Erin casts her eyes upon the horizon

The problem with this time of year is that I feel obligated to make lists like everyone else of the best things I did, or my favourite albums or something. Every year, I rack my brains trying to come up with something meaningful to say about what I did for the past year, and I tend to come up blank. The fact is that by December, I can't remember further back than June.

Besides, I already did this back in August, and maybe I'll do it again next August.

So, I'm going to try something completely different. Predictions.

January I will be back in school with four classes, one, which will be hard but interesting, one which I will absolutely hate, and another two that I will complain about because everyone else is doing it, even though they won't be all that bad. Anticipating the fact that I will (once again) most likely not get enough hours over the summer where I regularly work, I will begin applying without discrimination for every lifeguarding job advertised. I will be one of the lucky bastards that gets to count ballots for the election on January 23, after having voted in one of the advance polls. I will most likely move into my apartment, or at least that is the hope.

February will be full of school-related things, though I'll find some time to squeeze in other things as well. I will consider breifly signing up for recerts, but I will decide against it. I will suck up to the rowing team, and they will agree to let me be a coxswain, on the condition that I lose 20 lbs. If not, there's always coaching. I may possibly go to a conference on AIDS in Banff.

By mid-March I will have loads of papers to write. A conservative estimate says that I will be called for at least 4 interviews. They are nasty 2-4 hour long cattle-call interviews where you always get stuck working in groups with complete idiots, all the while trying hard to not look like an idiot yourself. I get to do strength tests, swimming exams, practical skills and first aid assesments, take home exams and create lesson plans, all lovely hoops to jump to prove that I can do exactly what my certificates say I can. I get to do one at every place that I applied. I will begin inhaling Sudafed by the bottle. It will make me extremely jittery, which will add to the slightly paranoid feeling that I get every March, April, May.

This is about the time when I suddenly realize that all my qualifications are expiring and I freak out and sign up for all my recerts. Invariably I will walk into interviews with old certificates and promise profusely that I will update them later. I will walk out completely certain that I have fucked every single one up, though I probably haven't.

My sister and mother will go to Tijuana for a week. I would have gone with them if I wasn't so busy. They will have lots of fun building a school for impoverished children.

I will dance at two festivals and most likely place 3rd and DFL, respectively. I will hate my costume from the moment I see it.

April arrives in all its fury, plunging me straight into exams for school, exams for lifeguarding and personal interviews at every place I applied. I will screw up my first sit-down-and-talk-to-a-person interview and not be called back for a third. Then, as soon as I think that I'm finished, I will have to do teaching interviews. Once again, I will walk out feeling like I have screwed them up completely. In a moment of panic, I will realize that
I might possibly have scheduled my recerts at the same time as my final exams. When I check, they will not overlap, but will be dangerously close.

May will come. I will have considered by now taking a course like intro German for intersession, but someone will have talked me out of it. It doesn't matter, because by this stage of the game, I won't be able to scratch together money for coffee, let alone tuition. This will translate into me spending a lot of time sitting around, doing nothing and feeling sorry for myself. My parents will tell me that there is no reason why my apartment should be such a bloody mess if I'm at home all the time, I will agree completely with them, and that will do nothing to help my mood.

I will come up with an elaborate plan to escape to Norway and not act upon it.

In the beginning of June, I will get conscripted into service at my parents' house, doing mainly gardening, but also to redo the floor in the livingroom. I will get some hours where I regularly work, and as predicted, they won't exactly be enough. I will once again be the head backstage runner for our yearend dance show, where I will be hugged, kissed, cheered for, screamed at and praised for being the calmest person around. I will continue to hold my breath and wait for the phone to ring. Eventually it will, and I will proudly accept a second job, putting me further over the 40 hour work week than I care to think about.

July. I will work at one job, then I will work at the other. Then I will sleep. I will try my damndest not to blog about work so as not to get myself fired, and will choose instead to bore people with pretty pictures and stories about the weird-as-shit people I meet on the bus. Someone will phone me about going out and doing something social, and I will decline because I have to work.

August, likewise, will be spent working. I will forget my own birthday. I will suddenly realize that I have no life whatsoever, call Kathy, and suggest that we do something fun and non work-related. She will decline because she too has much work and little life. At around this time we will once again give up our crazy idea of writing a novel over the summer together. Alison will finally get back from living in Malaysia, and we will go for coffee, because that will be all the time I can afford to spend on her before September. I will order something matcha flavoured and suggest that we take Quantitative Research Methods together because I can't possibly go it alone.

Two weeks into August I will begin to run on autopilot, reading textbooks on the bus to work and counting down the days until

September, when I will go back to school, completely burnt out. I will have signed up for the highest possible number of courses that are completely unrelated to my major. Frosh week will bring with it lots of non-alcoholic fun, and Frosh weekend will be sure to involve plenty of alcohol. Everyone I know will use the entire month to do a lot of catch-up for the partying that they missed over the summer, myself included. I will consider getting a job shelfreading at the library, but probably won't. It will take me a while before I stop feeling like crap.

In October I will rediscover my groove, just in time for midterms. I will procrastinate more than ever, only to vomit forth papers faster than ever. The month will end with yet another awesome Haloween party that I will probably go to dressed up as a frumpy old lady.

November will be spent finishing papers and projects. It will otherwise be uneventful. I will finally take some time to figure out what all the nifty buttons and settings on my camera actually do.

December will be nice, relaxing exams. I will decide upon a list of things that I want to accomplish over the holidays and not complete most of them. We will either decline invitiation to or not hear about Christmas dinner with my father's family, but we will have some sort of get-together with my mother's family. Grandma may or may not be present, depending on how bad her MS gets between now and then. It's not something that I care to predict.

That turned out much longer than expected, though it's really more for personal reference than for you. Sorry. Cookies for me if I'm right.