End of the year stress

There have been a couple of busy days recently. I had to pull an all-nighter Thursday/Friday to get the last bit of my end-of-year school work done. It was my fault for being dumb and procrastinating some things for literally months, but I managed to get five four-page papers and four one-page papers done before I had to leave in the morning. They aren't my best work, obviously, since I didn't spend more time on them then it took to write them, so their structure is off and there's probably some mistakes in them.

Three of the papers were for my American Law & Government class. I wasn't sure what to write them on (we're allowed to do anything, so long as there's some tangential connection to legal matters) until I realized it would be easy if I just picked something I could get worked up about. Thus I ended up writing about the current internet radio debacle, all those proposed smoking bans, and (I hate myself for this one) how people are getting fired from work and suspended from school for having blogs.

The other two papers were for my Modern Mythology class, and were a nice diversion as they were much more light-hearted. One I did on Kingdom Come, the comic book, regarding other possible endings and their ramifications, and the other I did on possible scientific explanations for Hiro Nakamura's (character from the television series Heroes) time-travelling. (This is the point at which I'm going to plug Primatech Paper Podcast, a Heroes-themed podcast. It's stunningly insightful and humorous, and that it's done by someone I know is entirely incidental.)

I did my best to get a good night's sleep Friday night, as I had the SATs the next day. I managed to get to the testing center on time and find my seat without too much trouble. I was amazed to run into a friend from school there, but it was nice to have some kind of connection there. I was also smart to have brought an extra, long-sleeved shirt to wear as the gym we were in got progressively colder as time passed.

The actual test was okay. The essay wasn't bad; I managed to dot my final period with 24 seconds left on the clock, which unfortunately left no time for proof-reading and revising. I'm not going to say what I had to write about, since I'd rather not have to deal with any college nerd thugs. The reading comprehension was about the same as it's always been for me. The math was much easier than the last time I took it. I was able to answer more questions than before and feel better about those answers. Overall I think I did decently.

Afterwards I went home and took care of a few things, then took a train into Philly to hang out with Rachel. We made sandwiches for dinner and a peach cobbler for dessert. After that we listened to some music, I had brought over my copy of Belle & Sebastian's The Life Pursuit for her to rip. I felt bad because I wasn't much fun to be around. After dinner I really just kind of crashed. Between staying up all night recently and expending a vast amount of energy via hyper-focusing on the SATs, I was exhausted. I was doing the whole almost-falling-asleep-and-speaking-in-a-monotone thing, which does not make for good company.

Then nothing really happened the next day. I had the place to myself for most of the day, and so I got to just relax and do nothing much. It was a nice change. I always push myself at the end of a school year, which is why I usually start out the summer sick. It seems to just be what I have to do each time.