California: Here I come!
So it's finally here, the day that I move to California. I can hardly believe it, I've waited so long for this moment and now I'm leaving. I'm just about done packing and ready to begin the next chapter in my life. I'm leaving this morning around 5 AM and I move into Chapman University in Orange, California on Tuesday. I can't wait for it to begin and I've planned this for so long that its great for it to actually be happening. But before I go, some reflection on why I hated high school, why I decided to go to college in California and why that college turned out to be Chapman University.
First of all, high school sucked for me and I still consider it my personal hell. I really want college to be the exact opposite so in choosing my college (and its location), I went for the opposite of where I have been. I've lived in basically the same place my entire life and am very tired of it. Syracuse is boring and ugly to me and worst of all, has the worst weather for me with it being always cold and snowy (lake effect snow sucks) and always so gray. By high school, I developed an extreme hatred of going through that cold all the time and couldn't wait to get out of it. Cold to me is like a prison, it suffocates me, keeps me inside and makes me wear tons of clothes when I want to be free. That is the greatest thing of all to me. I don't mind heat that much although I'm not fond of humidity so Caifornia seemed perfect to me rather than the south which I didn't want because of the culture anyways. If you want to say its not my high school's fault that it was cold-then I point to its inability to have heating systems that work so I'd always be cold in all my classes. So weather was definitely important to me in my college search as its important in my happiness and I have a MUCH more positive outlook on college now that I can say NO MORE WINTER since I got to choose my perfect climate.
I also like that California is so far away from my family because I need my space and distance away from them. I've never realy connected with them and they're in many ways disimiliar to me which makes it hard to live with them. Plus they hold me back in negativity and my own need for independence so I'm looking forward to having my own space with limited contact so they (or me) can't just go over whenever. And a big YAY for no brother! I've never gotten homesick (except for my cats) so I'm not too worried about that. I realy am going to miss my cats a lot though which is why I hope I can find a place to volunteer with them to get my daily fix. I will miss my friends who I'm always thankful for as they made high school bearable for me. But they're going off to college anyways and I can always chat with them on AIM and see them during Winter Break. One of the things I'm most nervous about in California/college is making new friends and I really hope I'll find my niche to fit in there. I know its a common fear but I've always been shy meeting people and I really like to have close friends so it seems even more scary to me. I'm going to try my best to meet people at Orientation along with in my classes, clubs and any other places I am so I'm hoping it'll be alright.
I have big academic plans for college which hopefully be a lot different than high school. In high school, it felt like it sucked all my love for learning out of me. Part of it is my fault to be sure, I got so used to coasting and doing well without much time outside of class before high school, that my study habits weren't that great but that was also aggravated by my personal preferences that made it hard for me to do well. For one, I'm a night owl who HATES mornings (defined as 6-12) so I did not appreciate having to get up at 6-7 AM for school which made me tired everyday. Then I hated having to go through 6-7 hours of school in a row which tires me out especially from being around people all the time and not getting my own space or freedom. So then I would go home and use my computer and then take a nap since I refuse to change my sleep schedule and went to bed from 2-4 AM. So by the time I woke up it was late evening and I wasn't usually in the mood for homework/studying. Thankfully in college you can set your own schedule and choose your classes and I've registered so that my earliest class is at 11:30 AM and the rest at 12 which allows me to sleep in and get 8-9 hours of sleep a night, yay! With less class time, I'll actually have time to study and do assignments in the afternoon and evening. I'm also glad to be able to choose classes I want to take which this semester will be a Freshman Foundations: War and Human Nature in Literature and Film (heard the teacher is good), Writing about Literature (reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest=psychology related, yay!), Introduction to Film Aesthetics (which I'm reeeally looking forward to), Elementary Japanese (so I can study abroad election year) and Statistics for Psychology (major course).
This brings me to writing essays which has been my archilles heel throughout my high school years. It all starts in 10th grade when I wanted to get my writing onto a higher level, to make it *deep* but I could never quite do it well enough. So I'd be perfectionist about it and procrastinate and end up not turning the paper in *cringe* This repeated for the rest of my high school career although I did make headway in being able to writer better papers and sometimes turn them in on time. I just developed this anti-writing thing, where I loove reading but can never bring myself to write without a major push. It's the worst for books because they're SO long and dense and I'm so perfectionist that it feels I have to go back and analyze every single thing and look for every connection and all the themes and if I want to focus it then I have to find all the examples...and by this time, I get frustrated and stuck. I like writing about poetry and passages much better because usually its just a single paper and its so much easier for me to find things, I don't get as overwhelmed. But I know that in colege, I'm going to have to deal with it and I'm already trying to develop a more positive attitude towards writing and I'm determined to get my essays done earlier (after my last night in high school pulling an all nighter writing last minute essays, I never want to do it again) and turned in on time. Hopefully I'll be able to get comfortable writing them and I'm planning on trying to develop a process that works for me. My plan is to do the essays in the afternoon and to try going to the Writing Center to get help or if only to force me to write the essays and not get distracted. This is one of the things I'm most worried about as I don't quite trust myself with my past experiences but yet I really want this to go well.
Back to academics in general, I really want to do well now and not only learn a lot but get good grades even though I know its harder in college. I just want to keep my options open if I ever did want to go to graduate school (for psychology most likely). I'm looking to expand my knowledge at all levels, I love how there are so many different courses available in college along with a huge library (Yay books!) that I'm really excited to learn about everything. I'm majoring in Psychology because I find it so fascinating how people think and I love all the theories along with the scientific aspect not to mention that it connects with everything. I'm not tied down to it as I'm not sure what I would do with it as a career and I'm just looking to find my place in the world, what I'm meant to do so I want to explore everything and be open to every possibility. Definitely will be stopping by the Career Center for help with that. But for now I'm sticking with Psychology and I want to try out doing some research work to see if I like it (again graduate school planning as I've researched it) along with maybe counseling and other avenues related to it. The good thing about Chapman is they seem to have a good psychology program with lots of good classes and different research labs so that was another thing that drew me to the school. I just really want to do well in school as a lot of my self-esteem is tied into it since from an early age, doing well in academics has been my thing, sure my brother may beat me in almost every other talent, but I always topped him in that and when I didn't in high school, it really brought me down. But I know if I work hard enough and and do my best to get help I can do well, so although that's my next nervous spot, I think I can do it. I just need to reclaim my own intelligence and although I may never be the smartest, try to achieve my full potential.
Another reason that I want to go to California and more specifically, southern California is because LA is the entertainment capitol of the world and I looove entertainment (if that's not obvious). It'll be so great to be around the place where movies and tv shows are being made not to mention the music being put out. When I think of my life, I can divide it into three stages with elementary school and under being where I was obsessed with books, middle school being exposed to music (although admittedly a slim selection with radio listening) and high school being all about television (hello fandom). I'm looking to expand all of them in college with books and music especially as tv is pretty much guarenteed with fandom/vidding. But I'm also looking forward to being where all the developments are being made and having access to them not to mention being able to possibility see celebrities (a girl can dream...). One of the primary reasons I was attracted to Chapman in the first place is they have a big film school (900 students out of around 3500) and even though I'm not really interested in pursuing film/tv production or anything, I still think it'll be awesome to be around people who have a love for it. Hopefully I can pick up information that will help with vidding while I'm there and I'd like to try a bit of filming myself. Already from the people I've seen on Facebook, the entertainment aspect seems to shine through and it looks like theres a lot of people there who love and enjoy tv shows as much as I do so it should be fun to watch them with people.
California is also perfect for me as it has both of the things I love most: big cities and nature. I love both so I like all the diversity the state has to offer. I'm so glad that I'll have both LA and San Diego to go to whenever I want with all the options and activities cities have to offer. Not to mention, there will be so many different people that I'm sure to find some people to connect with and I look forward to seeing lots of different perspectives. Another selling point for Chapman is its only 15-20 minutes from the beach and I loove the beach. The ocean waves are just so relaxing to me and I love to walk along the sand and just be in that atmosphere (especially good at sunset/night). I also realy want to check out the mountains and I'd really like to go on a camping trip again as I haven't done that for awhile and I miss truly being with nature, in the wild, at night under the stars. Other things I'd love to do in California is go to a lot of amusement parks (Disneyland is 10 minutes away!) mostly for the rollercoasters, visit San Francisco, Las Vegas and Mexico and go to big sports games. That reminds me, another reason why I love the weather is that I can play sports anytime I want now that its always warm outside. I'm really looking forward to doing some tennis and soccer intramurals at my school since I'll finally be able to participate again since at high school I could never do it in the afternoons as I was too tired and needed some alone time. But now I can do that as well as ride my bike around, swim/surf in the ocean or even go to Big Bear and ski. I also hope to try sky diving and bungee jumping at some time because I'm addicted to that feeling of flying (why do you think I wrote my admissions essay about it?).
One of the biggest things I'm looking forward to in college that was severely lacking in high school is the freedom and independence. That's what I want and need so much even when I know it'll be hard to adjust at first and there's responsibility involved but still, I don't care as its worth it. The thing I hated about high school was all the rules and regulations and people always patrolling you and keeping you from doing things even if it didn't make any sense (ie basically a prison to me). As an example, they woud try to make you not wear headphones which I can understand during classes but when its my FREE period and I'm doing homework/reading while I listen to music then there should be no reason not to allow me to do that. Thankfully the rule usually wasn't enforced and if they tried it on me, I'd go somewhere else because they were so not going to take my music away from me when it helped relax me and make me feel better during those long hs days. But then I'd go home and I'd have the same thing with my parents trying to control my life even if only in little ways and thats just frustrating to me. So I'm really looking forward to being in college and deciding my own life, from what I'm going to do to when I do it to how I do it and not having people telling me what to do (to a degree). One of the reasons I chose Chapman is it gave me the best financial package with a scholarship and grant along with a work study job which is basically my personal money and I'm looking forward to being able to manage my own money and use it for what I want and not have to rely on my parents there. I really want to become more self-reliant and mature in being able to run my own life and all the independence that brings.
In conclusion, California is my dream place and I'm happy and excited that I'm going. Going to California is the American Dream to me, it's my New Frontier (see Firefly/Serenity/heres luck's vid) and it opens up the amazing world of possibilities for me. It's the next part of my life, I feel like I'm being reborn again almost (think phoenix from Harry Potter) and I'm ready to start this new journey into an unknown world. I'm ready for college to begin and I hope it turns out to be a wonderful experience.
Going to sneak in a vid rec too. Everyone should go over and watch absolut3destiny's new vid, I Enjoy Being a Girl. One of my favorite vids ever with a perfect mix of Sydney Bristow, Buffy, Starbuck, Veronica Mars and Zoe being perfectly edited to the music with awesome parallels and kick ass fighting. I've been listening/watching it nonstop ever since Vividcon and it made me miss Veronica Mars and Firefly even more. It's just amazing. *am still in vidding mode*
First of all, high school sucked for me and I still consider it my personal hell. I really want college to be the exact opposite so in choosing my college (and its location), I went for the opposite of where I have been. I've lived in basically the same place my entire life and am very tired of it. Syracuse is boring and ugly to me and worst of all, has the worst weather for me with it being always cold and snowy (lake effect snow sucks) and always so gray. By high school, I developed an extreme hatred of going through that cold all the time and couldn't wait to get out of it. Cold to me is like a prison, it suffocates me, keeps me inside and makes me wear tons of clothes when I want to be free. That is the greatest thing of all to me. I don't mind heat that much although I'm not fond of humidity so Caifornia seemed perfect to me rather than the south which I didn't want because of the culture anyways. If you want to say its not my high school's fault that it was cold-then I point to its inability to have heating systems that work so I'd always be cold in all my classes. So weather was definitely important to me in my college search as its important in my happiness and I have a MUCH more positive outlook on college now that I can say NO MORE WINTER since I got to choose my perfect climate.
I also like that California is so far away from my family because I need my space and distance away from them. I've never realy connected with them and they're in many ways disimiliar to me which makes it hard to live with them. Plus they hold me back in negativity and my own need for independence so I'm looking forward to having my own space with limited contact so they (or me) can't just go over whenever. And a big YAY for no brother! I've never gotten homesick (except for my cats) so I'm not too worried about that. I realy am going to miss my cats a lot though which is why I hope I can find a place to volunteer with them to get my daily fix. I will miss my friends who I'm always thankful for as they made high school bearable for me. But they're going off to college anyways and I can always chat with them on AIM and see them during Winter Break. One of the things I'm most nervous about in California/college is making new friends and I really hope I'll find my niche to fit in there. I know its a common fear but I've always been shy meeting people and I really like to have close friends so it seems even more scary to me. I'm going to try my best to meet people at Orientation along with in my classes, clubs and any other places I am so I'm hoping it'll be alright.
I have big academic plans for college which hopefully be a lot different than high school. In high school, it felt like it sucked all my love for learning out of me. Part of it is my fault to be sure, I got so used to coasting and doing well without much time outside of class before high school, that my study habits weren't that great but that was also aggravated by my personal preferences that made it hard for me to do well. For one, I'm a night owl who HATES mornings (defined as 6-12) so I did not appreciate having to get up at 6-7 AM for school which made me tired everyday. Then I hated having to go through 6-7 hours of school in a row which tires me out especially from being around people all the time and not getting my own space or freedom. So then I would go home and use my computer and then take a nap since I refuse to change my sleep schedule and went to bed from 2-4 AM. So by the time I woke up it was late evening and I wasn't usually in the mood for homework/studying. Thankfully in college you can set your own schedule and choose your classes and I've registered so that my earliest class is at 11:30 AM and the rest at 12 which allows me to sleep in and get 8-9 hours of sleep a night, yay! With less class time, I'll actually have time to study and do assignments in the afternoon and evening. I'm also glad to be able to choose classes I want to take which this semester will be a Freshman Foundations: War and Human Nature in Literature and Film (heard the teacher is good), Writing about Literature (reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest=psychology related, yay!), Introduction to Film Aesthetics (which I'm reeeally looking forward to), Elementary Japanese (so I can study abroad election year) and Statistics for Psychology (major course).
This brings me to writing essays which has been my archilles heel throughout my high school years. It all starts in 10th grade when I wanted to get my writing onto a higher level, to make it *deep* but I could never quite do it well enough. So I'd be perfectionist about it and procrastinate and end up not turning the paper in *cringe* This repeated for the rest of my high school career although I did make headway in being able to writer better papers and sometimes turn them in on time. I just developed this anti-writing thing, where I loove reading but can never bring myself to write without a major push. It's the worst for books because they're SO long and dense and I'm so perfectionist that it feels I have to go back and analyze every single thing and look for every connection and all the themes and if I want to focus it then I have to find all the examples...and by this time, I get frustrated and stuck. I like writing about poetry and passages much better because usually its just a single paper and its so much easier for me to find things, I don't get as overwhelmed. But I know that in colege, I'm going to have to deal with it and I'm already trying to develop a more positive attitude towards writing and I'm determined to get my essays done earlier (after my last night in high school pulling an all nighter writing last minute essays, I never want to do it again) and turned in on time. Hopefully I'll be able to get comfortable writing them and I'm planning on trying to develop a process that works for me. My plan is to do the essays in the afternoon and to try going to the Writing Center to get help or if only to force me to write the essays and not get distracted. This is one of the things I'm most worried about as I don't quite trust myself with my past experiences but yet I really want this to go well.
Back to academics in general, I really want to do well now and not only learn a lot but get good grades even though I know its harder in college. I just want to keep my options open if I ever did want to go to graduate school (for psychology most likely). I'm looking to expand my knowledge at all levels, I love how there are so many different courses available in college along with a huge library (Yay books!) that I'm really excited to learn about everything. I'm majoring in Psychology because I find it so fascinating how people think and I love all the theories along with the scientific aspect not to mention that it connects with everything. I'm not tied down to it as I'm not sure what I would do with it as a career and I'm just looking to find my place in the world, what I'm meant to do so I want to explore everything and be open to every possibility. Definitely will be stopping by the Career Center for help with that. But for now I'm sticking with Psychology and I want to try out doing some research work to see if I like it (again graduate school planning as I've researched it) along with maybe counseling and other avenues related to it. The good thing about Chapman is they seem to have a good psychology program with lots of good classes and different research labs so that was another thing that drew me to the school. I just really want to do well in school as a lot of my self-esteem is tied into it since from an early age, doing well in academics has been my thing, sure my brother may beat me in almost every other talent, but I always topped him in that and when I didn't in high school, it really brought me down. But I know if I work hard enough and and do my best to get help I can do well, so although that's my next nervous spot, I think I can do it. I just need to reclaim my own intelligence and although I may never be the smartest, try to achieve my full potential.
Another reason that I want to go to California and more specifically, southern California is because LA is the entertainment capitol of the world and I looove entertainment (if that's not obvious). It'll be so great to be around the place where movies and tv shows are being made not to mention the music being put out. When I think of my life, I can divide it into three stages with elementary school and under being where I was obsessed with books, middle school being exposed to music (although admittedly a slim selection with radio listening) and high school being all about television (hello fandom). I'm looking to expand all of them in college with books and music especially as tv is pretty much guarenteed with fandom/vidding. But I'm also looking forward to being where all the developments are being made and having access to them not to mention being able to possibility see celebrities (a girl can dream...). One of the primary reasons I was attracted to Chapman in the first place is they have a big film school (900 students out of around 3500) and even though I'm not really interested in pursuing film/tv production or anything, I still think it'll be awesome to be around people who have a love for it. Hopefully I can pick up information that will help with vidding while I'm there and I'd like to try a bit of filming myself. Already from the people I've seen on Facebook, the entertainment aspect seems to shine through and it looks like theres a lot of people there who love and enjoy tv shows as much as I do so it should be fun to watch them with people.
California is also perfect for me as it has both of the things I love most: big cities and nature. I love both so I like all the diversity the state has to offer. I'm so glad that I'll have both LA and San Diego to go to whenever I want with all the options and activities cities have to offer. Not to mention, there will be so many different people that I'm sure to find some people to connect with and I look forward to seeing lots of different perspectives. Another selling point for Chapman is its only 15-20 minutes from the beach and I loove the beach. The ocean waves are just so relaxing to me and I love to walk along the sand and just be in that atmosphere (especially good at sunset/night). I also realy want to check out the mountains and I'd really like to go on a camping trip again as I haven't done that for awhile and I miss truly being with nature, in the wild, at night under the stars. Other things I'd love to do in California is go to a lot of amusement parks (Disneyland is 10 minutes away!) mostly for the rollercoasters, visit San Francisco, Las Vegas and Mexico and go to big sports games. That reminds me, another reason why I love the weather is that I can play sports anytime I want now that its always warm outside. I'm really looking forward to doing some tennis and soccer intramurals at my school since I'll finally be able to participate again since at high school I could never do it in the afternoons as I was too tired and needed some alone time. But now I can do that as well as ride my bike around, swim/surf in the ocean or even go to Big Bear and ski. I also hope to try sky diving and bungee jumping at some time because I'm addicted to that feeling of flying (why do you think I wrote my admissions essay about it?).
One of the biggest things I'm looking forward to in college that was severely lacking in high school is the freedom and independence. That's what I want and need so much even when I know it'll be hard to adjust at first and there's responsibility involved but still, I don't care as its worth it. The thing I hated about high school was all the rules and regulations and people always patrolling you and keeping you from doing things even if it didn't make any sense (ie basically a prison to me). As an example, they woud try to make you not wear headphones which I can understand during classes but when its my FREE period and I'm doing homework/reading while I listen to music then there should be no reason not to allow me to do that. Thankfully the rule usually wasn't enforced and if they tried it on me, I'd go somewhere else because they were so not going to take my music away from me when it helped relax me and make me feel better during those long hs days. But then I'd go home and I'd have the same thing with my parents trying to control my life even if only in little ways and thats just frustrating to me. So I'm really looking forward to being in college and deciding my own life, from what I'm going to do to when I do it to how I do it and not having people telling me what to do (to a degree). One of the reasons I chose Chapman is it gave me the best financial package with a scholarship and grant along with a work study job which is basically my personal money and I'm looking forward to being able to manage my own money and use it for what I want and not have to rely on my parents there. I really want to become more self-reliant and mature in being able to run my own life and all the independence that brings.
In conclusion, California is my dream place and I'm happy and excited that I'm going. Going to California is the American Dream to me, it's my New Frontier (see Firefly/Serenity/heres luck's vid) and it opens up the amazing world of possibilities for me. It's the next part of my life, I feel like I'm being reborn again almost (think phoenix from Harry Potter) and I'm ready to start this new journey into an unknown world. I'm ready for college to begin and I hope it turns out to be a wonderful experience.
Going to sneak in a vid rec too. Everyone should go over and watch absolut3destiny's new vid, I Enjoy Being a Girl. One of my favorite vids ever with a perfect mix of Sydney Bristow, Buffy, Starbuck, Veronica Mars and Zoe being perfectly edited to the music with awesome parallels and kick ass fighting. I've been listening/watching it nonstop ever since Vividcon and it made me miss Veronica Mars and Firefly even more. It's just amazing. *am still in vidding mode*