A light melodious tune rings through my head and I groggily blink open my eyes. I stare at the swirling texture of the ceiling above me as the song continues. I don’t want to move. How am I still this tired after so much sleep? Sighing, I reach towards my nightstand and press the volume button on the side of my phone, temporarily silencing it. I close my eyes again wishing I could justify falling back asleep. Even if I could, I know that I have another alarm set five minutes from now. And then another five minutes after that. How many have I set this time? Am I up to five or six?

I rest my arm across my forehead as I try to remember my general plans for the day. Within seconds, drowsiness begins to overtake me and I begin to drift off. Desperate to not fall back asleep, I reach for my phone and start to swipe away the notifications. I open a social media app and start scrolling thoughtlessly through the never-ending posts and videos. I like a few posts, looking at talented artists and beautiful influencers. Stunning vacation photos and luxury goods show off a seemingly unlimited expendable income that I am painfully aware I do not possess. My doomscrolling is quickly interrupted by another alarm going off. Once more I quickly dismiss it. Fine, I’ll get up!

Getting dressed and ready is as monotonous as my wake-up routine. I feel like my body is on autopilot as I select, and wash, and remove, and secure, and primp. I speed through, uncaring and almost unaware—a stark contrast to the moment of groundedness I felt in the now fuzzy memory of my dream.

I slow down when I lean over the sink and meticulously draw on my eyeliner, praying to the makeup Gods that the wings will be matching enough that I don’t have to redo them. Evidently, I am pious enough today that my prayers are answered. A quick layer of mascara and, after glancing at the rest of my makeup splayed on the bathroom counter, I shrug it off and head to the door. Too tired to care. I look fine enough.

That phrase has become my moto as of late—fine enough. I think I should feel guilty about having canonized mediocrity. I should feel bad that I don’t care what I look like. Should feel bad that I don’t care enough to change… And I should stop saying should. I shudder away concerns about this newfound apathy as I grab my messenger bag and head out the door to campus. If I don’t think about it, it isn’t a problem I need to address—right?

I step out the door and chilled air slithers through the holes in my oversized cardigan. I set a steady pace wanting to minimize being outdoors. Luckily, campus is only about a five minute walk from my apartment. Dark clouds above muddy the colors around me. Nature is yielding its vibrancy as the leaching early winter air rolls through. Piles of crispy brown leaves are scattered throughout the yellowing grass, having already lost their beautiful red and yellow hues. It’s bland and tasteless, much like my enthusiasm for this day. I long for this season to speed by, its physical effects on the world too reminiscent of the cloud that has recently fallen over my mind.

Preparing to sit for lectures, I file away the melancholia. I reach for the door—I need to be mentally present and ready to receive knowledge.

Finding room 1002, I enter through the back of the arena-like lecture hall. The large wedge-shaped room is filled with semi-circular rows that descend to the white boards and podium at the lowest level. Heading a few rows down, I take a seat and begin to unload my supplies. I’m one of the first in the room. Students continually trickle in, and before long I see Natalie enter through one of the twin doors on the back wall. I smile at her and she slips behind my chair and takes her seat next to me.

“Hey,” she greets me. I give her a placative smile in return. She pulls out her notebook as the other members of my main school friend group enter the room. Arya, Katrina, and Erin in turn slide behind us to their undesignated “assigned” seats in the long middle row of the auditorium. They are all in at least half of my classes—one good thing about being in a small major I suppose. We have dubbed ourselves the “Anthro Crew” in regards to our major.

“Did you do the bio homework?” Erin calls from two seats away. “I really struggled with question 8…” I reach down into my bag and grab out my homework binder, flipping it open to see what question she is asking about. I glance down at my completed paper and hum in contemplation.

“I couldn’t find it in the reading either, so I had to Google it. The answer is ‘at least 15 different sites have paleoanthropological fossils’ and then I went on to talk about some of the big hitter discoveries there…” I look at her once more to find that she already has her head down vigorously writing on her paper, brows furrowed in concentration.

“Mmm… thanks.”

I turn to face the front of the board as our Professor, Dr. Walsh, enters through the door at the front of the lecture hall.

“Hope everyone had a good few days…” He begins, setting his bag down on the table and pulls out a laptop. He strides over to the podium and begins fiddling around with cords until a PowerPoint is projected on the wall above the whiteboards. ‘Bipedalism—Theories and Advantages’ is written on the title slide and I jot it down as the header in my notebook. The next hour and a half fly by as I fill up page after page of notes, feeling compelled to write everything down.

Do I need to write all this information? No. Will I look at my notes again? Maybe once when I study for my test. Will the notebook just sit around for two years too long before I finally deign to throw it away since I never know when I might “need the information I have written in it”? Yes. Class ends and we all stand up to repack our bags.

“Don’t forget to turn in your homework on the way out” Dr Walsh shouts over the steadily rising conversations. I offer to take the rest of the Anthro Crews’ papers with me to add to the pile in the front of the room. A bottle neck forms at the door in the front, and I join the cue, feeling very claustrophobic with the brush and heat of bodies around me. I finally slip through, out into the open hall.

The crowd of fellow classmates I just escaped is a unique mix of people and energies. There are some who clearly took the class reluctantly to meet a necessary filler credit. They seem eager to leave the classroom and quickly disappear from the hallway once free. A secondary group of students have taken the class to fulfill some form or requirement but don’t find the topic tedious and seem at least mildly interested in what Dr. Walsh has to say. Then there are those majoring in Anthropology, myself included. They have a vivacious excitement about what is being taught, hanging onto every word, taking the most meticulous notes. Those people linger around after class, continuing discussions about what was taught.

Full of overachievers and often quirky personalities, the Anthropology majors are definitely ‘my type of people’. Those who choose anthropology don’t do so in hopes of getting a good job after graduation. They do so strictly out of a love of the subject, prospects be damned. There is a group of four or five majors who are similar to our Anthro Crew, but less outwardly nerdy. They often go out on weekends to bars or parties and actually seem capable of maintaining a normal social life. I am vaguely jealous at their ability to do so. I am friendly with them, often sharing outside interests, but I wouldn’t classify them as formal “friends”. If I wasn’t so caught up in my own head, I think I could be.

Thursdays are one of my slower days. I only have Physical Anthropology, so I return home after class is over. My mood quickly sours once more at the dreary weather and diluted colors of the world around me. When I arrive at my apartment, I throw my bag down by the door and flop on the couch.

While in class I feel more alive, I feel like I am actually doing something worthwhile. When it’s over, when I am alone again without something I am passionate about to focus on, it feels like my mind is trapped under a pile of snow. Sound and thoughts are dampened, wrapped in a fogginess. Is this depression? Even if it is, there isn’t much I can do. I just need to accept that life isn’t always exciting.

I close my eyes and rest the back of my wrist on my face. I feel alone. I need to feel something, explore something, be intrigued by something… At those thoughts a phantom warmth and a pair of icy eyes whisper through the recesses of my mind, remnants of the dream I can no longer recall.