Two Days in the Life of Zella Kate: Part Two

Now here is a typical Thursday. Again, I am just posting whatever happened on the day in question...no matter how embarrassing.

7:00 am: Just my standard routine: Scramble out of bed, brush hair, get dressed, eat cereal, brush teeth, clean my glasses (I remembered!), and wave farewell to the Chihuahuas, who are still not amused at my daily absences, which prevent me from petting them for several hours a day.

7:30 am: I pull out of my driveway. At least it's nice and sunny today. ^^ As I am driving on the dirt road I live on, I realize the road is being graded. This presents a small obstacle for my car, but I urge my trusty steed, erm, Honda Accord onward, and I get out without any trouble.

8:30 am: I arrive at school and check my e-mail and messages. I have an e-mail! Somebody does love me!

8:45 am: I don't have class for another two hours, but the fiction magazine I work on as a student editor needs money and name recognition, so we've been doing fundraisers. One fundraiser is selling copies of last year's volume to local businesses. The second is selling doughnuts and coffee on campus. I deliver the money from my door-to-door sales to my advisor, then walk across campus to join my best friend Renee in manning the doughnut fundraiser. She tells me there has been a rush early, which is unusual, but it's slow now. We chat about classes and other miscellaneous things.

9:25am: Renee leaves for her next class. I am left to run things solo, but nobody seems interested in coffee and doughnuts. Heathens. We have an editors' meeting this afternoon, so I reread all of the poetry submissions and a quirky, very postmodernist puppet play that I had mixed feelings about. I don't reread the short stories, because I have an easier time analyzing them and feel more comfortable with my initial assessment. Some of the poetry sounds better to me than it did. Some of it does not. When I first read the play, I thought it was bizarre and completely ludicrous. The second time I read it, I thought it was funny but weird. This third time, I think it's the best thing we have had submitted all year. Yeah, my mind works like that.

10:00am: I finish reading the submissions, in between chatting with a few people who did buy coffee and doughnuts. Now I start work on a couple of sonnets I am writing to enter a school contest. I have one written and am battling my way through the next one.

10:15am: Eeeep! I spy the guy who I am madly in love with walking my way... Ordinarily this would make my nerdy heart skip a beat, but I have to sneeze. I want him to stay away long enough for me to sneeze, then he's welcome to come talk to me. As is my luck, he has no intentions of obeying my thoughts. To make it worse, he is determined to apologize profusely for forgetting that he was supposed to meet me in the library and get notes from me yesterday. He keeps apologizing, and I keep telling him not to worry about it. (Honestly, I was wearing mismatched shoes that day. I was relieved when he didn't show.) Do you know how hard it is to effectively reassure someone who you are hopelessly (and secretly) in love with that you are not mad at him while trying not to sneeze and not be obvious in one's affections? Why do etiquette books not explain proper behaviour in these sorts of situations? To sneeze or not to sneeze? That is the question.

10:20am: He has ESP! He wanders off momentarily, then returns and starts chatting with me. Those sonnets can wait...

10:30am: My Prince Charming has left, and it's time to move all of the stuff from the fundraiser back to my advisor's office. This takes two trips to move everything up stairs and through two long hallways. When I take over the world, I will punish those who do not open doors for others by sawing their arms off with a butter knife. When I get to my advisor's office, I realize it is locked because he is in class. So I shlep all of the stuff back down the hall to my other advisor's office--who is also my lit. professor and the one who picked me to be an editor--and put the stuff in his office.

10:40 am: I go to the library and check my messages and online forums. Nothing much is going on, so I head off to class.

11:00 am: World Literature II: I love this class so much! Okay, I am an English major, so that is one of the reasons, but it's a fascinating class and my professor is brilliant at explaining things. We're doing one of my favorite works right now: Kafka's The Metamorphosis. We take a quiz over it, he hands our essays back (I have noticed that since I told him I was an English major he has been murdering my essays. I used to always make A+ on them. Now it's always an A-. :( ) and gives us our next assignment, then we discuss the text.

12:20 pm: My class is over, but I stay behind to ask a question about an assignment. After he answers my question, he asks me what I think of this week's submissions for the journal. I tell him some were better than others, which he agrees with. Then I tell him that some of the cover letters caused me mental anguish with the misspellings. He acts like he's looking for something, but I can tell he's trying not to let me see him chuckling at my neuroticism. I may be crazy, but I am not blind. I know that he knows that I know he knows I am a grammar geek. And he's really no better about the cover letters himself.

12:30pm: My friend Renee and I always eat together, but she needs to buy her lunch first. I tag along as she drives to the nearby Dairy Queen. She tells me which classes she signed up for next semester. I am transferring, so I have no idea what I'll be taking. I tell her which classes to avoid at all costs. Then we drive back to school. The cafeteria is closed for renovation, so we sit in the hallway and eat.

1:30pm: OT Survey: I took this class, because I needed an elective and because, as a Jew, I thought the subject would be interesting. Um, no. Well, it is interesting, but the professor and I have clashed. I get along with him all right, I suppose, but I am not a fan of his lectures or tests. This is the only college class I've ever taken where I don't at least try to pay attention. Today I work more on my sonnets for awhile, in between jotting down a few notes.

2:45 pm: We get out of class early, so I head to the library, where our meetings are held, and wait for my fellow literary conspirators.

3:15 pm: Our editing meeting starts. We usually discuss, debate, and argue over submissions, then determine if they are rejected, accepted, or wait-listed. This week we all seem to be a bit more like-minded. There are no impassioned pleas for one story or poem to be rejected or accepted. There is no reminder that we, you know, have to publish something. We accept the play I adore so much and spend the rest of the time ridiculing some epicly bad writing. We like to sing the words aloud to each other to the tune of an imaginary thrash metal song and discuss writing our own collage poem by piecing together especially bad poetry lines... The meeting ends a little early, so we sit around and chat about other randomness. I have noticed that, though my professor is much harder on my essays after finding out I am an English major, he has taken me on as a protege of sorts and gives me good career advice, which he does post-meeting.

5:00pm: The meeting breaks up. I follow one of my advisors to his office to get more issues to sell door-to-door, before heading home.

6:05pm: I return home and find that I am the only one home. My grandparents are in town and my brother is at a friend's house. I heat up my dinner and eat in silence, surreptitiously tossing pieces of bread to my Chihuahuas. Afterwards, I start sorting through my copies of the magazine submissions to get ready for layout work, which starts next week.

7:00pm: I chat with my family.

7:10pm: I start in on my geology homework and my history homework--our test was postponed until Friday.

9:30pm: I am all finished, but I have a headache. *whines* I am going to soak my brain in the hot water in the shower and see if that helps.

10:15pm: It did help. Now I get online and play until bed! Well, actually, I don't play, per se. I answer e-mail, read my blogger dashboard, and chat on forums when I should be critiquing.

11:15pm: I really do have to go to bed now, so I log off and retire for the evening.

What are your Thursdays like? What plans do you have for taking over the world?