varying degrees of light

I feel like there's more of a desire to read - blogs in particular - when the semester is wrapping up and we're up to our chins with review reads, take home test questions, research and the like. There's an increased intake of information and it needs to even out with something more elusive and less blatant.
Unless you're taking literature classes this semester.
I lay in bed the other morning and my instincts began to relay the entire year back to me. It was exhausting and I feel like I've grown a lot.
A big part of why I'm writing this right now is because I appreciate others that post often.
Another reason is because, as stated before, I think it's more needed now.
A third is because I think I have something to say, and I'll try my best to bring it forth, but I seem to be struggling.
I feel like a lot of my friends have grown a lot as well, and it's lucky for me to be able to see that. Others haven't - they've remained stagnant. That's the best way I can think to put and if you ever needed a reason to call me a jerk, or a liar, there it is.
The chairs are all set up in the auditorium. In two days, they will be filled and everyone will struggle with how to express what's screaming inside of them. I don't like goodbyes and I'd much rather be the one person on campus packing up and leaving to start my summer before everyone else does.
I'm tired, I guess.
Maybe I've just begun to feel how others have for months already - that this campus is too small, that the same varying groups of people start to chip away at your joy and sanity, that living in a close-knit community means giving up a notion of freedom.
It is, they do and it does to a varying extent.
I have so many papers to write - one of them will discuss the use of fate and decision in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles and No Country for Old Men. Status and ambition are always the big deal - Americans didn't invent it. And I've been relaying these stories against each other for days now. Tess runs the gauntlet for the entire span of the novel and is manipulated by exterior characters and her own morals. Llewelyn only smiles as he tells his wife that she doesn't work at Wal-Mart anymore. "You are retired." But after he finds two million dollars in cash, and though he knows better, he still gets out of bed to bring water to that dying man in the truck. He is also aware of his morals, keeping up with them. It's a stretch to say completely that Tess and Llewelyn both gave/lost their lives because of them, but I wouldn't agree that their initial good intentions had very much significance to their common end.
(spoilers)
Why is it, Coen Brothers, that you bluntly kill off the guy we're rooting for right after he smiles at that lady by the pool?
"I'm waiting here for my wife." Holds up his left hand, the ring shining in the sun as if to say Sorry ladies, I'm taken.
"I can bring the beers out here. You can stay married."
"No ma'am. I know what beer leads to."
And then she laughs, sits up and tilts her head (note to guys: when the lady tilts her head, DANGER).
"Beer leads to more beer."
And then he smiles, and then he's dead. And, cruelly, the shot we're given to understand that is dark and at an awkward angle - we don't clearly see his face.