I’ve never written a column on the train before. Usually the two-hour trip back to the city is just too pleasant to be productive and I end up spending the entire time with my headphones on looking out the window. But I’ve been avoiding my work like the plague lately. I feel compelled to get something done, and as far as writing goes, this is by far the most enjoyable task. And this way, I can keep putting off those painful 12-page papers.

New York City is not a good place to be if you’ve got finals breathing down your neck. The city is a paradise of distractions, and in the past two weeks, my friends and I have indulged in altogether too many of them. It all started when we got back from spring break, and we went to a concert on a Monday night. It was a last minute, frenzied dash to Brooklyn for a few hours of R&B (the artist we saw was Saba), and of course, we didn’t do a lick of homework. But I remember walking back, there was something uncannily peaceful about being out so late on a weekday. It was like we were walking against the grain, seeing a side of the city we weren’t meant to see.

That’s probably why we did it again the following Monday. My friend and I went to the movies that night, craving the popcorn more than anything. We walked down to the East Village to see Everything Everywhere All at Once, a movie that had taken over our TikTok feeds, that had my film major friends in a stranglehold. It was a meme from start to finish, made for my generation, funny and devastating at the same time. We thought it a fair sacrifice of our sleep schedules to see it.

Somehow in between all of this, we found the time to see a Broadway show. There aren’t too many perks to being a Hunter student, but one of them is discounted theater tickets. Last week we finally took advantage of that and a whole group of us went to see Beetlejuice, the self-proclaimed “show about death.” That was a real treat, it made me miss my days at the Shadowland Acting Academy, the musicals we did at Ellenville High School. That was a long way from Broadway, but just as exhilarating.

Now there are only two more weeks of the semester; things are getting down to the wire. And yet still, yesterday we spent an hour calculating how much it might cost us to go to Las Vegas in September and see our favorite band headline the Life is Beautiful festival. It’s a dazzling prospect, but we haven’t decided whether we’re brave enough to do it.

So clearly, we’ve been suffering from crippling cases of procrastination lately. But we no longer have the freedom to succumb to the city. My final term papers are due this week, and so here I am, being productive on the train. Penn station is one transfer away, and I have one piece of writing over and done.