Senior year, or Junior year, of high school we had to write transcendental essays about nature.  I titled one of them “To Fall, in Battle”, which I thought was very clever, because it’s like dedicating the essay to the season (we wrote four nature essays for the four seasons) that it was about, and also an acknowledgment of how fall is a battle between the life that is summer and the aging and whithering that leads to winter, and how summer eventually loses and gives way to winter.  I thought it was very clever.  I have a facebook album titled after that now, too.  Pretty much no one ever gets it.

It’s also an acknowledgment that Fall is, from an academic perspective, almost always damn hard.   About every fourth year you’re preparing to apply to schools again.  About every fourth year you are actually applying to schools again.  You’re always jumping into gear and organizing and gathering power.  It’s always darned hard.  And the thing is, you can either make it harder by hitting it like heck, and getting things done, and getting them done amazingly, and making decisions about what to do and doing everything you’ve decided on, or you can not, and if you don’t, it may well be easier or at least just as valid a choice, but I’ve never done that, and I’m not about to start now.

Nope, fall’s going to be damn hard-core, and I imagine I’ll write about all of it.  But that’s okay, you’ll love it, it’ll be frustratingly comical for you as a reader, I’m sure, and you’ll be relieved when it’s all over and we know what’s happening next year.