than just academically wandering around without any real purpose. Instead of telling myself I have no idea why I'm in university, I can tell myself I'm there to learn and eventually become a teacher, so I can work with kids all day, be home by the afternoon, and have summers to focus on writing or anything else I want to do.

Makes the work a little more bearable.