It’s 02:00, and I’m Thinking…

I realised with a jolt the other day that the semester is only about 4 weeks in, but I feel like I’ve been working hard for so much longer than that.

The jolt may have just been that feeling I get when my brain suddenly switches on and tells me to get on out of bed: lately I’ve been having to fight against myself before I can get up and go to class at all.
Waking up for an 08:00 class is not fun, and the rainy weather Joburg’s been having lately hasn’t made it any easier either, so I’ve already decided that in winter I’m simply not going to attend those lectures.

The lectures themselves are really not bad- if a man who talks for almost 2 hours straight in a thick ‘is-he-German-or-is-he-French?’ accent is what you consider “not bad”.
And to make things worse, his unintelligible rambling is about the equally mystifying writings of our dear Papa Kapitalismo, Karl Marx. Wonderful.

At least in Psychology my friends and I can soon take the opportunity to start a little class pool, and call it “Pop!, Goes Teach”, to guess when our lecturer will have her baby. The fact that she’s 7 months pregnant does make watching her teach a little more interesting…
(Yes. Our boredom is to such a degree that we have regressed to using high school humour to keep ourselves sane.)

If it isn’t early morning classes, or last-minute tutorial preparations, it’s assignments: the readings barely make any sense, and even those that do hardly warrant a 6-page essay, in my opinion.

I have no real say in the matter, though, so I just have to make peace with the fact that the hours between 23:00 and 03:00 mark my most productive time of the day, and use the time to “crank out a few A-grade essays”, right?
[Disclaimer: the cheery and triumphant pumping-fist-into-air attitude with which I imagined myself making that last statement does not make up for the droopy eyes and fuzzy brain from which I suffer on submission day.]

As a result of the increasing workload, things like eating, watching TV, and caring about what I wear to class have started to slip lower and lower (and lower) on my “Important! Note well! Do this now!” list.
Nutrition and soapies are just not that important when a deadline draws ever nearer and threatens to catch me when I’m least prepared.

All these dynamics interact on different levels to create The Wits Student: a perpetually fatigued, under-nourished and over-worked young adult, hustling towards Success, while still trying to find time to breathe and actually live life.

This is my 2nd year, so I have the wisdom to come to terms with how Wits takes a little piece of my soul each day early on- I can (try to) deal with it.

The 1st years on campus, however, seem to still be in that “ooo- varsity! So much fun! Aah, yes- life in this place is going to rock!” phase which I remember so fondly…

Is it wrong of me to snigger quietly to myself each time I think of how these poor kids are going to learn the hard way that they are nothing more than rusty cogs in the seldom-oiled Machine which is Wits Student Life…?
Possibly. Although it is one of those thoughts that occurred to me during that time when my brain goes into overdrive, and I can’t figure out which thoughts go under “Profound things I would never think of during the day” and which ones go under “Stupid things which always seem profound after 02:00”, so I can’t be held responsible…
😉