lazy sunday

I spent a big chunk of this afternoon flopping around on Paresky lawn. Since I only have once class (Russian) on Mondays, I don't have the type of Sunday crunch that some others do. Then Monday nights are usually the ones during which I don't sleep.

Lately, I've been feeling a bit like I did towards the end of my seventh grade. Only a few weeks remained in the school year, and my grades had been decent for the entire year. So I thought to myself, "Eh. I think I'll stop trying now." I figured, this will be my reward for an entire year of staying on top of things. A few mediocre grades at the tail end won't make that much of a difference.

So I stopped trying. Particularly in my Spanish class, my grades plummeted. I would sit through entire classes doodling or humming or whatever and completely zoning out. When the tests came around, and we did have final exams in seventh grade, I didn't know a darned thing.

None of this particularly concerned me. I thought, "Eh. One bad grade isn't going to make much of a difference."

In short, it did. I'm still not quite sure how, because mathematically, it doesn't seem to compute, but a few weeks of terrible grades made quite the dent on my middle school transcript. All interested parties were very disappointed in me; questions were raised about what my dim future had in store and whether I would manage to make some sort of contribution to society in spite of my transgressions.

I tried not to let the grim phone conversations and lectures distract me from my AIM instant messaging activities. It really was a nuisance.

I don't know if I really want to stop trying like I did in seventh grade. I did learn my lesson, in a way. The way I explained myself was by saying, "OK, so I shouldn't have stopped trying. I didn't realize it would make such a big difference." Which was completely true. And I certainly don't intend to stop trying here. I just feel a little like I did in the spring of seventh grade.

Now that I think of it, the whole fiasco might have been instigated by my Bar Mitzvah which was some time in the middle of March that year. Not only had I spent lots of time and energy studying for it, but I had to write a pile of thank you cards afterwards, and maybe I just needed to unwind with some preteen rebellion.

Fortunately, I have since discovered alternative methods of unwinding which do not have such a detrimental effect on my schoolwork and grades, such as flopping around on Paresky lawn on Sundays.