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.