What do you want your May 2023 self to know?
I write this acknowledging that I’m writing two my May self, from my May self, on account of a great failure on my part to spread this course across the whole semester rather than across the last few days for the most part. Even so, I’ve kept its questions and themes in mind as I put hours into Summerfields, my place of employment, and as I worked on homework and essays and tests throughout the semester. I hope to now address the Muhammad before May 9th and after May 10th, a small hop in time that seems now a chasm extraordinaire. I say “extraordinaire” in full knowledge of its positive connotations; as much of a negative situation I let this become, I look forward to the progress I know I can and will make by May 10th (if not maybe an extended date after). That progress will be added to a greater repitoir of confidence that no matter how terrible I was on the days before, that doesn’t mean I can’t be great now.
My intentions at the start of the semester were certainly to avoid what the last of that last semester looked like. Coming upon all the work I had piled up until the week of finals, I really did think that would be my last semester. It wasn’t, thankfully, but coming off it, I wanted something more than the catch-up that almost caught up to me then. I started in the library with a plan, a short-lived, strict and maybe inhumane schedule of library visitation hours. I hoped to start on the semester’s-worth early, work on it every day, with a few hours besides the bookshelves alongside the other workaholics drunk off sleep deprivation. I did so, and learned I wasn’t going to make it to the library if I didn’t go right after class. I catalogued that knowledge as I consequently struggled to maintain that semester’s creaseless image. I soon learned too that coming right after class wasn’t enough, that I had to treat the library like the prison it was if I wanted to earn my rations; I couldn’t keep dozing off and scrolling away on the job, and sleepless nights, undone homework reminded me of that. I added lesson after lesson to a list never lessening, and I was overwhelmed, and I had to restart again and again, that catalogue wrapping around my feet as I wrote note after rote note on and on until I came to this moment.
Between my classes, in my classes, and in my dreams turned nightmares too, I thought of how little love I had for this whole doomed affair, and that buried me deeper too. I’m at the realization now that all the prison-talk and bad-attitudes towards this work hasn’t helped me, but maybe hurt my motive and grit when I sat down at the same library desk, a whole lifetime of undone work to be not done. Changing my attitude now, I hope to make it through these next few days acknowledging that I’m behind, but every step I take forward is a reminder that I can walk on.
