Undergraduate Blues
by Tris Kerslake
Drugs are always tempting at a time like this, and when you see the bleakly dancing cursor, let alone the pristine page, you understand at last that hell is not a question of belief.
When you had weeks, you also had ability, but skill diminishes as do the days until you have a massive thirty hours before the email stamps you urgent.
You also wish that you had quit your job, who needs money when you have a brain that will not work? Disaster lurks behind each question, little maps of panic.
So, you endure. Lacking any form of absolution you guess your way to credit, waiting for the kingdoms that will not come. Off-campus students need not attempt.
But then you think. Slow fabrication of a phrase becomes a subtle doubt. You wouldn’t bet your pay, but you start to write, and with each syllable you try for wisdom.
And suddenly you have three thousand sounds that speak of Homer, Whitman stained for the establishment, or little poets. Spelling checked, you shun your other obligations.
Submission page at last. The upload and receipt. Caught and crushed between the proper rules of study and the knowledge of a deadline made, you graduate to life.