God Bless Friday

I am happy that another week of class ended well. I'm even happier that tomorrow I might sleep later than 4:45 a.m. without awakening every 90 minutes, genitive absolutes roaming around in my brain.

And at last, the major detour around Dubuque is gone. I've had to drive in circles around the city for the past several weeks, taking a detour that itself had road construction!

Yesterday at the end of class, one of my study partners had a huge meltdown in the classroom. Only the professor and I stuck around; everyone else split as fast as they were able. We listened to Craig (the, um, Melted One), responded, and thought he was better. Moments later, I walked through the Refectory and came upon his melting a second time -- only much, much louder and longer. We'd been told that students often experience meltdowns during intensive Greek (read: "this is normal"), but I really thought Craig was in trouble, and stayed with him. He actually was wailing! Only the day before, he was the life of the classroom, having bestowed upon us magic encoder rings (a.k.a. toy rings embedded with rhinestones)and now he was raging and crying over what he felt was an impossible task: passing today's test.

Craig calmed down; I went home. Today he did fine on the exam. He promised me he'll talk with his advisor about his fear and anxiety. It is major. We have one and a half weeks to go. I'm getting attached to these people, who all will continue learning together while I go off to my place back on the block.