{"id":3829,"date":"2018-09-10T20:00:47","date_gmt":"2018-09-11T00:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.pages.roanoke.edu\/?p=3829"},"modified":"2018-09-10T20:00:47","modified_gmt":"2018-09-11T00:00:47","slug":"temporarily-optimistic-student-comes-back-to-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=3829","title":{"rendered":"Temporarily Optimistic Student Comes Back to Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Written by Joe Krzyston<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a short-lived burst of back-to-school optimism, a Roanoke College student allowed himself to think, for one fleeting moment, that this might really be his year. The student, a senior, agreed to be interviewed confidentially, out of fear of embarrassment. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cLook,\u201d the student said, \u201cI know it was dumb to think. I know none of the first three years were my years, and I know that means the fourth one isn\u2019t likely to be either, but for a moment, as I walked down the sidewalk by Monterey, I entertained the notion that this year might really be a good one. I\u2026\u201d He looked off distantly before continuing. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I was thinking, but it felt good to believe it for a second, you know?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What shook the sweet, simple young lad from his na\u00efve daydream?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cWell, in my first couple minutes back on campus I broke a strap on my backpack, spilled coffee on myself, and made really awkward eye contact with a beautiful girl in the library, and I think we both felt weird about it. So the bubble actually burst quite quickly.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite the return of reality, the student is in reasonably high spirits.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cYeah, it\u2019s actually sort of nice to just accept the way things are, you know? I\u2019m let down every year, but this time it happened really quickly, and that\u2019s good in a way. Better to rip the band-aid off right away, right?\u201d The student gazed optimistically toward the horizon, making one more adorably optimistic remark. \u201cIt\u2019s not like things can get a whole lot worse, right?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Joe Krzyston In a short-lived burst of back-to-school optimism, a Roanoke College student allowed himself to think, for one fleeting moment, that this might really be his year. The student, a senior, agreed to be interviewed confidentially, out of fear of embarrassment. \u201cLook,\u201d the student said, \u201cI know it was dumb to think&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/images.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}