Two Degrees February 6, 2009

I saw the history adviser yesterday.  I actually made the decision to skip my lit theory class (it was WAY to nice and warm to be discussing Communist writings) and then wandered over to the history offices, met a secretary and asked if the adviser was in.  No appointment, just walked up.  He was in and available, so I introduced myself and explained my situation.  He explained that I could get a second major (where I just worry about the major requirements) but if I took one additional class to the major requirements, I could get a second degree.  Having two degrees is a little more impressive than having one.  After going back and forth with my mom on it and crunching some numbers and asking some questions, I can graduate in July 2010 with two degrees instead of May 2010 with one degree.  Since I don’t enroll for a few more weeks, I’m not going to do anything official yet.

I’m feeling really good about this decision.  Having two majors is always something I wished I was going to do.  Back when I wanted to do International Business at a private college I didn’t go to, it was a double major because you got a business and a language degree.  Pushing myself academically is what I’ve always done and never regretted.  And I feel like since I got to college, I haven’t really done that.  At least not in the right ways.

I need to eat a quick bite and then get back to campus for French.

Calmed Down February 5, 2009

Yeah, yesterday’s post was really harsh.  I had a lot of raw emotions and vented them without much self-monitoring, which is one of the reasons I have a blog.  I’m not saying that things are magically better; they’re not.  They’re about where they were yesterday.  Maybe even worse actually because I tried to talk to someone about some of the things I’ve written lately in my journal that have worried me a little, but they didn’t seem to get what I was saying.  And I didn’t a very good job at voicing my concern in the first place.

Yesterday was te first time I’ve spent quite a bit of time with friends in a while.  After class, I went across campus with someone to get their car and they gave me a ride home.  Then I ran to Starbucks with a second friend.  Then a third friend came over for a few hours of homework and talking and dinner.  I had to fight to not totally unburden myself to them.  I think it’s an addiction for me almost.  I’m not saying that I want to completely shut myself off from my friends, but I think it’s important for me to get through this without them.

Miraculously, this morning I don’t feel required to do much of anything to get ready for the day.  I’m taking the morning off.  I’m writing a blog post, reading for me, making a nice lunch, and then going to history.  I’ve decided to skip my lit theory class because I don’t want to deal with Marx and Engels today, or ever really.

History is something else I want to talk about.  I’m going to visit the history adviser to see if he can work some sort of magic with my credits so I can double major in history and English.  If I weren’t in the lit theory class and planning on doing an independent study in the fall with a professor, I’d drop my English major in a heartbeat.  I really hope it can be done because I love history and I’m really good at it too.

Despite the constant fear of the plates crashing around me, I see a lot of possibilities and opportunities on the horizon.  Things have to get better eventually.  They can’t always be like this.  I’d love to do a massive reorganization of my life right now, right this second, but that’s not quite possible.  It will have to wait a little while longer.

For now, I’m just going to keep juggling and dreaming…

Juggling February 4, 2009

I fee like I’m juggling about 10 different china plates right now and no one can catch one to help lighten the load–it’s all stuff I have to do myself, like homework/school (which accounts for about 3 plates), chores, family, and friends, otherwise I’d happily let someone take over a couple of the plates.  On the other hand, I think it’s good that I don’t have a boyfriend and I’m withholding information and details from my friends because it’s forcing me to deal with my stuff rather than unburden it onto friends or use them and their problems as a distraction.  I remarked this weekend that I’m amazing at telling other people what to do with their own lives, but I suck at ordering my own.  I rather feel like Rory Gilmore in the episode after she steals the yacht and it’s finals and she just sits there, thinking.

The roommate situation has finally taken its course.  The high point on tensions was when she measured the living room and drew a diagram saying this half was hers, that half was mine.  So I told her that if she wanted to do this, then she needed to buy her own shower curtain and rod, cleaning supplies, and other sundry items that people use every day, just to show her how stupid she was being.  I said that we were both going to come up with lists of things the other person could do to make life easier, such as not talking to me before I’ve had coffee, giving me from 9-10 each night as alone time (only to be disrupted in case of emergencies), and not rearranging things without talking to me first.  (This was something I had to be very explicit on because she took “don’t move my things” as “don’t touch my things” and “don’t rearrange things” as “you can rearrange them and then talk to me” [of course, this interpretation made me the a-hole for moving things back without talking to her after she rearranged them in the first place])  Things seem to be doing better.  I still can’t wait until the end of the year so I can get my own apartment.

I had found a routine that worked for me.  But this weekend screwed things up.  A friend came to visit Friday night and didn’t leave until 3 the next afternoon and then I had to head home, where I didn’t do any homework and was there for less than 24 hours.  I’m not saying  that I wish the friend hadn’t visited, but that I wish I hadn’t have been committed to going home.  I think I have to stay here this weekend beause I have a study group on Friday night and a ton of homework to catch up on.  Although I’d love to go home because I think my roommate’s parents are coming up and I don’t think they like me one bit (this feeling dates to before I was blamed for the Cold War and brought up on War Crimes charges).

This whole post makes me so angry.  I hate feeling like I’m complaining all of the time about things, but I’m just not happy with the way things are and there’s nothing I can do about them at this point, except possibly make myself think I’m happy by pretending to be happy.  I feel guilty for taking an hour each day to read for me.  I feel guilted into hanging out with various friends each week.  I am exhausted by the amount of homework I have, which never gets done to my satisfaction.  I feel burdened by having to make a visible effort to save the English Club, which is a dying institution and I want to just let it die.  I feel like I have to talk to my family and keep communication open with them, even though conversations with them seem to drag on forever and usually end in an argument with my mom (or with my stifling my feelings of irritation when she tries to help, when all I want to do is rant).  And then there’s all of the stuff I have do to, like eating and showering and keeping my room somewhat clean and sleeping.  All of these plates are things that I have to do myself.  I can’t have someone else eat for me.  I can’t have someone else do my homework.  I can’t pass the English Club off to someone else, because everyone else has already proven that they don’t care enough to do anything leadership-wise.  I can’t send someone else to hang out with my friends and I’m getting so tired of continually making plans and then realizing that I really don’t have time for them (because school really does come first, despite what everyone else tells you).

Relax, you say?  Calm down, you say?  I would love to.  But I just can’t right now.  (I think that’s one of the things that I hate most is people telling me to calm down.  My roommate said it and I wanted to hit her, or at the very least tell her off, for trying to tell me how to live.  It’s like people think that I actually want to be this busy and stressed out.  But I am at college for school and school happens to take a lot of my time.)

The Weekend January 24, 2009

Things aren’t looking much better this weekend in any area really.  I went to the hitsory class for the first time on Tuesday.  I love it!  And two people that I really get along with and can count on are in there, which makes me so happy.  But unfortunately, I missed it on Thursday.  I had a meeting of the English Club officers on Thursday during the break when there are no classes (so that way, no one could say they have class).  Since it was a really nice day, I decided to wear these new slip on shoes.  Bad idea.  I barely got onto campus before I felt like my feet were going to fall off, so I tried wearing them a different way.  No better.  Because instead of just my toes hurting, my heels hurt too.  But I was running late, so I had to hurry.  I got to the meeting place and had to use 5 bandaids to try to cover blisters or places where the skin had rubbed off (gross, I know).  To top it all off, only the two advisers showed up.  One of my friends sent me a text saying they had no way of getting there.  But no one else sent an email or a text or smoke signal saying they couldn’t come.  The meeting was a waste of time.  I tried to hobble off to class, but wasn’t even halfway there before the bell started ringing and I couldn’t go any faster than I was.  I took my shoes off and walked back to my house barefoot.  I missed history and was thinking I’d miss my other class too when I realized that I could get a different pair of shoes and make it to my second class.

The roommate situation is not getting any better.  Things escalated by text message on Tuesday, especially after I refused to miss the inauguration to take her her wallet (she wanted McCain to win, so she was in a bad mood already).  Anyway, she asked if there was a way we could live the next 5 months without her wanting to kill me, because that’s honestly how she felt (her words, not mine) so I told her that not moving my stuff would be a good place to start.  She now has her own dishes and silverware.  And she’s moving selected items out of common areas–her bathroom stuff out of the shelf that came with the house, her TV and VCR/DVD out of the living room (which only she watches), stuff like that.  She seems to have forgotten that I own the bookshelf in the living room on which all of her books live.  I’m contemplating reminding her of this, even though I don’t need the shelf and don’t care if her stuff is on it.  I’m not particularly concerned about any of this stuff though as long as she keeps paying her half of the bills.

I’ve got the house to myself for the day, which is pretty nice.  I’m planning on vacuuming and mopping and rearranging the living room.  I’m thinking of moving the dining room table into the living room and rearranging some stuff in the kitchen.  And, of course, homework.  I’m still trying to find a routine for the semester.  I really want to do my Wednesday homework on Monday night, my Thursday homework on Tuesday and so on because that would totally free up my weekend.  But…I gave myself last night off, which was really nice.  So I may do Monday homework on Saturdays.  I’m determined to find a way to get reading time in every day.  I tried reading for a while after I got back from classes on Friday, but that didn’t work so well because I got out of the school/homework mindset and didn’t do homework.  At least I’m trying to figure things out.

This past week on GoodReads, one of my groups invented a reading challenge for the school year.  There are different categories worth different amounts of points and you find a book that fits in the category and read it.  There’s a prize at the end for the person with the most points.  I like it because it’s getting me to read different kinds of books than I ever really thought of reading.  I’ll post my list after I tweak it a bit.

OK.  Back to cleaning.

The White Rabbit January 20, 2009

I know that that’s somehow a drug reference, but I’m not meaning to use it as one.  I feel like the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland (the movie because I haven’t read the book).  I feel like I need to hurry, hurry, hurry; no time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!

I dropped my soc class because I was tired of the rampant atheism of the professor and the articles we were reading.  All he had to say on the first day was, “God is not going to be discussed in this class; we’re going to deal with what has been proven” and then never bring up God again.  But no.  He seems to go out of his way to say that there is no God or to somehow slight God, which I have a problem with.  If we can’t mention God and our belief systems in our papers, God should be left entirely out of the course.  I was never really interested in sociology in the first place.  I took intro to soc as a freshman because my mom majored in sociology.  I took this professor in the fall of 2007 and it was fun.  Both of my parents had him in college, which is why I decided to take this professor’s other class.  But I can’t deal with it this time around.  So I enrolled in a Jacksonian Era history class, which I think I’ll love.  As my dad put it, I have a history of liking history classes.  (He’s such a nerd sometimes [especially if your definition of sometimes means 85% of the time])  I need to return my soc book today and get my history books, preferably before class at 12:30.

All of that was a positive change for me.

I’m feeling overwhelmed in other areas of my life.  It’s not really school that’s the problem.  I really like my classes (or acknowledge that I have to take them eventually to graduate), especially since I added the history class.  It’s everything else.  My room feels suffocating to me.  I think that’s because it’s a mess right now.  I’m afraid I’ll find myself under an avalanche of books and papers and clothes and purses and shoes.  I thought I had my room under control, but I guess not.

The house feels suffocating too.  My roommate moves and I can hear it.  It sounds like her TV is in my room, even though it’s not really loud.  I feel like I’m never alone.  And I’m annoyed because moved a cabinet I told her I wasn’t sure I wanted moved (and put everything back in the wrong place), but she didn’t vacuum and mop like she said she would.  I’m so mad that I don’t even want to see her to call her on it.

And I feel like such an empty shell of a person.  I feel used and empty and dry, among other things.  I feel like I’m too much and I need to hold part of myself back.  I feel over-valued and under-valued by people.  But it doesn’t all work out in the end, because those who over-value me over-value in different areas than the other people under-value me.

Books are another problem.  I feel myself wanting to take on too much.  I started reading The Fountainhead, which isn’t on my contractual list, but I’m reading it as a prelude to Atlas Shrugged.  And one of my book groups is reading Emma for its February group and I want to read and discuss with them, even though I can voice my opinion at any time.  Another group is starting War and Peace, of which I only have to read 15 pages a day to stay with the group.  Then I want to be reading Walden and the Teddy Roosevelt biography and Anna Karenina (so that I can be done with it) and a journal, either Sylvia Plath or Susan Sontag (I keep going back and forth between the two).  Logically, I know this is all too much.  It’s 8 books (assuming I read both journals at once), plus all of the reading and preparation I need to do for class.

I need to drop some things, but I don’t know which.  Maybe I should drop The Fountainhead because it’s a dense book and I started reading it one summer and it carried over into school and I felt like what I read during school went over my head.  I should drop one of the journals for sure, probably Susan Sontag’s because her is so philosophically dense that it takes me a while to get through it.  And Anna Karenina should probably stay on the backburner like it did all of winter break, but I so don’t want to lose my place with it because I’m almost halfway (finally).  That leaves me with 5 books, which still seems like too much.  But I guess when you consider the fact that I only have small increments of time to read, it’s not so awful to switch around books, especially if I don’t carry them all with me so I can read to my mood.

I feel like I’m all over the place.  I want to start a vision board (if what I’m wanting to do it called a vision board) in my room.  I want to hang up a piece of poster board and glue stuff to it.  “What do I want?” will be the central theme.  But I don’t know what I want.  And I don’t have the time to flip through many magazines to find pictures to hang up.

OK.  Time to decompress and stop thinking…

My Contract Part 1 January 14, 2009

I’ve been watching the Oprah Best Life week webcasts and I watched the shows last week or taped them as need be.  And she talked about making and signing a contract with herself regarding not drinking any alcohol for a month or a year or some period of time.  It was in writing, so it was there to remind her of her promise.  I need to do something like that.  I want to make 2009 all about being healthy and reading a lot of good books.

As for getting healthy, I plan on following Bob Greene’s plan as laid out in The Best Life Diet and on Oprah.com (I haven’t explored his portion of the site yet).  One of the things mentioned is that you must give up alcohol and you can’t allow yourself any exceptions for one month.  Since I plan on celebrating on January 20 with some champagne, I need to wait until then to sign a Best Life Diet contract for myself.  And that’s fine with me.  It gives me a few days to read through the book and not be surprised when I start.  So, the getting healthy part will be part 2 of my contract and that will happen next week.

But I can sign the book part of my contract right now.  Therefore, I need to draw up my contract.  I’m not going to put any penalties on it because taking away my books for not fulfilling the contract sort of defeats the purpose of reading more.  I am going to commit myself to reading:

All the King’s Men

Anna Karenina (still haven’t finished that one, but I will finish this year)

Atlas Shrugged

The Beautiful and the Damned

Brideshead Revisited

The Chronicles of Narnia

Jane Eyre

John Adams

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Little Women

Lolita

Pride and Prejudice

Summer of Faulkner Books

Swann’s Way

War and Peace

I will, of course, read other books.  But these are ones I really want to read this year.  I’m still striving for my goal of 60 books.  (Speaking of which, I just finished The History of Love.  It was really beautiful and good.  I’ve been telling a couple of friends that they must read it.  I just hope they don’t decide to read it at the same time.)  I’m pretty sure I won’t be reading these books in alphabetical order, like they’re listed, especially because we’re starting War and Peace in one of my book clubs soon.  Jane Eyre is another future book club read.

First Day January 12, 2009

My first first day of class is over.  I have another tomorrow.  I got up early and wasn’t tired and got ready and had time for do what I wanted and needed to do.  I didn’t miss any classes and I didn’t go to the wrong room (a huge fear of mine).  I’ve already bought the books I’ll be needing for my classes, which is good because I don’t want to go fight the hordes who are now buying their books.

I’ll tell you a little secret, but don’t tell anyone else because I’ll feel like a total nerd.  I’m actually excited about doing my homework tonight.  I think I’m excited because I formulated a new plan regarding homework so that I ought not get behind.  I’m also looking forward to flipping through my new books.  And doing new kinds of assignments (I’m doing case briefings for two of my classes), which will prepare me for law school.  Actually, those two classes in their very format will help prepare me for law school because the professor is going to use the Socratic method.

Except…someone out there doesn’t like me.  I’m having to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin again.  Don’t get me wrong–it’s a good message.  But the book is very poorly written, in my opinion.  Stowe unnecessarily and obviously enters the text at many places and I’m not a fan of authorial intrusions, especially to the extent that she does them.

I haven’t finished The History of Love yet.  I’m kind of bummed about it, but I’ll be OK.  Maybe I can get it finished tomorrow during my huge break.

This week just has me on my toes in anticipation.  Tonight, I have homework and getting my agenda together, an episode of Secret Life, and the Oprah webcast.  (There’s a webcast each night this week)  Tomorrow and Wednesday are the same, without the episode of Secret Life.  Thusday I have homework and the first Bible Study of the semester.  True, I’ll miss the webcast, but I wasn’t really interested in the money topic anyway (and I imagine the video will be on the site for a while to view).  I’m not sure how Friday will work because I am planning on going home and the internet in my room isn’t very good (I’m able to catch someone else’s signal), but I feel awkward shutting myself in the computer room for an hour and a half to watch the webcast about sex/relationships.  But oh well.

OK.  I have a lot to do in the next 3 hours before Secret Life.  Maybe, probably, more tomorrow.