So Joephet wants to be a subsistence farmer, though I don't think he realizes how much corn it takes to make a single chicken. And that's if the chickens are lucky enough not be fed on mad cow pulped brains. I think he just wants to avoid writing his paper, and I hope his professor isn't reading this blog...

So Lostin and I had a nice long chat this morning (late evening for him, I suppose)--he actually sounds happy in Korea, where he can just be--I guess I can't spill too many more beans than that, but it's a pretty encouraging sign, and I keep forgetting how much more time he has in front of him, unlike poor Rob Chin, who must soon graduate, somehow.

I have not been thinking about school very much at all, somehow--it's strange to think how much ambition has been leeched out of me of late, but I suppose it's just a break before the usual Long March, and all that horrid thesis work I will have to soon undertake. So it's not that bad that I'm lazing around a bit more than usual. And at this point, there is a real sense of defeatism which sinks in, and all without the sort of Regents-pressure from last year: it's a kick-back sort of month, in some ways.

It's just amazing, thinking back to freshman year of college, as I was reminded this evening walking with Joephet to pick up his laundry (which he now also drops off, though about once every three months), and the new-fallen grainy snow was being blown around the asphalt like sand--actual sand, Joephet claimed. The last time I'd seen that sort of thing was freshman year, sitting on the second or third floor, looking out onto the Yard, though there were dunes then and it was much more sand-like. But I can't really get a grip on what it was like to be that kid--so much angrier, but with so little reason to be, with so many battles yet ahead, but no less hope. I think I'd be pleased either way, though I still have no idea where another 5 year leap would take me, though of course as a teacher in a high school I force my kids to write these sorts of essays all the time.