Journals

Seasonal Affective Disorder

March 1, 2007   

It’s one week until Spring Break, papers are piling up (both in my planner and at the Writing Center), and the entire population of Hamilton is under the weather somehow – either with the campus-wide half-flu that’s going around (which I’ve been combating with a lot of sleep and tea) or with looking at the dirty snow. It’s not quite time to despair, nor is my only hope to bite the bullet and lock my door until next Friday; there are little things that are always a pick-me-up.

I live in Milbank 12, but every night I make the trek up to Milbank 29, because that suite is a little quieter and, consequently, easier to work in. I walk through all the suites between 23 and 28 at least once a day. I push open half a dozen doors and turn as many corners, pass as many kitchens and common rooms and stairwells. Needless to say, the scenery doesn’t change much. Tonight, though, to shake things up, my 29er friend and I decided to run, pell-mell, as though Campus Safety were on our tails – which they weren’t. So we sprinted, leaving a fleet of confused, studying students in our wake. It was awesome, and definitely a highlight of the week.

Getting off-campus is also a consistent perk. Usually, we drive down College Hill Road onto Route 12, but last weekend, we went up the Hill instead. I’d never been that way in the daytime, and was completely ignorant to the vast amount of farmland Hamilton is surrounded by. While the view did reiterate the fact that Hamilton is pretty much in the heart of nowhere, it was still pretty striking – all that snow, all that land. The Midwesterner in me thrilled at the sight of wide open spaces; it’s a good thing I don’t have a car on campus, or I would drive around all the time, just to look out the window.

Most of the time, though, I’m stuck in my dorm room, with little to divert me aside from Facebook. Since we’re all connected to the same network, however, iTunes allows any user to peek into someone else’s library. Recently, we’ve discovered a box set’s worth of middle-school slow dance songs, and all the one-hit-wonders we hadn’t heard since then. The set-up is perfect for impromptu dance parties.

There are other things to do to – ice cream for dinner is always helpful, as is a trip to the gym or library – but the fact remains; the weather may suck and I may be sick, but I can keep myself amused, just by being here.