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.