It’s Monday, Jan. 9, and school starts in two days. While most UNA students have been hiding out in their hometowns or traveling for the holidays, I’ve been back and forth between Huntsville and Florence, working weekends and hanging out in my apartment.

   Florence has been very quiet. Downtown has been a ghost town except for when the bars are open, and campus has been dead. The morning fog makes the area look even spookier, doing nothing to ease my pre-semester anxiety.

  In other words – the quiet feels like a foreboding of the semester to come.

    By the time this paper comes out, campus will be all hustle and bustle, with students running from the GUC to class to the library trying to start the semester off on the right foot.

    No more road trips, Christmas presents or New Year’s kisses. Instead, we’ll be drowning in schoolwork while working our outside jobs, and at the same time trying to maintain some semblance of a social life.

   But we’ll find a way to survive, because after all we’re college kids – also known as the most resilient species of people to ever walk the earth.

  Before we know it, this semester, too, will end with most of us escaping with As or Bs by the skin of our teeth.

   I hope you all enjoyed your moment of silence.