Winter break has come and gone and now I’m a second-semester senior. This could not be more terrifying. I’ll probably be showing up to most classes unshaven and reeking of cheap whiskey (just kidding, professors who have me in class this semester!). Instead of intramural soccer, I will spend my days playing bridge. Weekends will no longer feature such wild ideas as “partying” or “hanging out with friends,” as I will instead be searching for the Fountain of Youth.
I spent my entire winter break failing to get a job and consuming ungodly amounts of hummus. I was the last one to go back to school out of my high school friends, and I knew I was spiraling out of control when my own mother started to take pity on me by asking me if I wanted to hang out with her. I really wanted to. In order to stay sane, I kept a journal of what I considered to be the highlights of my break. I have transcribed it below.
December 21st: All my housemates are gone and I’m alone in my TH. Showering is legitimately terrifying and I smell like old Chinese food. I lock the doors and get in bed, where I just wait for the Headless Horseman to kick in my door, brandish his axe, realize I’m an English major familiar with the work of Washington Irving, and alert me that he not only spares English majors, but employs them with full benefits and a yearly performance bonus.
December 22nd: I drive home with a friend of mine. During the four-hour drive we hear “Team” by Lorde at least seven times. I pretend to hate it. I don’t hate it. I also tripped and fell in a Dunkin Donuts right next to one of those “caution: wet floors” signs. Shake my head disapprovingly at the cosmos.
December 24th: Christmas Eve. We have some family friends over for dinner. In reference to a Lego nativity scene that we have, this adorable five-year-old girl asks me if I will help her build “The Jesus Christ mansion thing.” Note to self: Teach Sophia the difference between a mansion and a manger. Actually, maybe I should just let her do her thing.
December 27th: Get an internship…writing for a music blog; it is unpaid, of course. My family proceeds to remind me about two hundred and fifty-six times that I’m off the payroll the second I graduate. Hey mom, what if I don’t want to become a corporate sell-out like you? What if I don’t want to let The Man keep me down? Bloggers are hot right now, mom! (Breaking down, tears flowing) Bloggers are so hot!
December 28th: See Inside Llewyn Davis with my entire family. Have an existential crisis during the movie. You win again, Cohen brothers.
December 31st: Oh, New Year’s Eve, you devil, you. Personal mantra: low expectations, low expectations, no puking. The bar I’m at holds 300 people and has five urinals, leading to the men’s room looking like a scene from the Trojan War, except instead of cool armor and chiseled physiques, we all have beer bellies and eyes acting independently. Hear a girl tell a guy he is cute, but in a hobbit way. This would seem cruel, but given the braided foot hair bursting from his shoes and the shirt he was wearing that said “Kiss me, I’m Frodo,” I think it might have been what he was going for.
January 1st: New Year’s Day. Spend two hours cleaning red wine stains out of the railing that leads up to my front door. Too afraid to ask questions.
January 2nd: I get a twitter account.
January 3rd and 4th: Self-loathing. Hummus. Self-loathing.
January 5th: Sneaky-pumped I have a twitter. Spend all day thinking of cool tweets then get too self-conscious to pull the trigger.
January 7th: Spend six hours playing a video game from the year 2005 with two of my buddies. Discuss how much cooler we’ve gotten since high school.
January 11th: Go to see Her with my family. Best movie I’ve seen in a long time. Throw my smart phone out of a moving vehicle on the way home. Remember I don’t even have Siri. Fail to rationalize my behavior.
January 12th: See Amy Adams’ inner side-boob, I mean, American Hustle, with the fam. Still have not stopped calling my microwave a science oven. Spend the rest of the day resisting the urge to read Buzzfeed articles about how quirky and awesome Jennifer Lawrence is. Okay, I read one. Sue me.
January 13th: Still painfully unemployed. E-mailed a couple alums who were happy to talk to me and tell me how hard it is to get a job. Tell my parents I’m making progress.
January 14th: Wrote this article a week early because the chances of anything exciting happening to me over the rest of break are thinner than Gumby with a raging cocaine addiction.