Tuesday, March 27, 2007

20/20

I'm back after a hiatus of academic inferno.

Today I discovered irony. Winter quarter really was difficult-I loved all my classes but the amount of work they required was literally unbearable. Sometimes I thought it was a pity that I was taking these classes all at once because some of them I had to make priority over others and that wasn't fair because then I missed getting deeper into the material. Needless to say, while I enjoyed the intellectual challenge, I was stressed out for 11 weeks straight and complained constantly of the amount of work.

As I was sitting in my new Spanish classes today, bored to death, I realized I missed last quarter's Spanish classes like crazy. While my teacher droned on about the major rivers and mountain chains of Spain, I would have given (almost) anything to be analyzing Cesár Vallejo's poetry or discussing sexual identity in modern Spanish culture (two things I did frequently in my classes last quarter).

Ironic. Last quarter, while complaining about my classes, I always knew that I preferred a stressful but challenging class to an easy but boring one. I hate being bored. I love to relax and I hate being stressed out, but sitting in a boring class is possibly a worse hell than what I experienced last quarter.

So I've learned a lesson, perhaps. At any rate, I won't complain about this quarter. I have 3 other exciting classes and plenty of hobbies and friends to keep myself occupied. I'm reminded of that Alanis Morissete song "Ironic." I usually see life as a dichotomy and not as ironic but now that I think about it, irony occurs everyday in our humdrum experiences-for example, with parking spots. Now that I have this perspective, I'm sure I'll see it all the time. Or, ironically, I won't.