Pass the (Metaphorical) Salt, Please

Another semester has started (in case you missed my tweets of despair the last couple of days), and it's my last one as an undergrad. On the one hand, I feel like I just got here. On the other hand, it's like I've been here forever and I'd like to just graduate already. But here at the beginning of the semester, everything feels fresh and new and I'm all full of hope to finally have a 4.0 semester before I move on to grad school.

In case you missed it, I'm a Rhetoric and Writing major with a side order of Linguistics. And if I may push the food metaphor, Linguistics has turned out to be the greasy french fries of my academic meal. I forget what the linguistics were like last time, so I order them again. The first few bites are great, but I'm not even halfway through my rhetoric burger before I realise that I'm starting to feel full. But I press on, because I already paid for the linguistics, and maybe there's a lone learning antioxidant in there somewhere that will manage to give me some intellectual benefits. But by the end, I'm left with greasy fingers and a lower grade than I was hoping for, and I know that I would have enjoyed the rhetoric a lot more without adding on the extra calories.

Source.

It's not a perfect metaphor, because unlike greasy fries, there's nothing inherently bad about linguistics. I'm just not good at it. I'm hoping this semester's linguistics course will finally be the one that comes with mustard and ketchup so I can at least enjoy it while it makes my schedule bloated.

And in other news, the Shakespeare class I was so excited about turned out to be impossible. I've changed my schedule three times this week, with one more to go next week, because I'm doing an independent research project through the Undergraduate Studies department and they have to register me, which they said they will do on Monday. Here goes.

Do you have something that you aren't gifted at that keeps sucking you back in? Any suggestions for some metaphorical ketchup?