Now that the first week of the semester is over, how do you feel? After the rush of getting to campus, finding parking spots, crossing campus in the prostrating heat and humidity, getting to classes, finding classrooms, finding a seat, getting up and leaving to find the right classroom, buying books, fixing schedules, changing schedules, registering cars, moving into dorms or apartments, eating cafeteria food for the first time, getting meningitis shots, learning or re-learning Blackboard, printing syllabi and getting into a perpetually abnormal routine, what’s there left in you? Can you recover from all that in just one weekend? Me? I’m a little frayed.

It’s like riding a roller coaster and coming out of a loop: There’s always another climb after the bottom. It’s like adrenalin released by your adrenal glands coursing through your selectively dilated arteries and stimulating your selectively vital organs: After the rush, there’s always adrenalin breakdown and letdown. Its like Frodo and Gollum at the fires of Mount Doom: After the Ring struggle, there’s always the return to the Shire. It’s like Friday night out at college: There’s always Saturday morning.

If you’re feeling this way, like me, perhaps you’re having a “doldrum.”

The word doldrum comes from the phrase “dull room,” which is intended to mean “a state of mind without excitement.” So, it’s not like you can mount a poster of multi-colored pepper pods (unless you’re majoring in culinary arts) or scantily clad, silicone-enhanced anatomicals (unless you’re majoring in pre-med) on the wall of your bedroom to spruce things up. Besides, the images on neither of those two poster’s types work on the mind.

I think that it’s fine to have a doldrum. A doldrum is a time for mind and body to sit back and repair itself from the stresses of things like physiological traumas and first weeks of semesters. If your body wouldn’t sit back and repair, you wouldn’t be able to tolerate or otherwise enjoy the next coaster loop or Ring struggle or Friday night.

Apparently, however, some people feel differently about having a doldrum. I looked it up in a Webster’s dictionary, and I could only find the term pluralized. Apparently, Webster’s thinks that you can only have “the doldrums” and cannot be suffering from a single “doldrum.” Even the thinks-it-knows-it-all Microsoft Word dictionary on autocorrect will not allow me to tell you that I have a single doldrum; each time I type it, it magically appears with a terminal “s.”

Truth be told, I’m not really “in the doldrums” but only close enough there to claim just the one. It would seem greedy to claim I have the full doldrums when I don’t, despite what Webster’s wants me to tell you and what Microsoft impolitely insists that I tell you.

Maybe it’s mandatory for the word “doldrum” to have a terminal “s” because having only one doldrum may actually be “terminal.” Like freckles: If you have a lot, you’re okay. If you suddenly have one, then maybe it should be removed. Or at least biopsied.

Can a doldrum be biopsied? And if I want to get just the one checked, can I get my doldrum “opsied” instead of “biopsied”? Seems wasteful to have a double “opsy” when I have just the one doldrum. Somehow, I think that that logic would warm the cockles of my HMO’s heart.

Or at least it should. My HMO must have only one cockle. It’s always asking me for more money. Like at the end of last week when I visited my primary care physician for a doldrum and I got charged for more than one.

And what about viruses? If you have a chicken pock, does that mean you’ve not developed immunity and will get the full-blown pox later in life? And, because the same virus causes chicken pox and shingles, will you luckily suffer from only a single shingle later in life if you’ve had only one pock?

And why do we have to study “mathematics”? If we’re allowed to register for one history at a time, or one literature at a time, or one science at a time, why are we forced to register for more than one mathematic?

And “genetics”! If you’re from a single-parent family, wouldn’t you have only one genetic? And what about your clone?

And after the cinematic release, the VHS tapes, the remastered tapes, the director’s cut tapes, the DVD version, the remastered DVD version, and the extended remastered director’s cut DVD version, which contains 16 hours of never-before seen footage and 16 documentaries with subtitles in 16 languages, don’t you wish there was only one Star War?

If someone out there can find a Japanese restaurant either on Earth or elsewhere in the Federation that is willing to serve single portions of their food, please let me know. When you want to try signature Japanese cuisine for the first time, you’d like to try single portions, right? Then why must you order “sushi” and not a single “sushium”? Or a “sashimium” instead of sashimi? I’d even pay for the premium sashimium just for the opportunity to have a single serving!

I know that you know about single servings. Back in the day, your mother threatened you into eating your vegetables, you coyly ate one “vegetable” and dropped the rest on the floor where the family dog (your savior at the moment) licked up after you and returned you to good graces and, apparently, good health. In case you were raised north of Baton Rouge and are having difficulty following the argument in this paragraph, try substituting “vegetables” and “vegetable” with “vittles” and “vittle.” And if you need further help, try substituting the dog.

As long as we’re asking such questions: Why “Nicholls”? How many Nicholls’ have we ever heard about? There was only the one-and-only Francis Tillou. And, given the loss of his left arm and left foot from war injuries, there was technically less than one Nicholl, a point well taken by the man himself. Once on the campaign trail in 1888, he quipped that he was running for governor because he “was too one-sided to be a judge.”

And that little story would be a “trivium”(a single, discrete piece of trivia. Even trivia can be had in increments of one!).

So what’s wrong with a person suffering from only one doldrum every now and then? Nothing, I say. Embrace the masses: We’re all in this together. (If so, I guess that would be just the one “mass.”) You’re not alone when you’re having a doldrum.

Heaven forbid I’m dead wrong all at once, so trust me. It’s not like you live in a little house in Vienna with a hundred cable cars of people looking after you and not watching you fall away. You know how to save your life.

So, when you’re feeling frayed, don’t be afraid. Everyone knows you’re in over your head. Over your head. Apparently, however, there’s eight seconds left in overtime, and that’s plenty of time for your comeback.