I was having a conversation with my hall director yesterday about how at North Central you don’t actually tell people what you have going on in your week, instead you reply to the, “how are you doing?” question with a simple response…”It’s week 8.” I will call this the “week X” response.

I argued that we tend to overuse the definition of our feelings by saying what week it is, because every week has a different meaning for every person. To exaggerate my point, at the beginning of the term, you might hear a conversation like this:

Person A:”Hey Jane, how’s it going?”

Jane: “Oh, you know, it’s week 2! I just can’t believe it!”

See, in this instance, Jane is already using the “week X” response to show that after beginning the term, she can’t believe that her life has so rapidly progressed up until the current point in time of it being week 2! One could argue that week 2 shouldn’t really stress anyone out because you may only have a few assignments as you are being initiated into a new class, but we still the “week X” response to convey a very strong emotion.

My point being, it’s week 8.  For almost any NCC student, this means a ridiculous amount of tests, papers, presentations or other such assignments as each professor’s last “HURAH” before finals come.

I guess I will have to except the “week 8″ response for a few more days now, but you better believe that after spring break, I will be cringing during those first few weeks when the “week X” response again takes its seat as the uniform meaning for “stressed”.