Alles Klar, Herr Kommissar

School starts tomorrow. Usually, I’m decently excited and motivated for a new semester to begin. Even when I haven’t had a summer break, I’m generally somewhat inspired by the thought of diving back into the world of academia, of starting anew and making the most of my educational opportunities.

Not this time.

Last spring was so draining, I still haven’t fully recovered. And the thought of doing it all again is just … well, draining. Studying languages takes so much time, and, silly me, I’ve been planning to add German to my repertoire (which, if you don’t know, already includes Ancient Greek and Latin). To top it all off, this semester I will also be planning for a wedding and preparing applications for graduate school. In short, this semester has all the potential of being the semester from you-know-where.

Luckily, I’ve seen the light. While I’m excited to learn a language that is actually in use today, there is no reason it has to be done now. And this simple realization has led to an obvious conclusion—I’m dropping my German class. Oh, the joy! Not that I won’t be busy; I’ve got plenty of projects to fill the sudden “void” in my schedule. For starters, I’ll be taking my senior capstone course, which is necessary for graduation. Rather than being a real “class,” the capstone course requires you to write a 20+-page paper on a topic of your choice. While this will certainly be time consuming, it will provide respite from my otherwise non-stop translating. German, on the other hand, would effectively fry my brain. Das ist nicht sehr gut!

But here is the most exciting news. I think I’ll start taking guitar lessons again. I think I’m finally responsible enough to make them worthwhile, and that thrills me. Throughout my teenage years, I took guitar lessons off-and-on from a variety of instructors, but I’ve never had the discipline to make such lessons pay off. Not in the way they should have. Yet I’ve long possessed a fear of regretting this uncultivated talent sometime down the road. It may sound silly, but it’s not a minor fear. Given that I’ve played guitar for 13 years or so (that is, if picking up a guitar once every few weeks counts as “playing for 13 years”), I’m a depressingly novice musician. However, I believe I excelled rather quickly when I did put forth an effort, and that gives me hope of a very fruitful future, should I decide to make it so.

I guess it’s time I learn how to change my guitar strings…