And you think you're sick. There is nothing like a sore throat sneaking up on you. Saturday night after our radio show I remember feeling that initial scratchiness, almost like there's a piece of hair back there that's impossible to detatch from behind the roof of your mouth. Only once in recent memory can I remember a sore throat not leading to some sort of ears/nose/throat congestion, so it must've been a fluke. Today I think I fought a hard battle, though, taking vitamins, decongestants, aspirin, and drinking about 15 servings of water in those biggens blue and white Residence Hall Association travel mugs. SHAWMANIA!

I can tell it's only a 24 hour deal, so that's good.

I remember at some point this weekend we were talking about how we have become dumber in college. How we reached our pinnacles senior year of high school and due to huge lectures, oblivious peers, no art and music classes (for me at least), and a pretty big lack of motivation/inspiration, we simply aren't thinking as creatively or maybe even as intelligently as we did two or three years ago. I don't know if this is true, but I definitely remember being, or at least trying to be, a lot more pithy or poetic in 10th grade than I do now. I'd go down by the river in Rockford Park, find a seat and open up a notebook from school, jotting things down on some of the back pages that I thought made sense and sounded good together. I don't think I've done that in months, and when I have, I've had a guitar in my lap haphazardly trying to put words to music. I remember every Friday or Saturday night my senior year I'd drive 20 minutes home from my girlfriend's house, crossing state lines and making curfew, and find something to write about, dissect, describe, etc. Maybe it's just the atmosphere here at school, the weather conditions, or something in the water. I feel like I'm still surrounded by over-achievers and people that "totally didn't study last night and are going to ohmygod fucking FAIL" the big test, but of course they barely sneak by with a 97 or whatever. I also think this university's dependency on Powerpoint can't be good for anyone at all. I understand it's probably the best method a teacher's got in this situation to convey the day's lecture notes but all you end up really jotting down is four or five broad bulleted points and telling yourself that you'll fill in the gaps by reading the text later on.

Don't get me wrong, there definitely have been wonderful things about the last year and a half but I can't help but wonder what some of my favorite teachers, excuse me... favorite people, would think of my abilities now. Maybe someone else has an opinion about this and could spell it out better than what I'm doing. I'm just hoping this pessimism is just a result of February doldrums, which I think can be defeated this weekend by the return of Spinto Group 2000 and a bare minimum of mushiness.