forced exploration

We fancy ourselves explorers.

That is where we start our fumbling.

Its a random week in November. Its is neither finals week nor midterms, and yet we find ourselves overwhelmed, abandoned in a world full of fast moving trains and ladders of life that we will only get the chance to dust the bottom rung of. This is where we placed ourselves.

Education. We don't know nearly the information that we should. We can't remember all they've told us, yet we've learned so much. If only test scores and paper grades proved that...or do they?

Education: the trapped person's version of exploring.

Four of us studied in a diner till 2:30 am in preparation for our 9:00am exam on Friday.

Oh how we confuse our bodies...our poor brains are loaded with caffeine and our lungs are full of stale air from labs and libraries.

It's just been a funny week in November. On Tuesday, the chrysanthemums were dusted in the frozen powder of early morning frost as I rushed to my Linguistics test at 8 am. Today, Saturday, the balmy autumn air is a mere 60 degrees and students are playing frisbee out on the lawn as if it were spring.

Too many tests and too much strange weather has left us tripping, fumbling through the days of classes as if we were still children, rolling down muddy hills in pursuit of the next great adventure.

But we are a different sort of explorer now. We can do nothing but move forward, yet suddenly we find ourselves craving those standstill moments when seconds were hours.

And so like children we grumble when we fumble, sighing and stating, "Forced exploration is the worst."