I may be a postgraduate, but I'm not mature

This is the first year in living memory that I haven't been a student. Even though it's been over nine months since my last exam or essay submission, I've mostly been wallowing in unemployed self-pity and / or existential angst too much to appreciate it until now.

But it's Spring, I've already gotten my first sunburn of the season, and the jasmine on the breeze makes me feel like I have superpowers. For the first time, the relief of warm weather isn't mixed with the ever-present anxiety that deadlines are clogging my schedule and exams are standing over my bed, staring gauntly at me like Richard Wright's American hunger*.

Of course, every now and then I miss my essay-writing ritual, which can be summarized in these steps:

1. Procrastinate until roughly four hours before the deadline
2. Cry deeply (like a BOSS)
3. Sit down at the computer
4. Grudgingly open a Word document
5. Type one sentence, beginning with "In this essay, I will answer the essay question by arguing the position the essay question has suggested, thus answering the essay question."
6. Hit Word Count with the irrational hope that it'll say 2500
7. Decide I deserve a coffee break
8. Repeat steps 5-7 until the last syllable of recorded time.

Ah, good times.

A part of me is melancholy with the thought that leaving student life behind is one giant leap on the one-way path to grownuphood. I'm saddened by seeing student events in my sidebar on facebook, knowing that I didn't get an invite to this or that cocktail party (to which I would've replied 'Maybe' when I really meant 'No',) because I'm not a student anymore, and I don't belong there.

Teehee. Cock!

But maybe I'm not a grownup yet either.


*If you don't get that reference, you have to read Richard Wright's Black Boy, which was originally titled American Hunger, one of the awesomest semi-autobiographical books, like, ever.**
**Why yes, I did just give you homework and use the word 'awesomest' in one sentence.

I'm not dead! But if I was.... the orangutan did it.

I know this blog has gotten a bit dusty, but with exams and trying to maintain my 13-hour-a-day sleep schedule, bloggable events have been at a minimum. Shockingly, exams haven't eaten my soul this year like they usually do. Maybe it's because I'm postgrad now, and therefore have superpowers. It could also be that this year, I've actually read the books I'm writing on. You never know.

Right now (as I type) I'm studying, by osmosis, my Edgar Allan Poe stories. Besides the outside-class discussions (in which we came to the conclusion that Poe was the first emo mo-fo, yo) I have many helpful lecture notes, such as these important points:

- The detective stories offer absurd solutions
- Thus resolution is offered, but not comforting to the reader
- Life is random and depressing
- At any moment an orangutan could run into your house, strangle you and stuff you up the chimney.

PICTURED: Not as innocent as they look, a young orangutan plots yet another act of random violence.

I really don't get why Poe wasn't taken seriously as a writer back in his day. Who could have a fun, exciting, gothic murder-mystery without a couple of orangutans thrown in? Orangutans make every story better. I could probably have sat through The Notebook if there were orangutans. Or even Mariah Carey's Glitter. Just imagine: our darling, buxom heroine finally finds the mother who gave her up for adoption, and just as she walks gracefully across the street to confront the jazzy drunkard, an evil orangutan snatches her up, strangles her and stuffs her up a chimney!

Come on, I'd watch that.