One of the benefits of working where I do is a free six credits a month - which is one class, since everything at the university is five credits. The catch, of course, is that I can't register until three days after the quarter starts, and all of the classes that I ought to take always have more people wanting them than there are spots.

It's fair enough that I have to wait, obviously. It'd be stupid to let me in when there are people trying to climb their way through a B.S. degree before their student loan debt crushes them to death.

The responsible thing to do would be to continue trying to get into biology classes, and undoubtedly I will do so. I always eventually cave to what I ought to do, obediently rebellious. That said, the week that classes start stresses me incredibly every quarter. Will someone drop at just the right time on Friday that I'll be able to get in? Etc. I know that I said this is what I wanted to do, a year and a half ago, that this was the plan, but is it really what I want to do?

It's worse in the fall, since fall is when the 101 language courses begin and this university has so many options that I could wrap myself in new verbs and noun cases for decades, even if I wasn't restricted to one-class-per-quarter. And the problem with that is that, even if I could justify saying, "Oh, fuck it," and doing what I want rather than what I should, could I really justify doing so more than once? So then what about winter, spring, summer? And do I really need yet another handful of brain-stuck phrases and words to add to the giant Second Language Stew of non-fluency that floats around behind my eyes? Few things are so useless as being a linguistic dabbler. How many words do I need for apple, anyway? And then, of course, there's answering the questions of people who persist in thinking I'm both smarter and more with it than I've ever managed to be, and disappointing them that I'm wasting my time rather than learning anything useful.

This is one of those situations where I find myself wanting to just go and demand advice and answers from someone, but that's also incredibly stupid of me. It's not as if I ever had any real use for advice. I ask it, sure, and then realize that all the issues brought up are things I've already thought of. I've always had this tendency to overweigh my choices before choosing almost at random once I determine that, well, it doesn't really matter either way, does it?

Or maybe this is simply an excuse to have an existential crisis again. Meh.

The precise root of this is that there is a half filled Finnish class and a half-filled Swedish class, and they tempt me more than anything else. Especially Finnish, that non-indo-european European language. Well, assuming I could avoid getting maudlin every five seconds as the inexorable slide into Washington's weak and mewling winter is only the very pale shadow of seven months with the ocean frozen solid and every breath steaming at twenty-below.

I can't say I wasn't warned, but I honestly didn't think I'd care once I came home, thought of nine months like an extended vacation. No, living somewhere is different. You can't love a place until you're there so thoroughly as to see the flaws.

Last winter-almost-spring, I discovered that I had forgotten how to walk on ice. Well? It'd been almost five years since I'd left.

The problem is really rather minor, and, as in most cases, is really just a problem with me.

I have about an hour to decide.