Whine and cheese.

If I am going to discreetly not do work and write boring, long-winded pieces of generic prose, I should be writing about George Orwell's essay "Such, Such Were the Joys..." The truth is, however, I could care less that I have a two-page response paper due this evening at 5:45.

I've written about a third of the paper, which is just one very long paragraph. This does not bode well, since the one very long paragraph takes up most of the page, and it's likely that my short response paper will end up being four pages. But honestly, why am I writing short, stupid papers for a graduate class? I was under the expectation that grad school required more reading and more work, but so far I feel like I'm taking the boring, uninteresting general education undergrad courses.

I don't know what this means, exactly. I've been thinking about my situation (the whole hating my classes thing), and it's just sparked a new Life Crisis of the Month. Do I just hate these classes and these professors? Do I not like DePaul? Do I not like graduate school?

I think turning twenty-three fucked me up. This is why I hate my birthday, because it's another reminder that hey, here's another year where I am older but not so much wiser. And I still don't know what I'm doing. And, yeah, I KNOW I'm only twenty-three. But I want to figure things out. I don't feel pressure from anyone but myself.

So now I have a million questions to answer, including:

1. Should I stay at DePaul since the grad school is free, even if I hate it?
2. If I don't take advantage of the tuition benefits, should I continue working here?
3. Should I start looking at grad schools elsewhere? Ole Miss? Georgia?
4. Do I want to go to grad school? Do I want to stay in Chicago?
5. Is PeaPod cheaper than Jewel? If not, is it worth paying extra money for groceries if it means I don't have to walk eight blocks with a cart full of bags and avoid looking like a (well-dressed, let's be honest here) homeless person? (I realize this isn't really related but it's on my mind.)
6. Should I move to New York? (It's possible I have been reading Gawker too much.)
7. Should I just write shitty chick-lit novels and publish them under a pseudonym?
8. How does one get a job in publishing in this damn city?

In the meantime, I'll just suffer through "The Essay" and Southern lit. It'll give me some material to work with here.