It is UNFATHOMABLY warm this week. (Insert some witty comment about Hotlanta here). As per usual, we had a very short week of spring, where my heart soared and I felt like I was in England and everything was perfect and how could anything ever go wrong. Then we had a day of freezing cold rain, and now it’s in the 80s. It’s absurd, and my body is confused. Warm weather makes me nostalgic more than anything. I’ve always traveled in the summer time, so I’ve experienced many different kinds of warmth. Lately I’ve been relishing in memories of Africa.  The apartment is warm and a little damp and I sleep with the windows open and the fan on. When I close my eyes, it could almost be Africa, until sirens whirr by and then I’m transported back to the city. I’m also wishing so much for England right now. It’s the time of year, I know. Two years ago on Monday, I left for England. Two years. That hurts a little bit. I’ve been living in this sort of dreamy sadness for a couple of days now. It’s like the top layer of a whole bunch of emotions and stress that I’m experiencing. See, after those sacred few days spring, the temperature went up and so did my stress level. This is mostly due to the fact that my computer broke on Sunday. The screen just stopped working. Now this would be a tragedy in and of itself, but you may remember that this happened to me fairly recently (like in January). I shelled out the $300 and cut off my right hand and gave it to Apple, and my computer was fixed! Hooray. Well now, the problem has returned and with a greater vengeance than before, so I gathered up my courage and went to the apple store. Thank God, the guy that helped me was nice, because I was so sure I was going to get another pretentious apple store employee who would make me burst into tears. But glory glory, I don’t have to give Apple any of my body parts or my money and they are going to fix the problem. Only a few more days of using my sister’s PC and then I can continue with my Graduate School applications.

I have been combatting my stress by making extensive lists about everything. I do this on tuesdays from 4:30 to 7 pm, when I sit in a somewhat interesting but mostly very boring Applied Linguistics class.

List of Lists I Make During Applied Linguistics

-food I ate today

-meals I will cook this week

-favorite pizza toppings

-countries I forget exist

-movies I want to watch

-vegan dinner options

-places in america that I wouldn’t hate to live

-authors I want to read

-homework

-blog post topics

-favorite fast food meals

I’m food obsessed. Last week, after making the generic grocery and to-do lists, I made the mother of all neurotic lists. It was more of an outline. An eight point outline, complete with subpoints and everything. The title of this outline: REASONS WHY I AM STRESSED OUT. It had a section about school, finances, health, personal life, etc. The lengthiest section was the one titled: Grad School is scary.

 

Reasons Why Grad School is Scary

– Getting reference letters from teachers makes me suddenly remember every time I’ve ever skipped their class

– The personal statement is impossible to write because I’m terrible at saying good things about myself

– How do you move to another place? Seriously, how do you do that?

– What if I have to go to graduate school in… America? (GASP)

 

There are just a few reasons of the many. But in spite of the terror that ensues whenever I think about it, I cant wait to have change in my life. I can’t wait to log onto my blog and write about the new places I’m going. I’m desperate for that actually. I need something new to say other than, “Help me. I’m terrified.” I want to prove to everyone (myself mostly) that I can do these things I’ve been talking about for so long. And I want to go to Paris. That’s kind of a side note, but it’s on my mind. So fingers crossed, a year from now I’ll be updating this blog from Paris… on a fully functioning MacBook.