You try to wake up

Deciding this might very well be a dream, and that you might very well have just been studying for too long; you decide the most prudent thing to do, would be to try and wake up. Yes. This has to be an illusion right? People do not just find themselves in a college dorm in New York one minute, and then in some gods-forsaken desert the next.
You chuckle, hoping to convince yourself as you pinch yourself hard, and wince from the nerve-racking pain.
You groan, and open one eye. Damn. Still desert all around you. Still a harsh sun beating down unforgivingly.
You sigh, and except the truth for what it is. This is real. Somehow, by some and for some reason, you had been transported from your comfortable lodgings in New York, to an unforgiving desert in the land of who-knows-where.