The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Finals are over. I'm done. I'd say I'm "finally" done, but that just feels like a bad pun even though I didn't intend it as one and-ugh. Forget it. Finals are over.

If you can't tell from that car crash of an opening paragraph, I'm still a bit burnt out from last week's academic shenanigans. To be sure, my mental acuity is improving-I can more or less carry on a conversation now and I've stopped drooling on my shirt-but it's going to take me a bit to get back to normal. And with my luck, by the time "normal" hits, grades will come out and knock me off my rocker once again.

On the other hand, the fact that we're in the middle of a combination pandemic-recession and all I have to complain about is testing anxiety just goes to show that I probably shouldn't be complaining at all.

With that in mind, it's time to forget about finals and start enjoying summer!

...or trying to. The law school has a writing competition that starts right after finals, and because it has "writing" in the name, I went ahead and entered. The end product is due in a little over a week. Thankfully, I don't have enough operative brain cells to panic yet, but I'm sure I'll get there when the deadline approaches.

After that, though, summer will begin in earnest. I look forward to having more free time to waste in the same ways I wasted my free time during the school year-namely, crocheting and listening to Supreme Court arguments. I might also occasionally try to cook something.

Summer also provides a nice opportunity to get out of the house and go places. For most of the summer, those "places" will consist of Waitsburg's various sidewalks. However, I'm delighted to announce that I will, at some point, be taking an actual bona-fide trip on a real airplane and everything-back to South Bend to clear my apartment out so that I don't lose my security deposit or my clothes. (Hey, it's a change of scenery.)

Of course, I can't fritter the whole summer away on civic engagement and rainbow afghans. Every student lawyer knows that summer employment is the key to getting an actual real-life paying job at some point in the future-and not to brag or anything, but I found some summer employment. I can't tell you who hired me, but I can tell you where I'll be working. (Hint: it's the same place I've been working since spring break. Bonus hint: it rhymes with "ditch in cable.")

Aside from work and play, I know that I should dedicate at least some of my summer to self-improvement. Besides exercising and refreshing my knowledge of the subjects I studied last year, I can work on breaking bad habits like slouching, being a clutterbug, overusing commas, and ending multiple paragraphs in a row with parentheticals. (I might wait a bit to start on those last couple, though.)

Many moons ago-well, two, to be exact-one of my professors asked one of my classmates what his plans were for spring break, and the classmate responded that he didn't have any. The professor suggested Italy: "The flights are cheap, and you'll probably recover." We all got a good laugh out of that, which just goes to show how little we knew about the virus even such a short time ago, and how little we anticipated the impact it would have on our lives. (Five days later, I was at home when the school told me not to come back to South Bend.)

It's shaping up to be a strange summer. Meanwhile, the siren song of my yarn basket is blaring in my ears, and McGirt v. Oklahoma isn't going to listen to itself.