As I half-open my insomniac eyes to gaze at the screen, your email finds me in dismay and disarray, disheveled, disillusioned, disheartened, and disgruntled beyond measure. I don’t want to tell tales out of school, but midterm season has reduced me to a shell of my former self, trudging through the muck and mire of psets, readings, and discussions that once seemed just fine, but are, at present, entirely beyond me.

Enter you. Now, I want to be clear: it’s not you. It is, in fact, me. Or rather, the version of me that currently exists — one who stares at emails blankly as if they are written in an ancient lost dialect and immediately feels the need to lie down. Even typing this out just now feels like the chore of a lifetime. Once full of joy and joie de vivre, I no longer possess the wherewithal to keep sending personalized responses to the thunderstorm of samey emails terrorizing my inbox.

Please rest assured that your email has been seen, registered, and filed away in the back corner of my consciousness, where it will remain until I either (a) regain the light in my eyes, or (b) I am forced by circumstance to acknowledge it under duress. Typically, this happens at 2:00 a.m. when I awake from my peaceful slumber in a fright.

If you’re here to ask me to do something I don’t really have a choice in doing, then fear not, for my ramshackle state has not yet rendered me derelict in my duties. My better judgment is working overtime to force me to do whatever bare minimum is required to crawl to summer break. I might whine and mope (oh, woe is me, etcetera, etcetera), but you can bet your life savings on me getting it done. Some way, somehow… all the way to the end of the semester.

May it all seem like a distant nightmare then.

To cocktails, beaches, and the sun.

With best regards, yours truly.