à la bibliothèque

It's a beautiful Sunday and John and I have spent most of it toiling away at the library. Well, I worked on my cookies for Martha Stewart's Favorite Cookie Contest (I reeeaaallllly want to be one of the 10 that wins a free Cookies cookbook, but I doubt I'll win with my limited time and resources, and relative inexperience making pretty things....if you wanted an "ugliest yet still tasty cookie" contest winner, then I'm it!) for most of the early afternoon, but they're still in their "prototype" stage. More on that tomorrow, when I actually have to submit my photos. Anyway, it's that time again--you guessed it: FINALS WEEK! :O

I have to quote the lovely JG here...she summed up the entire finals week experience in a most apt fashion:

I'm sitting in the library, and it's amazing how the shared experience of having to write rediculous amounts of papers before the final week of classes brings people together. People you don't know actually say "bless you" when you sneeze. People smile. We're all drowning under an extrodinary amount of dull white paper and faded computer screens, but we know that--and we appreciate human contact, even if it's with strangers, now more than ever.

Though we've been here for the past few hours, I still don't feel like I've done much--or maybe it's just because I haven't met my slightly over-ambitious goals for the evening? Of course, it probably doesn't help that I've taken a blogging break, but a girl can only look at articles for so long. Sometimes I wish I could go back and warn my bright-eyed undergraduate self: Scholarly articles aren't always as riveting as you think! In fact, they can be as dry and burnt as that first batch of ill-conceived cookies I pulled out of the oven last night.....

But I digress. While finals week is dreaded by all, I don't think I would really feel like things will have come to a close without it. Sure, I will experience a semester next year where I will take no classes, but I'll still have my comprehensive exams and thesis defense. There's still torture ahead of me--I guess it's all part of the end-of-semester rite of passage.