Thoughts while at work.

It's nearly 4:30 on Sunday morning, and the march of time is bringing me nearer and nearer to oral defense.

Suffice it to say that I'm not looking forward to it. In fact, what I'm really looking forward to is Monday night after oral defense, when I'll be at the Tavern, either toasting my resounding success or bitterly cursing my abject failure.

My spirits are buoyed by the fact that I'm not going to be that chick who only had two pieces to defend (I've got seven), I'm not going to be that guy that didn't show up (fuuuuuuuuuuck that) and I'm not going to be that other chick who had her Facebook status updates read aloud (because I unfriended Professor Eaton for the time being and I've sanitized it all anyway).

But the darkening clouds aren't going away. Just writing this blog, I can feel my stomach clenching and my head starting to hurt.

Or maybe that was the two Whoppers Junior I ate in the car on my way to work. Even though that was like six hours ago.

It's funny. When you're running late to work, you seem to hit every red light between where you started and where you need to get. On the other hand, when you're early and trying to get 30 seconds to cram something in your mouth _{(that's what she said)} it seems that all you see before you is a string of green lights offering you no repose, rushing you onward.

The waning days of my college career feel a lot like that. When I was 21, desperate to just get the damn degree and get out into the world, there they were, the red lights: You have to take two math classes here, a semester on Microsoft Office there.

Here I'm 25, still desperate as ever to get the degree and get on with my life, sure, but at the same time I find myself envious of the juniors. Another year to go, more time to kill, more parties to go to and days where grabbing a bar stool and a couple of beers and watching the tourists walk by feels like the best idea in the world.

The older I get, the fiercer my desire grows to have an ever-increasing surplus of adolescence and young adulthood to fritter away.

They say that youth is wasted on the young. But I'm not as young as I once was and I'm dying to have it back to waste it all over again.