Missing Marbles

Dear Cornellies,

Coming back to the ’Nell is one of my favorite times of the year. The week before classes is always a blast with the endless parties and the sight of all the friends that I’ve only communicated with through my Facebook wall all summer. I even like buying books and picking up my FREE planner in the bottom of Goldwin Smith. (That’s right. All of you who paid the sneaky scheming Cornell Store $5.50 for the planner were ripped off! You can get it for free at your Registrar!) I love these small routines of the school year starting. What’s harder is jumpstarting my brain again.

Since coming back to school, I seem to have forgotten how to function. I jumble sentences and go into system overload when asked too many questions at once. While everyone else seems to be geared up and ready to write papers and read books, I am dreading what my mind will do when I ask it kindly and then forcefully coerce it into doing homework and thinking in words longer than a syllable (believe me, this article was not easy to write). It’s going to take at least a week and half to oil up the rusty wheels, and classes have already started! Perhaps I should just wear a sign that says, “Thinking in progress, gimme a minute.” I’m even slow to get jokes, and the witty repartee I usually love is painfully slow and not very witty at all.

But it’s not just making my brain work. It’s getting the rest of my life into school mode that puts such a dampener on starting the year again. Arriving at my new apartment was great, but then I spent the next two days trying to clear a pathway from my door to my bed through all the boxes and bags and unpaired socks that I was attempting to transfer from their former roomy location to my now cramped and tiny room in my new apartment. Unpacking is my least favorite thing to do, and the sheer amount of stuff in my room so overwhelmed me that I found myself shuffling one piece of paper or one book at a time across the room to it’s new location. (That may also be the lag time my brain needs these days to process any large amount of information.) It’s especially frustrating that I was the last to move in, so while I was trudging and toiling in my tiny room, all my housemates were enjoying their beautifully arranged and fully set up rooms, complete with the comforts of hooked up computers and room for their desk chairs.

Still, I am glad to be back. I’m sure this slow start will soon pick up its pace — at least I hope so; I can only endure my friends inquiries of, “Becky, have you gone retarded?” for so long, although my response to them will have to be, “Temporarily.” But I must say, I couldn’t think of a better place to be than Cornell at the beginning of the semester, stupidity and all. So welcome back and welcome to the freshmen from a seasoned semester starter.

Love and Luck,

Temporarily-Brainless Becky.