So this is the new year.

I'm not writing a New Year's post this time.

I've done it-- like most people do-- every year for the past seven or eight years, but don't intend on giving my half-formulated hopes and sad middle-class disappointments the chance to rot away in the blogosphere this year. This has been a wonderful year full of new friends, experiences, and achievements, and this upcoming year looks to be even better. I'm not setting goals because I've learned that if you just keep plowing along, goals you never knew to set fulfill themselves.

And so, in this spirit, I leave this as my one hope for the next year: That I really live it. That I meet its challenges with an almost aggressive aplomb, that I love every moment and cherish it all because it's life and I only get one to cherish. I know that if I do these things, I will meet every goal and surpass every aspiration. Life will take care of itself. It's the living I have to watch out for.

I leave for England in less that a week. Let's do this.

WOOOO!

Got engaged last night! Might post the story, but right now I'm enjoying the holiday and spending time with friends, family, and my new fiance(!).

Buried beneath the work.

So, you know, I'm just clawing my way through finals week, hoping that my As come out intact and my other grades... well, I just hope they're as good as I can make them. I've got a killer Chaucer exam in a few hours that determines 40% of my total grade for the class. Which, considering how well I've done in Chaucer thus far, should not pose much of a threat to my A+. However, this exam is two 4 page essays and ten paragraph-long "short answer identifications." Ha.

May hope spring eternal.

A Cold Weather Man.

I realize that I must live somewhere cold, somewhere it snows. People up here tell me that I'll get tired of it, that it really is irritating, blah blah blah, and perhaps they're right, but not right now. I love snow. It transforms wherever you are into a different place.

I like to think of U of I as three campuses: warm weather, autumn, and snow. The warm weather U of I has a pretty fun atmosphere-- lots of people on the quad flying kites, sunbathing, and playing frisbee. The campus population seems to multiply, and one can't help but notice that suddenly every girl owns at least one flattering sundress. It looks like this, basically:

The autumn U of I brings with it football games, my birthday, and Halloween, but its beauty is hit-or-miss. Champaign-Urbana can have brilliant leaves for a time, but then one big storm comes flying down the prairie, and all the leaves get blasted off the trees. No-pants make an unfortunate appearance during this time, as do a proliferation of UGG boots and North Face jackets. As you can see, it is also often wet during this time:

Snow U of I comes to clothe the barren landscape, but sadly not the no-pants. The UGGs remain, as does all the North Face. Despite these clothing tragedies, snow U of I is easily my favorite version of campus. The population appears to shrink, basketball has gotten in full swing, and everything just looks so pretty (and there's Christmas!). I'll give you two shots of this one, just because I like it more:

Testament to change.

I'm starting to like Melville. This development in my personal taste has come as a shock even to myself. I nearly invented an imaginary friend simply to tell him about it.

Not sure I can muster enough willpower to plow through Moby Dick, but I've really enjoyed his Piazza Tales, which are surprisingly deeper than I had expected. I can tell that he wrote intentionally, with the idea that his works should and would be subject to scrutiny and analysis. The way he constructs his narrative always seems to toy with different modes-- poetry, prose, charts, graphs, etc.-- that he weaves together like clues for the reader to follow. I like that. It appeals to the English major inside of me.

As if I needed a way of marking college's profound affect on my life, here is yet another marker. Touche, university, touche.

Back to the grind.

Oh, how I wish tomorrow would not arrive. I don't want to go back to school, I don't want to go back to night after night with little sleep as I slave over papers and projects, I don't want to shower in a cubby, and I don't want to have to marshal piles of quarters simply to do a load of laundry. I've had a great break, I really have, and I feel that it was just starting to get going by the time it reached its end.

Alas, I suppose that's the stuff of life. But anyway, I'm not all sad about returning to school; I don't even mind the work so much as I mind the means by which it must get done. Less than three weeks from now, I'll be right back here in my room, ready to celebrate Christmas with my family. Carly will have arrived from her stint overseas, and I'll be bristling with excitement as I prepare to head over for my own time abroad. So I suppose I shouldn't complain-- a full plate is certainly preferable to no plate at all.

Now, to sleep...

Tchaikovsky and coffee.

I'm having one of those days where I wake up scatter-brained, and attempt for a few hours to focus on my work, but then fail because I can't remember what I needed to get done or why it was important in the first place and then I realize I lack any sense of urgency but for some reason am restless and then I don't know what to do with myself. I also write egregious run-on sentences.

I cannot express how much I need a break. I mean, I pulled SIX all-nighters in the month of October alone. If we're sticking with statistics here, that's two more times than I had pulled them in my entire life up to that point. So, aside from being physically exhausted, I'm running out of intellectual energy as well. Unfortunately, this last problem has embodied itself in my two major research papers that I have been writing-- both of which have not turned out well.

As I've said before, I've got some really great news to share in the upcoming weeks. More on those things as they occur...