“Break” seems like a generous word for the stretch of time between the fall and spring semesters.
Even with final exams over and done with, the slow and unpredictable trickling of grades into Canvas keeps me biting my nails long after leaving campus. For graduate students, the pressure of a master’s thesis or project is looming and continuous; those revisions hanging over your head aren’t confined to the standard academic calendar.
It’s also about that time when the job search picks up its pace — and throughout the holiday season, remembering those application deadlines seems to demand twice the brainpower it did when school was in session.
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t met a single student who’s had a relaxing December — academically, personally, or professionally.
Like a series finale, the end of the calendar year always seems to bundle up the last twelve months into a neat, disastrous culmination of developments. Areas of your life intersect (maybe, more accurately, collide) so perfectly that if you think about it too much, it seems there was no other way the year could end.
I’m tempted to say it feels orchestrated — but that would imply someone, something with more agency than myself pulling the strings. The yearly amalgamation of seemingly-minute developments is more analogous to the swirling of water being sucked down a drain: inevitable, unquestionable, absolute and having awaited me through every step I took through 2024.
The whole month feels like the breathless, lucid tone of Alifair Durand McDonnell’s “you, my,” or the harrowing finale of “A Tower No Longer.”
As in both of these works, though, there is that inherent promise of resolution: to draw a literary parallel, the trope of the hero’s journey is never without change, trial, and a certain degree of loss.
That conclusion might not look the way you once wanted it to — mine certainly doesn’t have the same people by my side anymore, and my thesis needs some substantial methodological alterations. But wherever it falls, all dust has to settle eventually. The last grade has to be put into Canvas.
All this is to say something that Virgil communicated much more concisely in the Aeneid: the only way forward is through, and maybe on the other side we’ll be able to remember the parts worth smiling about. All hard times must come to an end.
Until they do, I hope you all can find restful moments where they choose to arise. Keep close to those people that feel like stability. And whatever you celebrate, I want to take this moment to wish everyone a happy holiday season.
EJ Haas, Editor-in-chief
