Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Through the Looking Glass

“ ‘I can’t stand this any longer!’ she cried, as she jumped up and seized the table cloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor”[1](Through the Looking Glass, chapter 9).

Tonight, I feel just like Alice did during her last moments in Looking Glass House. I’ve got piles of homework, a massive headache, and troubles at home and 900 miles away. I’ll admit it, and I almost never do: I’m stressed.

But this is what college is about, right? We’re supposed to be pulling all-nighters

Hittin' the books[2]

and pulling out our hair. Maybe it isn’t.

I’ve recently heard in the news and in newspapers (no specific quotes in particular) that we (as in adolescents and college students) aren’t getting near as much sleep as we’re supposed to, and that we spend too much time awake for our bodies to function to full capacity (I’m sure Bump will agree with me on this). I like getting a full night of sleep, but sometimes there is just too much homework and too many expectations for me to fulfill. I suppose Alice felt like this as well when she was being quizzed by the queens and throughout her time in Looking-glass House; she didn’t know the rules there, but yet she was expected to follow them and especially understand them to a T.

Sometimes, I think I’ve got the college thing figured out, and I can accurately predict how things will turn out, or how I will do on an assignment, much like Alice’s correct interpretation of the meaning of “wabe”, “It’s called ‘wabe’ you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it” “And a long way beyond it on each side,” Alice added”[3] (Through the Looking Glass, chapter 6). But then other times I find I am sadly mistaken, and then I blame myself for being so stupid as to think that I’m a good student. My luck only goes so far.

The average college student is pretty good at justifying ourselves. We’ve all had time to practice for years in high school and middle school, so when something comes up that we are afraid of or were wrong about; we know just what to say to make ourselves look better. For example, I constantly made up reasons for not being very good at sports when I was a kid, such as having “really poor hand-eye coordination”, having non-athletic parents,

I should've had this shirt a while ago…[4]

and being too big to run around with my much shorter friends (though that was a really weak argument). I’ve been afraid to do things though, just like Tweedle-dum’s complaint of having a headache and thus lowered bravery when he is suiting up to fight Tweedle-dee[5]. (And, like him, I also get frequent headaches as a result of Austin allergies. It is a reasonable excuse at times.)

However, I think one of the worst problems that college students have is being ungrateful. Alice is accused by the Red Queen in chapter 2 of being ungrateful, but we have a much worse problem of ungratefulness. Most of us don’t stop and think about how much food we waste in a given day, where our trash ends up, or how lucky we are to have so many nice, new computers and friendly lab staff in almost every building. I sometimes take for granted the money that my parents earned to get me here to UT, and it makes me sad that so many people just waste their parents’ money by skipping class

Everybody's doin' it![6]

for no reason, using facebook all through class on their laptops, or not doing the assignments to go out underage drinking.

I think we can learn comical things from the Alice books, but we should also use them as a way to discover the faults we have as students and how we can best take advantage of what we have here, whether it is the friendly staff or the food prepared just for us in Jester.

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