10th Week and Meltdowns with Fro Yo

The College I work for is on a quarter system, and we have ten weeks in a quarter. It doesn't have to be, but this is most typically known as the week to A) study for finals B) massively pack up everything and stuff it in your closet C) Panic D) All of the above, often all at the same time

Now that I've graduated and work here instead of go here, I find the list to be slightly different. Instead of taking finals, I GRADE and MAKE the finals. All those papers we hated writing and all those essays we hated studying for? Yup, you guessed it, it's now my job to grade and mark and read these oh so wonderful educational tools.

I don't mind, but it can be stressful. To combat the stress, I've tried, in the weekends before 10th week, to relax as much as possible. They're awesome plans, often involving lots of sleep and covers tucked in tight and bowls of tea at the ready. Last quarter's weekend before plan got derailed for reasons I shall not go into, but I made up for it by planning to go see Harry Potter 7.1 with Suite Besty and Cool Sis at midnight.

THIS was an AWESOME PLAN. We had real food for dinner, and then went for fro yo before the movie. I was so happy to not be grading papers for these few hours, it was glorious. What I didn't count on was the exhaustion, stress, and general unhappiness that had been the last week and truthfully the last several weeks to catch up to me in one explosive mental breakdown that had me crying over my fro yo and in front of Suite Besty and Cool Sis. SIGH. Let me recap:

HP7 was on thursday/Friday at midnight. So I'd made it through the entirety of 10th week with little sleep, much, much tea, massive packing, and not a little stress. I was also dealing with another terrible situation in my life that was taking up a lot of my mental reserves. (I know I sound whiny, bear with me and we'll get to the funny)

Enter HP7, the night and plan I had been waiting for. Like I said, we went to dinner and then fro yo. I'd never been to fro yo before, and let me tell you, for someone whose favorite color of all time is pink, I had just entered heaven and/or nirvana. The chairs were pink. The WALLS were pinks. It was AMAZING. Then there was the actual fro yo with real fruit and candy. Sensory overload, I thank you. We sit down, start to eat, and I realize that this is the happiest I've been in five weeks. Enter emotional breakdown in which I tear up over frozen yogurt. Poor Suite Besty and Cool Sis had no idea what to do with this, so they embraced me and pushed me to enjoy my fro yo and the pink that surrounded us. We finished and went to see HP7.



(Suite Besty and I at HP7. Notice the stack of papers and the red pen in my hand, and please disregard/ignore the deep bags under both/mostly my eyes)

It was one of the best nights ever, despite the breakdown over fro yo, and I survived 10th week mostly in tact.

This quarter's weekend before 10th week went swimingly on Friday and Saturday, and kind of crashed and burned on Sunday afternoon/night. That thing that was bothering and ultimately led to the now infamous fro yo breakdown of 2010 came back in one fell swoop. But, like before, Suite Besty was there to pick up the pieces, and we ended the night not with HP7 and fro yo, but with kettle corn for her, tuna with green curry for me, and some good old fashioned Boy Meets World reruns. A meltdown has not occurred, nor will it in the days to come this winter quarter 10th week.

'This time baby, I'll be bulletproof'