The End Draweth Nigh

Next week Thursday is the last day of winter quarter classes. Five minutes ago I turned in my penultimate assignment of the quarter. The final assignment is due two weeks from tomorrow. I have no finals. Spring quarter doesn't start until March 26th. I love the quarter system.

A thrill rushes through me at the thought of free time and all I can do with it--the books I can read, the audiobooks I can finally transfer onto my MP3 player, the loose ends in my music library's organization I can finally tie up, the brilliant works of staggering genius I can finally write. All of this won't happen, of course. Free time, even without the burden of school, really only means the two or three hours between my children's bedtime and my own, and experience teaches me that this time passes all too quickly, usually wasted with random internet browsing, dishwashing, or some other pointless distraction. (I honestly don't mind doing the dishes; it just kills me to do them during that sacred time when the children are in bed and I could be doing something else.)

For someone who values downtime as much as I do (as a teenager and young adult, I honestly could spend hours and days on end doing nothing but reading and rereading comic books), I don't live a life that actually includes very much of it. I lament this fact often, but I don't really regret it. The children--the primary timesuckers in my life--are worth it, and I remind myself frequently that they will not always need one or both of their parents to pay attention to them each and every moment of the day (and often into the night). School, also, will not last forever (much as it feels like it already has), and it too will be worth it. I chose librarianship over English professorship, after all, not only because the two PhD programs I applied to rejected me, but also because it's a shorter program and leads to a profession that does not require me to do homework (in the form of lesson plans and grading) for the rest of my life. Eventually, I will get there.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy my spring break.