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I'd like to preface this entry by telling you that I'm a writing drama queen...
I feel like I could live forever. Is that why the days are rushing by so (too) fast?
I've taken a step of some sort today. I feel like Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, having his epiphany and pushing his dad's car off the balcony, putting into motion the confrontation that he has realized must come to a head. Of course it's nothing so major (I guess) or expensive (wait...yes it kind of is), but it's a milestone of some sort. I've been sitting stagnant through this semester, this year, just waiting. I didn't spend much time thinking about what it was exactly that I was waiting for. I was just slacking off and not controlling my own... well, destiny is the only word that fits. Doing mediocre in most classes, just hanging in there.
Oww; let me interrupt myself to say that the Advil I just swallowed is burning in my throat. I need water!
Anyways.
And not being enthusiastic about it. About this higher education. My roommate lives to learn. Her hobby is learning, she dreams about learning. And what am I doing, just waiting for the bell to ring like I was still in high school, like it wasn't my own choice alone to be here, like I didn't work so hard to earn scholarships and take out loans ($32,000 to be here, people,). What am I doing wasting my time? All I want to do, pretty much all I've done this semester, is read and read and write... about things that have nothing to do with class. I've been enthusiastic and devoted my time to something that does not demand my money and does not earn me any credits or grades. I have two thousand pages (font size 8) of printed words underneath my bed, everything read and sometimes read twice. I've been committing adultery on my college education, and the college education has suffered for it.
So, back to today.
At 2:00, I made the choice not to go to my 3:00 final for my gov. class. It's worth 50% of my grade. I chose to fail a class for the first time in my life. I could have done what I always do, what I've always done for as long as I can remember, and spend the morning cramming. I can write, I'm very good at bullshitting essays. I probably would have passed the class with a C.
But what a waste. I would not have learned anything. It would be me putting in the smallest amount of effort simply to earn the grades that earn the credits that earn the degree, and I wouldn't really have earned any of it at all, because I didn't get what I went to college to get, and that is a *higher* *education*. Cram info into the brain, and most of it falls right out again. It wouldn't change me, make me a better person, or prepare me for a life I could want.
So what am I doing. I don't have an answer right now, and I don't want to try to make one that isn't a long term (or at least contributing to a long term) solution. But I read a story late last night that really started some gears turning. It was about possible futures, how there are infinite possibilities. The butterfly effect and chaos theory. If a ship out on the ocean changs its course a few degrees, weeks later the ship will land miles away from where it might have landed originally. The small choices made in the beginning have the greatest effect on the nature of the eventual outcome. Then I remember what Mr. Musaeus, my junior year English honors teacher told us about not looking at things as "the end", static and final, but viewing them as always shifting, always moving along and changing. He used the metaphor of a beam of sunlight. If you look where the beam lands on the floor, you see a small dot of light. But if you stand directly in the path of that beam and stare up along sunlight shaft, you are looking through billions of miles all the way to the sun itself. You don't truly see something until you look down the path it takes to get there. Nothing is at its final destination. Nothing stays the same. Nothing is unchangeable. You could use the expression of "life is in the journey, not the destination." So if I accept all these concepts, then that means that the small choices I make now will greatly affect where I will end up, but that whatever "ends" up happening, it can always be altered, reshaped. There is no one real destiny.
As for what exactly my "choices" are, all I am thinking of right now is summer and what I want to do for a job. I would like to intern with Joel Something-or-Other, an old boyfriend and still friend of my Aunt Ginger's who is one of the primary photographers for the Oregonian. I guess I've never mentioned how "photographically predisposed" I am. Anyway, Aunt Ginger has told me that she could probably pull some strings. Only problem is, I don't think it's very likely that this would be a paid internship, and I really need to work a full time job to save up some money.
Well, if the internship doesn't work out, another major contender for a summer job is working at the Central library downtown. I think I've mentioned how much I adore this library. It would be very close to a dream summer job. Another idea would be to work at Movie Madness, which is the absolute coolest video rental place- the building looks very small, squat, nondescript from the outside, but you go inside, and you walk further in, and you're walking down this hall with rows of movies that leads into more and more rooms and just goes on and on. It all has a DIY, hipster feel to it, with painted murals, costumes from no name B-movies, and posters for movies by directors like Andy Warhol and John Waters and Ed Wood.
But as for a career, ...?
Although I am definitely going to focus on the literary next year at PSU. Also, I'll take a sociology or psychology course for the sake of my writing, and absolutely, with no question, will join a choir. I have missed the dynamics of a choir very much. Hopefully things will work out. I don't mind being poor as long as I know that I'm headed to greater things. I want to be successful in life.
I feel like I could live forever. Is that why the days are rushing by so (too) fast?
I've taken a step of some sort today. I feel like Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, having his epiphany and pushing his dad's car off the balcony, putting into motion the confrontation that he has realized must come to a head. Of course it's nothing so major (I guess) or expensive (wait...yes it kind of is), but it's a milestone of some sort. I've been sitting stagnant through this semester, this year, just waiting. I didn't spend much time thinking about what it was exactly that I was waiting for. I was just slacking off and not controlling my own... well, destiny is the only word that fits. Doing mediocre in most classes, just hanging in there.
Oww; let me interrupt myself to say that the Advil I just swallowed is burning in my throat. I need water!
Anyways.
And not being enthusiastic about it. About this higher education. My roommate lives to learn. Her hobby is learning, she dreams about learning. And what am I doing, just waiting for the bell to ring like I was still in high school, like it wasn't my own choice alone to be here, like I didn't work so hard to earn scholarships and take out loans ($32,000 to be here, people,). What am I doing wasting my time? All I want to do, pretty much all I've done this semester, is read and read and write... about things that have nothing to do with class. I've been enthusiastic and devoted my time to something that does not demand my money and does not earn me any credits or grades. I have two thousand pages (font size 8) of printed words underneath my bed, everything read and sometimes read twice. I've been committing adultery on my college education, and the college education has suffered for it.
So, back to today.
At 2:00, I made the choice not to go to my 3:00 final for my gov. class. It's worth 50% of my grade. I chose to fail a class for the first time in my life. I could have done what I always do, what I've always done for as long as I can remember, and spend the morning cramming. I can write, I'm very good at bullshitting essays. I probably would have passed the class with a C.
But what a waste. I would not have learned anything. It would be me putting in the smallest amount of effort simply to earn the grades that earn the credits that earn the degree, and I wouldn't really have earned any of it at all, because I didn't get what I went to college to get, and that is a *higher* *education*. Cram info into the brain, and most of it falls right out again. It wouldn't change me, make me a better person, or prepare me for a life I could want.
So what am I doing. I don't have an answer right now, and I don't want to try to make one that isn't a long term (or at least contributing to a long term) solution. But I read a story late last night that really started some gears turning. It was about possible futures, how there are infinite possibilities. The butterfly effect and chaos theory. If a ship out on the ocean changs its course a few degrees, weeks later the ship will land miles away from where it might have landed originally. The small choices made in the beginning have the greatest effect on the nature of the eventual outcome. Then I remember what Mr. Musaeus, my junior year English honors teacher told us about not looking at things as "the end", static and final, but viewing them as always shifting, always moving along and changing. He used the metaphor of a beam of sunlight. If you look where the beam lands on the floor, you see a small dot of light. But if you stand directly in the path of that beam and stare up along sunlight shaft, you are looking through billions of miles all the way to the sun itself. You don't truly see something until you look down the path it takes to get there. Nothing is at its final destination. Nothing stays the same. Nothing is unchangeable. You could use the expression of "life is in the journey, not the destination." So if I accept all these concepts, then that means that the small choices I make now will greatly affect where I will end up, but that whatever "ends" up happening, it can always be altered, reshaped. There is no one real destiny.
As for what exactly my "choices" are, all I am thinking of right now is summer and what I want to do for a job. I would like to intern with Joel Something-or-Other, an old boyfriend and still friend of my Aunt Ginger's who is one of the primary photographers for the Oregonian. I guess I've never mentioned how "photographically predisposed" I am. Anyway, Aunt Ginger has told me that she could probably pull some strings. Only problem is, I don't think it's very likely that this would be a paid internship, and I really need to work a full time job to save up some money.
Well, if the internship doesn't work out, another major contender for a summer job is working at the Central library downtown. I think I've mentioned how much I adore this library. It would be very close to a dream summer job. Another idea would be to work at Movie Madness, which is the absolute coolest video rental place- the building looks very small, squat, nondescript from the outside, but you go inside, and you walk further in, and you're walking down this hall with rows of movies that leads into more and more rooms and just goes on and on. It all has a DIY, hipster feel to it, with painted murals, costumes from no name B-movies, and posters for movies by directors like Andy Warhol and John Waters and Ed Wood.
But as for a career, ...?
Although I am definitely going to focus on the literary next year at PSU. Also, I'll take a sociology or psychology course for the sake of my writing, and absolutely, with no question, will join a choir. I have missed the dynamics of a choir very much. Hopefully things will work out. I don't mind being poor as long as I know that I'm headed to greater things. I want to be successful in life.
