Time

A student one row in front calls my name as I'm hanging my coat over the back of my chair. She proceeds to ask me a few general questions about getting an internship. I give her thorough but efficient answers but am forced to elaborate further when the girl to her right chimes in with a couple of follow-ups. I tell them how many hours I've done a week, when I started on my thesis, when I planned things out with my advisor, how many shits I take a day. Everyone wants to know how I'm on track to finish the program in 2 years, considering 1 person has done it since they extended the coursework.

When my professor is ready to start her lecture, the girls turn their chairs back toward the front. I space out during lecture, figuring out what I'm going to have for dinner, trying to think of another Chuck Norris quote, reminding myself to let a friend know who I bumped into earlier. I'm just going through the motions for these required classes until I graduate. I have plenty of work to do; why dedicate time to courses I'm only in because I have to take them (espcially ones where she gives us the questions to the exam beforehand)?

When lecture runs its course, I get up and leave my chair. There's a student waiting for me at the door. She thanks me for my help on an assessment of hers and updates me on her work-related issue we had recently discussed. I was happy to hear that things were resolved peacefully. We part at the bottom of the stairs: she to the parking lot, I to the library. I need to finish this last problem on my statistics assignment.

After I save the completed assignment on my USB card, I walk to my car and head home. I'm tired. I lean back in my computer chair and chat online with a good friend as I unwind after another Wednesday. Then I go to my bedroom and turn off the lights on another day.



The first space directly in front of the restaurant door is free. I turn my car into it and head to the door for some genuine latino lunch. There's an extra kick to my step. I've been craving this food for a while now but just hadn't managed to make the 20-minute drive here to get it. Today I'm in the mood for the roast pork with rice and beans. The little Dominican gentleman at the counter gives me a welcoming grin and puts on his glasses as he gets ready to master the cash register. I go through my order in spanish, idenitifying my choice of meal, what kind of rice I want, and what I'll have to drink.

He responds to me in spanish. I furrow my brow.

He says the same thing, only slightly slower. I got about half of it. Something about it being "here." I figure out that he's asking if I want it "for here or to go." He then asks me another question. I get frustrated and switch to English. I feel a little sheepish and just want to hurry up and pay for my food.

My spanish has regressed a bit lately, I suppose. I haven't been practicing with my old Simpsons dvds. Come to think of it, when was the last time I'd even been here ordering in spanish from my favorite cafe? This couldn't have been my first time back in 2006. I used to come at least once a week!



On the morning drive to internship, another song is selected at random from my ipod. I press the skip button because I'm not particularly in the mood for that song. The next one I've heard too many times, so I skip that one too. I don't even like that next one. What's it even doing on my ipod? Talk radio suddenly seems like a better alternative to skipping through the same songs over and over.

Later when I tell another friend of mine what bands I think she'd like, she informs me that I already gave her those artists. Apparently I don't have much new to offer her. The newest songs I've discovered are ones I got from a friend earlier this year. I haven't been celebrating New CD Day lately. I try to justify this by saying I have plenty of music to choose from, but that excuse is promptly rejected.

"You told me you can never stop finding music that'll change your life," is exactly how she called me out.

It's true that I was fooling myself. Maybe I should find some time to take a trip to Best Buy. I miss New CD Day.



My buddy calls me to let me know he's turning the corner of my parking lot and will be out front in about 45 seconds. I hang up the phone and get ready to meet him at the door. This will be a good visit. We have lots of grilling to catch up on, considering we haven't really been able to hang out for a while.

I open my apartment door and have to avoid stepping on the package that has awaited me. I tear open the manilla envelope as I go down the stairs. What am I getting in the mail from some company whose name I don't recognize? My question is answered just as I make it down to greet my friend. I show him that I finally got the replacement box to my Simpsons dvd collection. I had ordered it maybe 2 months before and had long forgotten about it.

This brings back memories of sitting in my dorm room with the other guys from our floor, watching Simpsons episodes I had taped during my youth (this was just before Fox made my lifelong efforts obsolete with its seasonal dvd compilations). I throw some random Simpsons quotes into the conversation for old time's sake. It's a little bittersweet to remember how often I watched those tapes. I can't remember when I put one in for the hell of it. Last week I even missed an episode, even though I was in the apartment at the time. I got sidetracked on the computer.

I update him on my upcoming start at John Jay, how the old people are treating me in Harrisburg, that I'm no longer particularly interested in meeting older women... all the important aspects of my evolution. We make some phenomenal lemon pepper wings and sit to watch the Gators play for a spot in the Sweet Sixteen.

I'm only watching for fun and for the Gators, I tell him, because my bracket is all but busted. I've been in first or second in every NCAA bracket since college, but this year I'll be lucky to finish in the top half of my pool. When I printed out my bracket before the tournament, I sighed and realized it would all be pure guesswork. I just didn't keep track of college basketball this year.

I'm really enjoying being able to sit back and watch my team play. Perhaps I should do this more often.



There isn't any reason to be nervous about this site visit. I know my supervisor likes me and won't tell my professor anything too incriminating. I take my professor to our office, where my supervisor already has 3 chairs set up. We go through a little small talk-- my professor knows my supervisor from the many visits she's made checking on interns-- before my evaluation begins.

Everything goes about as expected. I'm allowed to chime in about how I've been working hard and have been pleasantly surprised by the variety of work I've gotten here. My supervisor lists for my professor the same strengths he's indirectly told me he's seen in me these last few months. When the time comes for constructive criticism, he jokes that he's failed to get me a dead body to put my future profiling skills to task.

He then positions himself so that he's moreso speaking to me than to my professor. He emphasizes to me that he has a little concern about my egghead habits during slow times in the office. I initially wonder if it's a joke, considering that his criticism is that I, at times, get entrenched in my studies too much. How is that a bad thing?

He elaborates that he doesn't want me to miss out on some good things out there, and that sometimes people can get lost in the game of life because they are too busy with their head in the middle of an opened book.

The site visit is a complete success. On my drive home, I mildly chuckle-- the arrogant bastard I am-- that my supervisor thinks I may need to work on NOT working so hard. Then I think about the little joys in my life, and how some of them have hit the backburner lately. This is just a temporary place for them, I assume, but sometimes change can be so sneakingly gradual that you don't notice you've lost track of what you like about yourself.

I decide that I want to be a good worker but not to the detriment of who I am as a person. As long as I like who I am, there's no need to change... only to enhance. I'm once again shuffling through the same tunes on my ipod, and it hits me that the sly 73-year-old loudmouth that calls himself my supervisor has a point: I can maintain a solid work ethic while keeping track of the things I enjoy in life, be they treating myself to a meal, discovering a new musician, catching a basketball game, or expressing myself through written word.