happy holidays

i had my last exam yesterday and it went horribly. i studied hard and my friends were amazed at how well i knew the material. of course, i had the feeling that it wouldn't go well, as is now a tradition in all my grad school exams. but since they never fail people, in the middle of the test i just had this urge to stand up and leave. you won't fail anyway, then why go through the suffering? i thought it was a bit too early to just leave and that was a very loser-like mentality. so i stayed. i didn't do much more but i still stayed. how brave of me.

i hope next year i take classes with no exams. i hate the suffering one undergoes when sitting in the middle of an exam. even if you know the answers, the pressure of having to write down everything you know to show that you actually know is unbearable. but i guess that's the life of a student.

although i'm a procrastinator at heart, there's always this constant pressure of assignments that need to get done, papers that need to be written, research projects that need to be completed, presentations that need to be prepared. when all of that is done, there's still the exam period: nuits blanches, backaches, coffee breaks at 2am. and when all of that is done, you need to pack in the next 3 hours and you are literally running errands in order to catch that bus/train/plane that is going to take you to the holiday destination of your choice.

and then the holidays are hardly ever a good rest. if you go on vacation, you go everywhere in the city you visit because you tell yourself, i might never come back, i need to see everything. if you go home, you want to see all of your family and friends and spend every day at breakfasts, lunches, coffees, dinners, high school and family reunions. you go see your dentist and your doctor, because you have seen that dentist and that doctor since you were 6 and you don't trust anyone else, or because they are your mom's cousins or your dad's friends or whatever other reason you may have.

and then you go back to school, usually just the night before classes start... or sometimes even after classes began. after all, you don't have that many days of vacation and you want to enjoy as many days as you can at your holiday destination.

well... that won't happen this year. after my exam, i had lunch with friends, took pipi, perro, and mya to the train station, and then had coffee with chucho. he left for class and i stayed at k2 by myself. alone at k2 with anything but my coffee. no schoolbag, no books, no lecture notes. for the first time i felt that i had nothing to do, nothing to hurry for, nothing that had to get done by tomorrow. i sipped my mocha, sat back, and relaxed. then i went to the bookstore next door and i just browsed the shelves aimlessly. i walked back home in the cold -- stopped by panza's, who told me the temperature had been -11C that morning, and felt like -18C with the windchill -- and realized that it was the first time in my life that i'd stay at my home away from home and i'd be able to truly enjoy the city.

sit back. relax. enjoy new haven.