Overwhelming College

I’m going to continue on my last blog about being overwhelmed—because I am still overwhelmed. Except, this time it’s for different reasons. I’m perfectly healthy now-- except for sleep deprivation, but that’s pretty much a constant at any given point in the school year. This time, it’s college that’s piled on top of my usual school and rehearsal routine that’s my problem. 

Most of the time I’d call myself a pretty strong person—emotionally at least. I’m usually able to stay calm in crisis, keep a cool head when things are presently hectic-- stuff like that. And, for the most part, I’m still doing that now. I’ve never, however, been in a situation where the stakes were so high. I’m realizing I can’t neglect any part in my life right now and still find my life okay in the future-- not even a little bit. I can’t neglect my school work for a bit to focus on college, because colleges will want to see current grades at some point. I can’t neglect theatre for a day or two, because next week is tech week (you all should come and see Arsenic and Old Lace, BTW), and in this show I’m a lead. I can’t neglect sleep, because if I do then I’ll be dragging my drowsy self throughout the entire day and my productivity will go down. And, I can’t neglect college stuff, because—well, if I do then I’ll just make my future much harder. I’d have to work extra hard to get into colleges with aid and scholarships if I don’t apply before November 1 (the early action period, before regular decision). 

The college process is a lot different than I imagined. I thought that once senior year hit, it would be college, college, college for everyone-- with the only talk being college and the only priority being college. It’s not like that at all. College is just lurking in the background. Occasionally the topic of teacher recs come up, or college essays, but everyone is just going through school like normal. Maybe everyone is just in denial of it. After all, it is deciding how we’re going to spend the next four years of our lives we’re talking about here. It’s so in the background that I still feel like I have loads of time to get everything done. In reality, I’m taking my second (and hopefully last) SAT on Saturday in hopes to get a score high enough to qualify for more scholarships-- and I haven’t started studying for it yet. On top of that, the deadline for asking for teacher recs is on Monday, and I have yet to ask any of my teachers. I have one month to write five or six essays. I have one month to decide what I want to do with my life. I wish college was more in my face. Honestly, that would make it so much easier. I wouldn’t be able to push all of it to the back corners of my mind.

Two weeks of sickness

In these past two weeks, my busy life has slowed down—actually, more of came to a screechingly slow crawl—because of the annual fall sickness. This year it’s seemed worse than the past to me, although it’s possible that I just haven’t gotten this sick in the past few years. Either way, it’s been bad.

Last week I had some germ that started off as a cough and grew into an even bigger cough. I felt like I was coughing my lungs out. Yet, no runny nose, no sore throat, no fever. Just coughing. Dry coughing. It finally turned into a wet cough, but I’ve never encountered something like that before. It drained the energy from me, and more than anything I just wanted to come home and sleep every day after school and rehearsal (which, btw, you all should come see Arsenic and Old Lace October 6, 7, or 8th). And, sometimes I did sleep. But, those times that I did, my schoolwork just built up and I soon felt overwhelmed. When one of my first exams came up on me last week, I realized that both getting well and studying couldn’t fit into my schedule. That night, I picked my health. The next day, I failed my exam.

This week, as soon as I was finally getting better, I caught the second bug floating around school. This time it started as a sore throat, turned into a nasty congestion filled nose blowing session, and now is a bad dry cough. I finally decided to give in and accept that I should stay home from school for a day and try to get a little better. And, it was glorious. I went to bed at 9:45PM the night before, and woke up at 6:30PM the next day (I woke up a few times to eat and things). I can’t tell if that was a good or bad decision yet. But, right now, having gone back to school for a day, I feel like it’s a bad one. I have a ton of work to make up. I’m not even sure how that much work could fit into one day. But, it’s there, and I have to do it for tomorrow.

I’m pretty sure it says something if I can’t even take a day to recover without missing so much important stuff that's so impossible to make up. Don’t get me wrong, most of the Uni teachers are very understanding and will do as much as they can to help, giving extensions and whatnot. But, there are still those few who just expect you to dive right back into everything even though you’re still at the bottom of the pool from that last belly-flop of a dive you took. The entire school is sick because no one will stay home when they’re sick, because no one has the time or energy to fit in two days worth of school into one once they come back. Even trying to fit in a little bit of work that you missed into your regular homework is so hard because so many of the teachers just slip around the rule about having no more than 30 minutes of homework a night. I’m not totally sure where I was going with this, but I should probably wrap it up so I can get to that other homework I’ve been talking about for a majority of this post. Wish me luck.

Smash Mouth at the Urbana Sweetcorn Festival

Last weekend, one of the events in my busy life was going to the Urbana Sweetcorn Festival. Actually, it was more of going to the Sweetcorn Festival to see Smash Mouth. But, even in going to Smash Mouth, I just wanted to hear one song—All Star. I’m not sure how much you know about Smash Mouth or All Star, but All Star was in the movie Shrek, my favorite movie series. For that reason I was pumped and very ready to fulfill my life goal to see them live in concert. 

This year’s experience with the sweetcorn festival started with myself getting lost trying to find my friends I was meeting. I stumbled through the crowd, half dialing my friend’s phone number and half watching to make sure I didn’t bump into anyone. I’m not a big fan of large crowds in close quarters where everyone is constantly moving in every direction. Maybe it’s just because I’m short and can’t see anything except the people on either side of me. Or, maybe it’s just that I don’t like having to navigate around people stopped in the middle of my walking path every 5 seconds. Nevertheless, I can tolerate it. Once I managed to meet up with my friends, we had about an hour until the concert started to hang out and explore the festival. I had money, but I didn’t really feel like getting anything. I just wanted to see Smash Mouth.

Some of you might not know how big a deal Shrek is to me, both in movie and meme form. When I was 4, I saw the movie for the first time while sitting on my older brother Elliot’s back. It was the only movie series my older brothers and parents would agree to go with me to the movie theatre for. But, in the more meme sense, Shrek became a big part of my life my freshman year. It’s now a common occurrence for people to immediately think of me whenever they seem something Shrek. It always makes me crack up. It’s a nice feeling when people see things and it reminds them of you.

The stage for Smash Mouth was huge and there was a large group of people waiting by the time we got there. Not too long after we got arrived, this group of college boys started chanting, “SHREK, SHREK, SHREK” and I realized that like me, a lot of people there just wanted to hear All Star. All of us grew up on Shrek. I felt old. Apparently Shrek came out in 2001—15 years ago. A couple more background songs played before Smash Mouth entered onto the stage. My first thought was, “Is that actually the singer?” I’d thought the singer was younger, but he looked to be in his mid 50’s. The synth player seemed to be having a great time jumping up down while playing. They kept playing songs I didn’t know, and no one else seemed to know either, but we all still waited anxiously for All Star and I was still extremely happy. I had my boyfriend with me, my friends with me, and I was watching Smash Mouth, so everything was A+ in my book. Then the college boys started getting a little more rowdy. I’m not sure if they had been drinking the hard liquor that the festival was selling or were just that into Shrek, but this one guy kept shouting “SIGN MY CHILDREN” after every few songs. My friends and I laughed at that and continued to entertain ourselves by taking pictures with a cob of corn on the ground in front of us.

The level of anxiousness and rowdiness kept increasing as more songs were played instead of All Star. There were more chants of “Shrek”, some of “Steve”, a few of “red flower blue thorns”, and random singing of All Star between songs and during other songs. I kinda felt bad for Smash Mouth, no one really cared about any of their other music. It must be horrible to be an artist who only has one song that people want to hear but have a ton of other songs to play. I didn’t even know the lead singer’s name was Steve before I went to the concert. But, then Steve asked everyone in the crowd if they liked to smoke weed and I realized that Steve might have partied a bit too hard before he went on stage. And, then a few minutes later he just left the stage. A couple of minutes after, I’m A Believer started playing and the crowd cheered. Everyone was distracted from Steve and sang along. There was a larger cheering as All Star emerged from the bridge in the song. The crowd went wild. I looked at my friends and laughed. It was the 4 minutes everyone was waiting for. I could feel the bass in my body and the sounds of everyone singing along around me. I knew every lyric. I feel a little bad, because I’m pretty sure I jumped on some people’s toes, but those 4 minutes were definitely some of the most memorable of my life. Sweaty and exhausted, the song ended and I ended up high fiving random people in the crowd. That’s when I remembered Steve. There were flashing lights near the tent. It seemed like an ambulance. A few seconds later a firetruck appeared with sirens blaring. Was Steve okay? Everyone started clearing out and within a few minutes the crowd had disappeared. “Thank you again for coming out to see Smash Mouth.” The announcer seemed like he was trying to be professional and ignore the fact that Steve was in an ambulance. We stuck around for a few minutes, but then departed as well. I’m still not sure what exactly happened to Steve. But, I’m assuming he’s still alive.

This might have been my last Sweetcorn Festival, and I’m a bit sad about that, but it’s definitely one I’ll remember forever.