Mi vida sleepy

Don't be a journalism major. We're special, flustered people.\nDon't take challenging classes. You will hate yourself when three deadlines fall on you at once.\nDon't be afraid to spend half a decade in college, unless you're like me and really don't want to (and can't) pay for that victory lap year.\nThis is the advice I give to you as a result of my recent academic exploits. Rather, I feel like the academics are exploiting me.\nWho knew 13 credit hours could be this hard? Well, factor in the 2-1/2 jobs I have, and then the time I devote to bringing you this weekly column, and I finally begin to realize why I fall asleep in class (for some reason I don't sleep at home), why non-rich kids struggle to graduate and just how much of a farce the four-year college plan is.\nMy 13 credit hours include a television production class (this is my half-job), screenwriting, art history, bowling and statistics. Taken alone, that schedule shouldn't prove daunting to most students. \nDaunting is when you add in my jobs -- features editor for Weekend, and assisting in the journalism computer lab. Why two jobs? Two words: experience and money. To have any hope of being employed when I graduate, I have to have experience. Thus, the only options for aspiring journalists are internships and working on student media. But then, most internships don't hire you if you don't have experience, so that leaves student media as your only option. But then you can't work in student media if you're not a student, thus you must be in school and taking classes, which then add to your workload and stress level.\nOK, so now the classes and first job are accounted for. The second job, the one in the computer lab, is one of necessity. If you read my last column, I talked about the dearth of black inner-city high school students making it to college. Well, us urban kids live in or near the inner city for a reason -- our parents couldn't pay the admission charge to make it into the suburbs, so obviously, paying the admission charge to college is an act of magic, miracles and financial aid. To cover what's left to pay after scholarships and grants (it really helps to be smart in the inner-city), I come up with the money on my own, thus necessitating the gainful employment.\nAnd to top all that off, I think I still owe IU money because Uncle Sam decided to reduce one of my grants this year (senior year, at that!). \nI guess Uncle Sam needed the cash to pay for the training of WMD-sniffing dogs.\nBetween all that work, study and actually attending the classes I paid to take, I have to fit in homework time, writing time, sleep time and wind-down time so I don't get sick and stressed and miss those classes for which I worked so hard to pay. \nWhen I finally get to those classes, find a seat in the packed lecture halls and squeeze into my uncomfortably small desk, the thermostat controls are all out of whack. The classes get warm, the lights go out and the professor starts his or her hour-long foray into criminal recidivism, dramatic scene construction and the strata left behind by pre-classical Greeks in the year 1077 B.C.\nI think my eyelids droop an eighth of an inch for every two sentences uttered in lecture. By the 20th or so sentence, the heat, darkness, fatigue and boredom have all sent me into sleepyland, where nightmares of a fifth year of school dance in my mind.\nThe nightmares always wake me up right before the professors walk by my desk and shake their heads.