Squandrous

Undergrad.

“I’m going to be late for class!”

That was the first thought that passed through my head this morning, absurd for two reasons: it was 5:30am, and I’m not in school. I haven’t been in school for years.

My dreams last night, it turns out, were vivid. In the one that’s still playing in my head, I was back to being an undergraduate student, studying English literature, living in an off-campus shared house with my best friend and two people I didn’t recognize.

I was happy.

I spent my days in small seminars debating central themes in contemporary American novels, spent my evenings in library carrels writing commentaries and essays on the difficulties of appreciating translated works, spent my nights in the kitchen creating culinary concoctions with my best friend.

It was a life completely different from my own, right now — and it was incredibly appealing.

Now, I know for a fact that dreams are often more rosy than reality, and that my undergrad years were also filled with part-time jobs, team practice, writing and sending out CVs, and figuring out how to pay the rent and my student loans. But I also know that somewhere in that dream lay a shred of desire: a desire to go back to school, a desire to study English, a desire to see my best friend more often, a desire to engage more cerebrally with my work, a desire to spend more time in libraries, a desire to change things, just a little. I’m not quite sure what the dream meant, but I know I woke up happy, smiling, and more than a little excited at the prospect of going to class.

Maybe I need more reasons to be excited when I wake up in the morning these days.