Bah.

I hate this school. I can't wait to get out of here. It's Friday of the week before finals and the internet is down across campus. Wireless and wired. I have a paper due Monday and one due a week from tomorrow and surprise, I can't get anything done because I can't do research. Granted I have some books from the library but those only go so far because they only mention my topic in passing. I can't even make productive use of my time right now and pack or clean my room or something because it's after 1pm and my roommate is asleep. All she ever does is sleep and it's ridiculous. She'll disappear late in the afternoon or evening and not come back til 3 am (or later), make as much noise as she possibly can, and then sleep until well into the afternoon. She complains that she's doing badly in her classes and can't afford to repeat any of them, but she never goes to class. It's ridiculous. I'm so sick of this place and all of the idiot people who populate it. I'd like to say this wasn't an awful choice but now that I'm at the tail end of it, I don't know if I can honestly say that.

The hilarious part is that AUI is supposed to be the best university in Morocco. If that's the case, no wonder the country can't figure out up from down. AUI students are supposed to be the best and brightest but it's all a joke. They're more worried about the clothes they're wearing (if you can call them clothes) and having the newest (fake) designer purse or about going out to the (seriously awful) clubs in Ifrane and picking up guys/girls.

I'm not going to feel guilty anymore about not liking it here. I think we all feel that way. Morocco is great, but you know what? My day-to-day routine does not involve Morocco, it involves the stupidity of this school. When you tell people you're studying in Morocco they're all like, “You're going to have a great time! It's so exotic! You're going to learn so much about the culture and the people and it's going to be great and you're going to remember it for the rest of your life!” and all kinds of other things that make you feel like you have to like it. And you know what? I don't. I HATE this school. And this school makes up most of my Moroccan experience. So no, I'm not enjoying it here. And if I remember it it will largely be because it's so horrible. The internet is entirely unreliable and doing any kind of work is a challenge because you never know if it's going to cut out on you. Skype is a joke; what kind of phone call is it when you have to reconnect every three minutes? The library has the most ridiculous hours; it doesn't open til noon on Saturday (then closes at 6) and 2pm on Sunday. When they say it closes at 6, they mean they start kicking people out at 5:40 so they can leave at 6 if not before. Books are never where they should be. And even though finals don't end til next Saturday? All books are due back on Tuesday and can't be checked out after that date. And yes, they're serious. Not to mention that no one seems to understand the concept of being quiet in a library. Talking on the phone is not ever a quiet thing. Even the staff aren't quiet. There's almost no point in going, except since we can only check out SIX books at once, it's generally all but required to sit there and collect a pile of books if you want to get anything done. And then you have to hide them or recollect them the next day if you don't finish with them. It's awesome.

The food is barely worth talking about. It goes without saying that college food is low quality, but this place is sub-par. None of the food has any nutritional value (the vegetables are mush) and a good bit of it is fried. On the weekends they close two of the restaurant options, leaving us to choices of fried things or more fried things. There's no variety at all and when there's fruit, it looks rotten. What's the point?

The health center is anything but. They don't listen when you tell them what symptoms you have, insist that you have some other ailment, and if they give you medication at all they pull it out of a drawer full of medicines, give you a sheet of pills without telling you what it is or why you're supposed to take it, and tell you to come back only after you've finished the medicine if you've not gotten better. I'm pretty sure I'm anemic right now, and when I went to the health center after spring break they gave me a steroid “to fight fatigue”and told me to come back in ten days. And by steroid I mean when I Googled the name of it it was actually being sold on websites that cater to bodybuilders and is used to be able to prolong your workouts and get better results. I went back and told them I wasn't taking it, and they put it right back in the magic drawer. Are. You. Serious? And the best part is I won't even know whether or not I am anemic or if it's something else til I go home because they can't even do the simple blood test here! I'd have to go to Fes early in the morning someday to get it done. And it may not be the best life choice not do get it done, but you know what? I'm not going to a hospital anywhere in Morocco. I avoid AUI's health center as much as a possibly can; there's no way I'm going anywhere near any other supposed medical institution. Not a chance.

And then there's the fact that it's so repressive. I understand that parents don't want their kids going crazy, but you know what? If they're going to be delinquents once they leave the house, the problem lies in how they were raised. Having the school act like a babysitter because your adult children don't know how to behave themselves? Not solving the problem. Especially not when there're two liquor stores, two night clubs, and bars in town that all sell alcohol to anyone (except during Ramadan and Muslim holidays, because legal trouble would ensue). So really, what's the point of barring alcohol on campus? Especially when people bring it in anyway. And this segregated dorms business is absolutely ridiculous. There are very few places on campus where you can actually hang out with friends of the opposite sex: restaurants, outside, the lobby of my building, the joke of a student center, or in the hallways of the few class buildings that happen to have chairs or couches. What people want to do behind closed doors is their business; we're all adults here. I just want to be able to go somewhere to watch a movie or something without having to drown out the noise of a dozen other people doing the same thing in the same place or worrying that we could actually be expelled because people are stuck in the middle ages. (Do I really worry about it? No. But they will actually expel you should you get caught.) And really, it should say something to the parents that when AUI started filtering the internet, the main complaint of the Facebook group against said filter was that they could no longer download or watch porn.

It's not like I thought coming to a third-world country was going to be made of rainbows and butterflies and unicorns. Of course I knew there would be restrictions to what we could do and where we could go. And I knew sexual harassment would be a problem. But when it gets to the point that we go out expecting it, that cars slowing down and driving along side us with guys yelling out the window is more an annoyance now than a cause for concern, and that a bunch of kids who couldn't have been more than 14 years old found it perfectly acceptable to badger us at a soccer game, that's when it gets absolutely ridiculous. And I know Jordan will be the same if not worse. But Morocco is supposed to be one of the most liberal countries in the MENA region. There's no reason for this other than sheer stupidity. I'm so tired of everything here.

It's 2pm now. My roommate is still asleep. And still manages to be obnoxious while sleeping. The internet still doesn't work and I'm getting sick of playing this stupid game of “will it or won't it?” The best part is that it says I'm actually connected to the network, that the speed of the connection is very good, but that there's limited connectivity. Someone explain to me how this works? I went down to the IT people thinking maybe it was just my dinosaur of a computer being temperamental. Three other girls were down there and one finally explained to me that the guy was telling them in darija that yes, the internet is down all across campus but they've identified the problem and it should be fixed by this afternoon. This was an hour and a half ago? They probably went to lunch and decided they'd fix it later. Thanks so much.

It's not helping my mood knowing that right now I should be 15 days away from graduating. I know this is my choice and that obviously there's good reason for it, because studying abroad three semesters can't really hurt my resume or whatever, but I am so. Over. School. I want to get out of here. I want to be done and move on with my life. Knowing that most of my friends at VCU are graduating in two weeks doesn't help. Nor does knowing that I could have graduated last spring. Again, this was my choice and it's for the best, but it doesn't make it any better. I'm to the point where I don't care what I get in my classes, so long as I can pass and get credit for them at VCU so I don't have to repeat them and stay a full year. Sure it bothers me that I have this attitude now, because I've always made real attempts at school and tried to do my best. Before I went to France (the grades from there are an entirely different story because VCU's system is stupid), I had two B's in chemistry and a C in calculus that I learned on my own. Everything else was an A and I was proud of it. The fact that all I care about is getting C's in my classes now is not a good thing at all. And I can't bring myself to care. I just want out of this stupid school. I have two papers and two exams standing between me and freedom and they can't get over fast enough.

I wish I could write papers as fast as I've written this 2.5-page Word document. But I've got half a page of one of my papers written so far, and I have a few books I can try to mine for information before the internet comes back, if at all. If it doesn't I swear I will destroy something. And considering it's 2:20 now, I'm also done being the conscientious roommate. My stuff needs to get packed, and if AUI won't let me use the internet to work on my papers, then I'm going to pack all my stuff and not care how loud I happen to be. I'm not planning my day around other people who do nothing but waste oxygen.