Rain.

It’s sheeting down the windows and soaking into the marrow of this sleepy college town. Everything is soaked. I’m perfectly dry, but it’s so wet outside I swear my skin is dripping. It’s a fitting backdrop for the second-most stressful week of the year for college students–MIDTERMS. My back is to the room, preferring to stare out the window as I try to think about the essay on foreignness and race in Wuthering Heights that I have to complete by tonight. All around me, students are so entrenched at their work tables that some of them appear to have become one with the bleak landscape. Bags line their eyes and the hysterical laughter that is only born out of misery echoes across the large room. Elbows bear the telltale marks of having spent too long being leaned on. Necks crack, books slam, sighs of frustration gust through the air like the north wind.

We’ve had it.

Only one more day until freedom, but most of us can’t even see the other side.

Every time I sit down to put the proverbial pen to paper, my fingers fly away from the keys and my head drops to the back of my chair. It’s not that I don’t want to write–I do. I actually am quite interested in the topic and have a lot to say.

But with the end so near, my brain fights bitterly with my sense of obligation.

I stretch. I stand and shake off the funk. I switch chairs so I can’t see outside.

Let’s do this.

Wish me luck, folks!