The Last Plane Is Out For The Winter...

Do you remember the scene in The Thing (uh... let's go with the John Carpenter version -- they're both good, but c'mon, Wilfred Brimley!!!) where the final plane leaves and the researchers are left alone for the winter (technically summer in Antarctica) and our heroes are plunged into months of darkness?

Well, that's not how I feel.

HA! Gotcha... bear with me, Dear Reader, we'll get there.

I just finished my semester. I attended my last class on Tuesday and got stood up by my last undergrad during my last office hour right after. Fuckers. I composed this beautiful email to them saying that my TA hours were over for the semester and wishing them all the best of their exams and for a happy season. Sure nuff', 3 hours later, I've got 20 emails from them. I'm crappin you negative! And they were all exactly the same: "I know that the midterm was 2 months ago and you've given me about 80 chances to correct any problems or grade errors, but can you change my midterm grade because one question you marked wrong I actually got right."

Uh, kid? Do you really expect me to take your word for this when your final is only 3 days away and it's obvious that you are only shitting yourself because you just read the chapter on ANOVA this morning and you have no fucking idea what to do? Seriously, I got about 10 emails today asking me how to do a question they got wrong from their first assignment, and about 30 asking what a t table is. What it IS!!! Not WHERE it is but WHAT.... These are students who expect to pass stats in 3 days. Honest to dog, I hope that they shit themselves to death. Seriously to death.

Okay, I don't mean that. But I do hope that Frau Professor DOES. It would make me totally happy if on her way to the exam, when she parked her car, a whole flock of birds shit all over her car, and her... and just kept shitting until she was drenched it bird crap, then panicked, and shit herself until she DIED. Oh, and if the bird crap went in her mouth, all the better.

So the classes are done. A plane leaves.
The TA hours are done. A plane leaves.
I brought my books home.
I cancelled going to some wrap up things that I just couldn't make myself go to because my brain just refused (get up, Psyche... get up, you have to go to your clinic observation... you have to go... -- Nope. Brain shut off... the last plane has left for the season.)
And the planes all spin their propellers, and take off, and fly away into the low, low, burnt amber sun. And as the last plane reaches the horizon, the sun dips bellow and both are gone.

It's not actually the responsibilities that have left as the cold dead winter sets in. Rather, as the longest night approaches, it is my brain that has left. Flown away. Gone for a period of total darkness. It refuses to work. It has gone limp like a non-violent tree-hugging protester. Well, brain, congratulations on your incarceration. I hope you get out before the new semester starts.

And I hope I survive, although I am pretty sure I will. Keep in mind that the entire cast of characters from The Thing was made up of males. I think I'm more like Sigourney Weaver in Alien/Aliens. I survive it, along with the cat. Like I survive every semester, enter a lengthy period of sleep (with cat), after which I waken to find more face-hugging soul-suckers begging to burst out of my chest. When I return to school, I feel like Ripley entering that Alien nursery. The slow dawning realization of the amount of terrifying work I have to do. The feeling that any single one of these projects could burn me into oblivion.

It's interesting, the way The Thing and the Alien movies are similar but different. One is a testement to motherhood in every disgusting, biological, sweet, desperate, how do I choose a carreer or a child?, return to domesticity -- while the other is a bunch of guys sinking deeper into paranoia then destroying themselves and everything they've worked for. Well, I guess both films embrace the descent into parnoia due to a small group of isolated people being beset upon by a horrible alien. Blood and acid figure prominently. So on. So forth.

Are you still reading? Do you want to make a double bill now? Fuck, I do! Watching these two movies together is the exact opposite of doing grad school. And like I said earlier, the last plane is out. I can't do anything other than mindless stupid bullshit and enjoy.

And that's what happened when I left. I was exhausted all day until I boarded the bus and left school behind. I was on the last plane? and it was like falling awake. I felt more like myself than I have all semester.

Tucked into my bed, with my cat. With a girl with a headless doll. Happy to sleep until the next crisis. Until the sun comes up. And hoping I don't find an exploded icy crater full of frozen corpses - although if you've ever been to my university, it's not too far from the mark.