quick blurb

[kickbrass]

I just read AJ's entry and feel the same way ... here is work, home is family, and I want to go home again. I don't think I've changed a whole lot here, either, but I've learned some important things. My main lesson this semester: I'm not special. Seriously, I thought I was Superman after breezing through high school and most of my freshman year; I learned that I can't just take hard classes for fun, because they will be hard and kick my ass. And if I really do want to learn something, now I have to try. Since I know all of the easy things, I have to work to do the hard ones. But really, I'm not that special -- next semester I'm going to have to actually work to keep my grades up. This semester is going to hurt. I'm projecting a D in econ and a B in an organic chemistry class that I should be acing. That sort of happened last year, when I got a C in math and a B- in chemistry, but I passed that off as a depressed funk, which it was. This semester, shit is just too hard. I haven't been practicing, and I've let other things slide a lot, too. It's sort of refreshing to know that I'm in a place where I don't have to be special anymore, that I don't have to be good at everything. Also, it's helping me not be afraid of deciding on a major -- before, I had this fear of focusing on fewer things, but now I see that it's okay to only "do" what I like. I'm honing in on an English major, unless next semester goes poorly. Might double in music. Which is ironic, because that's what I thought I would do over a year ago, but since then have cast serious doubt on the prospect. Now that I know how it feels to be a failure -- literally, I couldn't even answer a single problem on my last econ test, but the professor pitied me and let me retake it as an open-book take-home test -- I can work on recovering from this Significant Learning Opportunity and set myself on a trajectory of doing things that I love. It's good to feel some positive outlook on things, because right now I'm mired in the cold, biting New England winter with only the prospect of a return to Portland keeping me going. And Emily Kennedy. We had a little fight this weekend but it was just because we were crankying at each other ... I visited her house in Maine last weekend and that was really nice ... she has managed to keep me sane in the face of a fairly humiliating academic reality this semester, at least by my standards. I don't know when she's ever going to be able to visit the other Portland (she lives just outside Portland, ME) but I hope that she does because I want her to see where I came from. Anyway, I'm meeting her for dinner in 5 minutes so I'd better cut out.

Here's to my first real update in a long time!