To skip or not to skip

I woke up begrudgingly. Rolling out of bed, I crossed the room to turn off my alarm clock, only to discover it had yet to ring. As my eyes finally adjusted to their open state, I looked at the little green LCDs on the clock's face. 9:57. The only words that came to my mind were of the four-letter variety that make small children giggle and the elderly blush. Hadn't I set the alarm last night? If I had, it would have rung almost an hour ago. Despite the extra hour of rest, I could still barely work up the energy to barrel back across the expanse of my dorm room to the dresser. I had to search for the surely elusive pair of jeans that would actually fit without the aid of a belt because the extra accessory would require another search party entirely. I really enjoyed the class, but maybe it wasn't worth the effort.

What did it matter anyway? Wednesday was the important class to go to. It was then that my meager classroom would be graced with the presence of that guest speaker whose work I had wanted to read for quite some time. The speaker's appearance had been my biggest reason for taking the class, and the time had finally come when I could sit in awe for 50 minutes while knowledge beyond what mere mortals could hope to achieve was imparted upon me ... as long I didn't fall asleep.

But anyway, that was 48 hours from now. At the current moment, now 9:58, I had to decide just how ambitious I was. Clearly, my life would not suffer if I just slipped back under the covers. In fact, another half hour of sleep would still leave me a half hour to study the subtle, confounding intricacies of kanji before my Japanese exam at 11. But I could always half pay attention and half study during lecture, and perhaps the academic warmup would do me some good. From the sound of it, that might be better than allotting myself the extra sleep. But then again, hadn't it taken me a while to fall asleep last night? Perhaps the sleep deprivation would screw me over when trying to translate haru into its symbolic form, with the little sun radical and the part that looked like ... like ... crap, this wasn't working.

It's 9:59. Decision time. Ah, what the hell, how much was half an hour of studying after another half hour of sleep going to help anyway? Seriously, it would take me five or 10 minutes to fall asleep again, and then I would have to go through the whole epic of the wake-up-get-changed-and-go process, which would eat into the half hour of study time. If I hurried, I could probably make it to lecture before the professor even made it up to the podium to begin. It wasn't like he ever started at precisely 10 a.m. every Monday and Wednesday.

I figured, why not? Lecture was usually pretty painless, the professor was pretty interesting, and it wasn't that far away, was it? My mind made up, I threw some books - which may or may not have been for the right class - into my bag, rushed out the door and jog-walked my way to class. As I reached the door to McCosh, I saw the semi-familiar faces of some classmates a few steps behind me. Glad to not be the last one to walk through the door, I took the stairs two at a time, a habit not induced by my rush to get to class but more necessitated by my height. Finally, I reached the open door to the back of the lecture hall.

As I sidestepped backpacks and other hazards on the way to my preferred section of seats, I was kind of happy I had decided to come to class. It was a little brisk outside, and the walk had really woken me up. Now I was relatively confident that I could avoid falling asleep in lecture. I took an aisle seat so I could stretch my legs out, threw my bag down and rummaged through it, glad to see that the notebook I had semi-blindly groped for was, indeed, the correct one. I tossed it onto the desk, found a pen and opened the notebook, trying to appear attentive and hoping that doing my ready stance would make it so.

For the first time since I'd entered, I took a moment to appraise the room. As I scanned the gathered students, my eyes fell on the stage-like front of the classroom, and I let out a mental yelp. There was our guest lecturer, preparing to address the gathered legions of academic warriors. I reflected on the process that had taken place back in my room to get me to this point, the internal argument that had racked me. I decided that while I did not necessarily believe in God, my faith in destiny, that everything happens for a reason, was fully affirmed. I grinned as I turned to a blank page, ready to give my best attempt at transcribing the knowledge about to be passed from professional to amateur ... if I could stay awake, that is.