Wrapping up the year
I thought it appropriate to post one more time before the year was out. This entry is going to cover quite a potpourri of things, so it should be quite a doozy.
Firstly, I'll cover what's been going on with me since my last rant update. Thankfully, I managed to perform satisfactorily enough in my work for the last month to pass the semester. I never thought in my life that I would be happy with a straight 3.0, but I suppose it is acceptable as I am not quite used to this level of rigor in school. It's not that studying at Rutgers was "easy" by any means, but the level of competition in this group of students is much higher than any level I've ever experienced. I really hope to be a better student next semester, and although I have four classes, I think I have the experience this semester has left me with the tools to do so.
I guess one can also factor in to my potential "doing better" that I will be a bit more adjusted to my atmosphere and I will not allow myself to take any trips back to New Jersey until the semester's over. Although going home for Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks gave me some valuable time with family and friends, I believe the earlier trips in the semester left me unfocused for school in the surrounding time periods and detracted from my performance. I'm sure that other students go through that same sort of thing, and learn from it, just as I have.
That's not to say that I won't allow myself shorter trips away from school on the occasional weekend, but going all the way back to NJ will just be too much of a time/money investment in the middle of the semester.
Moving on... suffice it to say, the latter issues that I discussed in the last entry were resolved a couple of weeks later in a favorable way. Despite the odd timing with the end of the semester, I'm very happy with the way things are going. I had some unexpressed and completely natural (in my opinion anyway) doubts regarding how the holiday break would affect things, but it doesn't seem to be causing any problems, and it's more than halfway over at this point. That's my point of view, at least. =)
Yes, I know that was vague, and I also know that I'm probably going to get questioned on it later.
I guess another specific series of events from the past month and a half that deserves its own mention was a certain trio of friends joining me down in Atlanta for a couple days. Many fun adventures were had, the most memorable being our Stone Mountain hike in the dark of night... while it was raining. Things like that happen when me and James are together, it seems. Also of note was our trip to Jacksonville, FL to see the Jaguars play. It was an awesome experience, to say the least. The Jags pretty much killed the Raiders, and seeing people other than James wearing that teal jersey was amusing (I've been using his given name to prevent any confusion).
Some lame things happened in our travels between locales which fostered a common hatred for the states of Florida and Virginia among our band , but speeding tickets weren't nearly enough to completely dampen our spirits. It was a very fun trip overall.
Christmas break has been as relaxing as I could have hoped. I feel like I've restored the energy I need to take the coming year on. I'm not sure where exactly I'll be on New Years Eve; I've got a couple options. I'll most likely be spending the night in New Brunswick, though. I'll be starting back to Atlanta on New Years Day, a trip which should be a lot more relaxed than any of my recent ones. I've decided, in the light of the said speeding tickets, not to try for sub-12-hour runs between my homes anymore. And this time, I will be able to take a real break mid-trip, as a certain someone was very gracious and offered me a place to take one. =)
That's all I have to say as far as my life goes. Overall, 2007 has been another pretty good year; it's certainly been my most dynamic and interesting thus far. I think the next has the potential to be even better. We'll see.
Anyway, I have two random things to discuss, the first being completely superficial, and the second not so much.
First, I just have a few words on the Giants-Patriots game that I just finished watching. This game was notable for me because the Giants are my #1 team, and the Patriots are my most hated team (they used to only be my 3rd-most hated team just because they were from the Boston area, but the whole video taping fiasco at the beginning of this season propelled them below the Colts and even the Cowboys in my book). It was definitely one of the more exciting games I've watched. Sure, the Giants made some pretty bad mistakes in there which contributed to their eventual loss, but otherwise, there was some damn good football being played out there, and I think the Giants should be proud that they made the Patriots sweat for their perfect season. There was some talk in the week before the game on whether New York would just hand it over and save their steam for the playoffs, and I swore if I saw that happening when I watched the game, I would turn it off immediately and go do something else. That would have been the biggest waste in the world, as I think the Giants stripping the Patriots of their perfect season would've been a bigger story than the Giants going on to win the Super Bowl. I'm glad that's not the way it went down and they at least tried, even if they failed.
The second loose thought on my mind concerns a potential concept that came up the other night in discussion over coffee with a close friend of mine (who shall remain nameless and gender-neutral, and I will using "they" as a singular pronoun, in this case). This friend had done something recently that they had previously thought they would never do, as they thought they would feel "wrong" or "bad" about doing it. However, after having done it, they really didn't feel bad at all. However, they found this lack of "feeling bad" to be somewhat unsettling in a way, resulting in a sort of "feeling bad about not feeling bad." We eventually coined this condition "feeling meta-bad," and decided that the general term of feeling about the way you feel, "metafeeling." I've surmised that the difference between feeling and "metafeeling" is that the former centers more on emotion while the latter concerns the logic centers of your brain more. I'm not sure how much this concept has been explored in cognitive science or whatever field would study it, or whether there's another name for it, but I think it's sort of interesting.
And with that, I've said my piece. See you all in 2008.
Firstly, I'll cover what's been going on with me since my last rant update. Thankfully, I managed to perform satisfactorily enough in my work for the last month to pass the semester. I never thought in my life that I would be happy with a straight 3.0, but I suppose it is acceptable as I am not quite used to this level of rigor in school. It's not that studying at Rutgers was "easy" by any means, but the level of competition in this group of students is much higher than any level I've ever experienced. I really hope to be a better student next semester, and although I have four classes, I think I have the experience this semester has left me with the tools to do so.
I guess one can also factor in to my potential "doing better" that I will be a bit more adjusted to my atmosphere and I will not allow myself to take any trips back to New Jersey until the semester's over. Although going home for Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks gave me some valuable time with family and friends, I believe the earlier trips in the semester left me unfocused for school in the surrounding time periods and detracted from my performance. I'm sure that other students go through that same sort of thing, and learn from it, just as I have.
That's not to say that I won't allow myself shorter trips away from school on the occasional weekend, but going all the way back to NJ will just be too much of a time/money investment in the middle of the semester.
Moving on... suffice it to say, the latter issues that I discussed in the last entry were resolved a couple of weeks later in a favorable way. Despite the odd timing with the end of the semester, I'm very happy with the way things are going. I had some unexpressed and completely natural (in my opinion anyway) doubts regarding how the holiday break would affect things, but it doesn't seem to be causing any problems, and it's more than halfway over at this point. That's my point of view, at least. =)
Yes, I know that was vague, and I also know that I'm probably going to get questioned on it later.
I guess another specific series of events from the past month and a half that deserves its own mention was a certain trio of friends joining me down in Atlanta for a couple days. Many fun adventures were had, the most memorable being our Stone Mountain hike in the dark of night... while it was raining. Things like that happen when me and James are together, it seems. Also of note was our trip to Jacksonville, FL to see the Jaguars play. It was an awesome experience, to say the least. The Jags pretty much killed the Raiders, and seeing people other than James wearing that teal jersey was amusing (I've been using his given name to prevent any confusion).
Some lame things happened in our travels between locales which fostered a common hatred for the states of Florida and Virginia among our band , but speeding tickets weren't nearly enough to completely dampen our spirits. It was a very fun trip overall.
Christmas break has been as relaxing as I could have hoped. I feel like I've restored the energy I need to take the coming year on. I'm not sure where exactly I'll be on New Years Eve; I've got a couple options. I'll most likely be spending the night in New Brunswick, though. I'll be starting back to Atlanta on New Years Day, a trip which should be a lot more relaxed than any of my recent ones. I've decided, in the light of the said speeding tickets, not to try for sub-12-hour runs between my homes anymore. And this time, I will be able to take a real break mid-trip, as a certain someone was very gracious and offered me a place to take one. =)
That's all I have to say as far as my life goes. Overall, 2007 has been another pretty good year; it's certainly been my most dynamic and interesting thus far. I think the next has the potential to be even better. We'll see.
Anyway, I have two random things to discuss, the first being completely superficial, and the second not so much.
First, I just have a few words on the Giants-Patriots game that I just finished watching. This game was notable for me because the Giants are my #1 team, and the Patriots are my most hated team (they used to only be my 3rd-most hated team just because they were from the Boston area, but the whole video taping fiasco at the beginning of this season propelled them below the Colts and even the Cowboys in my book). It was definitely one of the more exciting games I've watched. Sure, the Giants made some pretty bad mistakes in there which contributed to their eventual loss, but otherwise, there was some damn good football being played out there, and I think the Giants should be proud that they made the Patriots sweat for their perfect season. There was some talk in the week before the game on whether New York would just hand it over and save their steam for the playoffs, and I swore if I saw that happening when I watched the game, I would turn it off immediately and go do something else. That would have been the biggest waste in the world, as I think the Giants stripping the Patriots of their perfect season would've been a bigger story than the Giants going on to win the Super Bowl. I'm glad that's not the way it went down and they at least tried, even if they failed.
The second loose thought on my mind concerns a potential concept that came up the other night in discussion over coffee with a close friend of mine (who shall remain nameless and gender-neutral, and I will using "they" as a singular pronoun, in this case). This friend had done something recently that they had previously thought they would never do, as they thought they would feel "wrong" or "bad" about doing it. However, after having done it, they really didn't feel bad at all. However, they found this lack of "feeling bad" to be somewhat unsettling in a way, resulting in a sort of "feeling bad about not feeling bad." We eventually coined this condition "feeling meta-bad," and decided that the general term of feeling about the way you feel, "metafeeling." I've surmised that the difference between feeling and "metafeeling" is that the former centers more on emotion while the latter concerns the logic centers of your brain more. I'm not sure how much this concept has been explored in cognitive science or whatever field would study it, or whether there's another name for it, but I think it's sort of interesting.
And with that, I've said my piece. See you all in 2008.