It’s that time of year again….

Some days I love uni. I love going there, meeting up with friends, attending great lectures, having lunch together and (sometimes) finding that spot where I can bathe in the winter sun  and read a book.

And other times I really, really hate it. Replace really with an expletive and you get the general gist of it. Droll lectures, horrendous readings to do, completely impractical ways in which you’re taught to write (I’d like to think I’ve got SOME notion of how to kick a story into shape, but apparently I either need to take drugs, be extremely political, or just try to re-revolutionize the entire process of penning a story in order to make something of value), amoung countless other things.

Oh yeah, then there’s the work load.

I’ve got so much end of semester work to do it’s like I’ve got weights fastened to my feet. I just came off a four-day film shoot, which in all honesty, was incredibly fun (but incredibly difficult, with brutally long days). And now I’ve got almost 12,000 words in essay questions to write up, assignments to hand in, summaries to scratch together, and more stuff that I’ve probably forgotten about. Hell, I’ve even delayed buying my Playstation 4 until I can clear all this work off my desk.

But frankly, it’s not the difficultly of the work that’s strenuous. It’s the mental-space that it takes up. The 3500 word essay looming over you might not be that hard of a job to knock into something comprehensible, but it’s just all cramming in my brain, occupying space that I honestly don’t have room for. There’s agents to query, novels to write (I’m half-way through my 4th one), short stories to write and submit, copy edits to go over, reviews to write up, people to contact, interviews to conduct, stories to solicit, and so much more. Again, none of this is particularly difficult. It’s just the mental space that it occupies. The straw that broke the camel’s back. And there are a lot of straws on my back.

I’m sure I’m going to miss university when I’m done. Hell, I’m sort of not looking forward to it already. I’ve enjoyed the three years I’ve spent there, and it’s going to be so hard to walk away. But at the end of the day, I’ll be damned if I choose to go to a lecture instead of querying an agent, or tightening a chapter on a novel. I’ve got so many things I want to do and catch up with, so many projects to start and finish, but I need to shut them out just for a little while longer while I wrap all this up. I wish I didn’t have to, but since when does anyone always get what they want? And I’m not entirely sure anyone should.

I’ll be hanging in there.