Life's Just a Roller Coaster Ride

I have literally been a roller coaster the past few weeks. It's ridiculous. One day I'm flying high, in a fabulous mood, looking forward to summer, and optimistic about completing my homework...the next day I'm on the verge of tears at every turn, dreading the remaining three weeks of school, overwhelmed with mountains of homework, and an absolute basket case. Definitely not okay.

Such is the result of the last few weeks of school, especially in the quarter system. With our school year we pretty much have three sets of finals, and nearly six sets of "midterms." In all my classes I have three big tests, upon which nearly the entire grade rides. No pressure or anything! So after getting through the first couple of weeks you have midterms. Stress there. Then a week later tons of papers are due, then you're all of the sudden preparing for the second set of midterms. More big papers to turn in, oral exams in language classes to study for, then suddenly everything is due and it's finals time. No rest for the weary, my friends.

Ow. I just burnt my tongue on scalding raspberry tea. And back to my musings...

So yeah. That's been the quarter so far. Summer is so close, and yet three weeks feels like an eternity! Currently I'm feeling moderately optimistic. The weather was FABULOUS today. Now it isn't, as tomorrow is supposed to drop back down to a high of 45 with clouds and rain and grossness. But today was a perfect 70-80 degrees, sunny, and mildly breezy. Perfect skirt weather.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with my writing class paper, however. It's a qualitative study on something. I chose longboarding on DU's campus. Nothing too complicated, but the paper involves tons of observations and interpretations of the observations. Plus it is around 8-10 pages long. After looking extensively through the assignment sheet and talking with the teacher, I feel like it might be manageable though. I'll just have to take it one chunk at a time.

That class, my writ one, has been super interesting. I mean it's hard, and I don't like writing for teachers or assignments, but I do love the teacher. We read very interesting material as well. We're currently reading a book called The Comfort of Thing. Sounds kinda materialistic, huh? It would seem that way, but it isn't really. I mean it does delve into the things that people own, but not so much what they own, as how they own it. That doesn't really make sense, does it? I just mean it's more about the way in which they own things, what is valued, what is not appreciated, what is so valued it is practically revered. What things people choose to collect or keep or remember, and what things are of no importance to them. And it talks about how the things define people, and how the people define the things. It's really a very interesting study that the authors did. They just picked one street and spent around a year (I think) visiting people, getting to know them, their quirks, and their things. It's fun, too, because it sparks interesting discussions in class and reminds me of forgotten memories. One story was about a woman who would always buy her kids Happy Meals at McDonald's. The goal was to collect all the toys from each collection. She wanted to make up for her parent's bad parenting by being a fun, good, loving mom to her kids.

It made me think of when I was little and we'd go to McDonald's. With a family of 8, going out to eat anywhere, whether fast-food or more fancy, was a rare and special occurrence...Happy Meals were even more of a rarity. I don't recall exactly how many times my parents actually bought us Happy Meals, but I'm sure I could count it on one hand. It's not like my parents were mean and deprived us of toys or something, but Happy Meals weren't cheap when you added them up for five or six kids, and it was simply better to save the money to buy one bigger, nicer toy. We understood that. And it made the times when we did get to go out to eat, or get a toy at McDonald's, even more special. More often our grandparents would take us to McDonald's, my grandpa always seems to love going there (though now I would really rather not). And sometimes they would get us Happy Meals. I just remember how exciting it was to get that toy. The food was usually quickly forgotten in the excitement of digging through the cardboard boxes, feeling the plastic wrapping, and pulling out the toy. After a few moments of struggle with the packaging, a new friend would emerge. I remember a Minnie/Mickey Mouse series that we all played with for months, or longer. The Madame Alexander series that appeared at McDonalds a few times was especially enjoyable. The dolls were just so cute! My siblings and I would spend hours playing with our new toys. We were always very imaginative kids. Towns and cities emerged in my sister and I's huge attic room. It wasn't just playing, we created whole worlds. Everyone had personalities and background stories. So much fun.

It's good to reminisce. I feel like I do that a lot now that I'm away from home. Someone will be telling a story or I'll see or read something and remember something I used to do back at home when I was a kid. It's suddenly so fun to think and talk and write about old family traditions or memories. Lots of people say when they go to college they realize how much they love and miss their family. I already knew I loved my family dearly when I left, but I was so ready to leave I barely missed them the first quarter away. Now I realize just how right everyone was! You really do appreciate things more when they aren't as accessible, just like our appreciation and love for the rare treat of a McDonald's toy.