A More Terrible Metaphorical Monstrosity

I know that it is silly for a person who usually only works five hours a day to make any claim of being rushed, but I felt distinctly rushed last night. I got off of work at 5 p.m. (after that arduous and aforementioned five hours of work) and after wasting a hefty chunk of the afternoon chatting, lanyard-free, in the foyer of my workplace, I made my way home. Once there I ate two hastily constructed burritos, slung my messenger bag over my shoulder and moseyed to class.

No one is surprised, I’m sure, at the length and detail that I employing in describing my evening, but those impatient sorts should be heartened because I am about to reach my point. When I got to class I dropped into my seat, brushed a few mysterious capsules (pills? breath mints?!) off of my desk and felt a very familiar feeling settle over me. The moment that my ass hit that spinning chair, an internal timer blinking “3 hours” instantly assumed the foreground of my mind; the count down to dismissal had begun.

This isn’t a particularly deep revelation, I know. The countdown mentality is no rarity in our society of mulitaskery and especially in my personal demographic of cubicle peons. Who hasn’t sat at their desk imagining the giant timer, ticking off seconds? (The timer, of course, never reflects actual time as we know it. It moves with terrible speed or deliberate slowness and probably reflects our eventual mortality.) When we have too much to do we race against a clock that seems to be ticking away minutes out of spite and we begrudge any task that can’t be completed in that allotted time; by contrast, when we want to go home every minute takes hours for the timer to shed.

So, okay, I’m rehashing all of the problems of the modern workplace and though I enjoy that topic immensely, I’m going to jump ship. My intent in writing this was not to open fire on society, but rather to discuss my reasons for voluntarily taking a class (and paying a hefty amount for the book) and waiting with bated breath for it to end. I don’t have any degree hanging in the balance and my mom is never going to find out if I skip.

I think that this might just be the way that I have learned to attend class. I was an enthusiastic student, an eager beaver in academic waters, but I was never afflicted with a desire for a class to go on longer than its allotted time. I liked learning, the chairs were pretty comfy and I didn’t have anywhere else to be but still I wanted to be dismissed. I sat and waited to leave, my senses dulled by the noisy air conditioned breezes universal to classrooms, in the exact same fashion that I did last night. Canceled classes are still beautiful things and I’m looking forward to having President’s Day off next week.

I don’t know if it is a strange manifestation of rebelliousness or some larger and more terrible metaphorical monstrosity, but the countdown to the end of class is back. Whether or not I have actually missed going to school is going to be measured by the pace of its imaginary ticking because there is no other constant where classes are concerned.