Damn you old man winter!

I'm feeling so tired and lethargic right now. It is convenient to blame it on the weather--who actually wants to get out of the bed and do something when the temperature outside is below freezing? Even when I'm at home I don't feel like doing anything other than sprawling out on the sofa watching TV and/or doing the daily crosswords puzzle. What makes it worse is that everytime I indulge in this loafing activities--watching TV and sleeping--I keep getting pestered by the constantly annoying guilty conscience (yeah, that tiny voice in your head) telling me there are still shitloads of schoolwork to do.

I do question myself if I'm making the right decision by going back to school, instead of working full-time. I was so gung-ho about going back to school and now, barely past midterm, I'm feeling so burned out and somehow missing the routine and mundane aspects of working life. When I was working full-time I missed the intellectual stimulation of academia, in which I currently enjoy immensely, but the life as a student doesn't stop once you leave the campus--the fact that escaped me before I went back to school. There are plenty of pages to read, papers to write, research to do, and to top it off, a part-time job that most students have to go to.

I still love the intellectual challenge that comes with being in school but the coerced nature of it--like exams, deadlines etc--seems to put a little damper in my enthusiasm. It's not that I'm doing bad in my classes--I'm actually doing quite well and is in position to get straight As this semester. It's just that I feel the focus of learning is shifted from attainment of knowledge to getting good grades in class.

I do talk about this issue with my professors and they assure me that gaining knowledge in class is not exclusive of getting good grades. If you enjoy your course readings and participate actively in class--basically immersing yourself in the learning environment--you should be able to get good grades. I don't doubt this fact but can we all just have fun learning without the pressure of doing well in exams and writing brilliant term papers? I know some universities, like the Yale Law School, have abolished the letter-grading system and have substituted it with the Pass/Fail system. Now, wouldn't that be nice?

Anyway, one has to do what one has to do and I just have to deal with it for now. On the bright side, the grades do provide me with some sense of where I stand relative to the rest of the class. At the risk of sounding smug and boastful, I do have to admit that it feels good to score better than most of my classmates.