The Post-Tournament Hangover

I miss my first class and arrive 10 minutes late to my second, both that take down attendance. Ironically I arrive promptly to a lecture that doesn't even care the least about it.

On a 4 a.m. the day before, I packed my sparring bag to get ready to go to the taekwondo tournament at Princeton. I kissed my girlfriend who seemed half asleep at the time see you tonight, and went off. I missed her so much when I left the room.

My performance at the tournament was short, but I am proud of my b-team teammates, who were just a hair shy of winning gold. I said my hellos to my all-star teammates I traveled and trained with during winter break to the bay area and it's nice to see them again. One of them got 1st place in the poomsae division.

We got back around 10 p.m. Exhausting is not the right word. It was such a long day. Fighting, standing, waiting, and sitting in the long car ride sandwiched between my teammates. I slept over at my girlfriend's dorm after the four hour car ride back and I was so excited to see her. It soothed me. She gave me a massage and it was so pleasant and nice. Had a rough, long day and she cured it for me.



Today has not really been my day.

I've spent the entire Sunday at the tournament that I just so happened to shove away my academic priorities for that day. This morning/afternoon, I spent my time writing a report in Japanese and investigating criminal records for journalism. In addition, I realized that there was another Japanese homework assignment that I had completely ignored until now and it was due at 3pm today, and I had class at 2:45. The subpar work took more time than I expected that I had to skip my first class. I arrived on campus and went to print out all the assignments just in the nick of time, only to see that the printer had printed an error page, leaving me to have to re-print the page, resulting me to be late for my second class.

I call this the post-tournament hangover, where the load of exhaustion both physically and mentally leads to the postponing of academic priorities.


Anyway, there is a bus driver that operates the university shuttle's evening shift, it seems, and he is nothing but rude. There aren't any cords or signals to pull to signal for stop, so it's normal for students to tell the driver they want to get off at their stop. But he makes it worse by complaining and hollering all the time.

"If you don't tell me to stop, I am not gonna stop. If I don't hear anything I'm not gonna stop."

The struggle..