Syllabus week has the potential to reduce you to “a puddle of exhaustion that clearly needs along, uninterrupted nap.”
After completing yet another first week of classes, I feel compelled to talk about the weirdness that is syllabus week.
First off, there is a very specific anxiety that I experience during syllabus week. I constantly worry that I will walk into a classroom, realize it is not my class and then be faced with the choice to either leave and have everyone know I am a sad lost girl, or sit through economics when I really need to be in history. I always panic and ask at least three people in the room what class we are in and then double check my schedule in order to ensure I am in the correct room.
I find that my hyper vigilance prevents anything bad from happening, and by doing the aforementioned, I tend to avoid the awkwardness that I get myself into.
Once in class, I always struggle to decide whether to be the pretentious girl who corrects the professor when they butcher my last name or to go through the entire semester as ‘Allison Seetack’.
I always experience an internal state of war as the professor starts to call roll and I usually wimp out and take the butchering like the pansy I apparently am. Sometimes in a glimmer of mercy, the professor will ask me how to say it and I can correct them in a respectful and non-conceited manner, but usually it ends with me silently glowering at the professor for not magically knowing how to speak Czech.
By the end of the week — which consists of me walking to class, listening to the professor and playing on Pintrest — I am reduced to a puddle of exhaustion that clearly needs a long, uninterrupted nap. This semester I passed out in bed with both my lights and shoes on for two hours, and, needless to say, I felt pretty pathetic. But alas there was nothing I could do, for that is what syllabus week is all about.
As I tackle week two, I am hopeful that my exhaustion and anxiety levels will balance out to a manageable intensity, as once again I have lived through another syllabus week.
