Yeah the Train Conductor Totally Just Called This a Choo-Choo Ride
So, I decided for New Year's that one of my resolutions should be that I should try to update my journal at least once a week during my spring semester. I thought it was a good idea for a few reasons: one, because I feel like I'm losing my ability to write. I used to write - and I mean properly write - at least once a day when I was younger; now all it seems I ever do is chat. I love MSN, don't get me wrong, but it's not the same thing, and I really do feel like any “skills” I have are suffering for its domination of my life. Does anyone else ever feel similar?
Secondly, because I know I'm not going to have a lot of time to write the way I *want* to this semester, and when I say I'm going to write fiction I always wind up lying anyways, I figure journal updating is the safer bet. Besides, it'll be nice to have a better record of what the hell I'm doing at college. A lot of times when I think about what I've done so far here at school I find that the dates all run together. Which is a good thing, but I like details. That's another problem I've gotten from MSN incidentally, I think - I now find that any sort of conversation or experience that I can't save and re-read at my leisure is sort of harder to remember. Frankly, I don't like what that implies about my memory.
I think once a week is a relatively safe goal to aim for, as well. I managed to almost keep up with updating character journals every day of January this year for Tao's Journal January challenge, so at least I'm sort of used to it. And, hopefully, by keeping schedule with updating here I might even stick at keeping up some sort of manageable schedule with school work.
Yeah, the spring semester is starting up this Wednesday, and I've got a pretty trustworthy feeling it's going to kick my ass. My schedule is fairly decent, it's just the course work involved. This is what my life is going to look like for the next couple of months.
Monday:
11:30 - 1:00 = Argumentation & Advocacy
1:10 - 2:40 = Ethnicity, Conflict & Nationalism (Fun fact! I have both these classes with my lovely roommate Allison!)
Tuesday:
10:30 - 2:30 = Research Methods in Political Science (Lecture & Lab!)
6:30 - 7:30 = Tai-Chi For Health (Y, hallo thar last minute rush to get my gym credits out of the way!)
Wednesday:
11:30 - 1:00 = Argumentation & Advocacy
1:10 - 2:40 = Ethnicity, Conflict & Nationalism
6:00- 9:00 = Introduction to Writing For the Print Media (You'd think I would have taken this class *before* I did an internship for a whole month writing for a newspaper, but no.)
Thursday: (Same a Tuesday)
Friday: Nothing, for the first time in my college career!
Again, it doesn't look so bad. But Professor Ra's class, the Research Methods one, is going to kill me. It's known at Hollins as being the hardest course my school offers, and it's all … statistic-y, and writing 20 page papers-y and just … intimidating, as hell. Long as hell too though I'm pretty sure we get at least a half hour break for lunch somewhere in there.
On top of that, there's still my school's shitty, shitty newspaper which, essentially I run with my lovely roommate Allison. The actual editor, Sarah, told us at the end of last semester that we're definitely going to be the head co-editors next year. You know, I only joined the newspaper because Allison wanted to, and we thought it'd be funny because of how much everyone on campus hates the paper, with all the different clubs that boycott it; we thought we could just write whatever we wanted because, you know, absolutely no one reads it. Except, instead, we got roped into being section editors after the first edition, and then we got all crazy sucked into it (like a black hole in so many ways), and now it's like … a serious, “this is our way to leave behind a legacy here” deal. I'm not even joking when I say last semester I think I spent more time working on that shitty, shitty newspaper than I did any of my classes.
I'm also a member of my school's branch of Habit for Humanity. (Again: with Allison; we kind of come as a co-dependent pair on campus, and I'd like to say that's an exaggeration but … no) Not gonna lie, I just joined that one 'cause I thought it'd look good on a resume, and also because I thought it'd be a nice, free way to learn some repair-y skills for the home. The whole helping people was more of a secondary motivator. But, um here's the thing about Habitat. The people who run it kind of suck at it. It's awkward because all the officer types are sophomores and freshmen, and then there's Allison and me who are juniors, and we're the only ones without … official titles/duties. So we kind of get stuck doing all the grunt work, when it comes to the fundraisers and all. Which is a little shitty. I think we'll stick with it though, 'cause we want to see if we can get Hollins to pay for us to spend our spring break in New Orleans, building houses.
Another goal of mine for the semester that I have absolutely no time for: re-starting up my school's Democrat Club. Yeah, that's right. My lezzy, lezzy lesbian school is currently without an active Democrats club. It's ridiculous, and I really feel like something needs to be done about it. Especially given the current political climate, coming into the '10 congressional elections. It's bad enough that in Virginia this year, not only did they run a weak ass candidate in Creigh Deeds, he fucking lost to that git McDonnell - Mr. Let Me Show You My Master's Thesis On Why Women Belong in the Home And their Being in the Workplace is the Downfall of Society as We Know It. (Okay, admittedly, college is a time where people play with and share some of the most extreme view points they ever have in their lives; it's a time for radical view points because, I dunno, you drink a lot of beer. And if your view points on the world haven't changed or been re-evaluated *at all* in the decades since you left college, you have way bigger problems than just thinking women should be barefoot and pregnant. But at the same time, *really* McDonnell? Seriously. It's not like you went to college in the '60s, assface.) Add in the loss of Ted Kennedy's seat to Senator-Elect Sexy Brown (fuuuuuuuck you, massholes) and, you know, I think now is a very important time to have active Democrat clubs on college campuses.
So, yes. I have to try to find time to do that. For, like, humanity and Rahm Emanuel's sake.
I'm only mostly kidding about that.
Anyways, this feels like a very long update, so I think I'm going to stop now. The only reason why it's this long so far is because I'm typing it on the train while riding back to Washington on Monday. I'm in New York, actually, as I'm typing this. I hope the train empties out a little once we hit Penn Station; I mean, the guy sitting next to me this time is okay. Unlike on my ride home, where I had a man ask me if I played the piano with my toes, and other assorted creepiness. (Fun story that one.) I've been typing this entry up while sitting next to him, 'cause I'd feel like a creeper writing fic with someone close enough to read over my shoulder.
P.S. I highly recommend the Amtrak experience for traveling. Yes it may ultimately be longer than flying, but you know what? VP Joey B is totally right: trains are fucking awesome! They're cheaper, have more comfortable seats, cheaper (and a wider variety of) food, and are easier to get on because there's, like, absolutely no security to go through (… which is actually kind of alarming? But I'm counting it as a good for the moment, because the hassle of airports has been annoying me lately). I'd really like to see more rail-as-mass-transport built into this country; hopefully the promise the President made to bring a high speed train to … Miami I think it was, in the State of the Union, is legit and not like that one time during the Bush year's where we got promised we'd be on Mars by, like, 2012 during a SotU. Oh, President Bush. You might have earned back a couple of cool points if you could have gotten us on the road to Mars. Superficial cool points, but cool points none the less.
Secondly, because I know I'm not going to have a lot of time to write the way I *want* to this semester, and when I say I'm going to write fiction I always wind up lying anyways, I figure journal updating is the safer bet. Besides, it'll be nice to have a better record of what the hell I'm doing at college. A lot of times when I think about what I've done so far here at school I find that the dates all run together. Which is a good thing, but I like details. That's another problem I've gotten from MSN incidentally, I think - I now find that any sort of conversation or experience that I can't save and re-read at my leisure is sort of harder to remember. Frankly, I don't like what that implies about my memory.
I think once a week is a relatively safe goal to aim for, as well. I managed to almost keep up with updating character journals every day of January this year for Tao's Journal January challenge, so at least I'm sort of used to it. And, hopefully, by keeping schedule with updating here I might even stick at keeping up some sort of manageable schedule with school work.
Yeah, the spring semester is starting up this Wednesday, and I've got a pretty trustworthy feeling it's going to kick my ass. My schedule is fairly decent, it's just the course work involved. This is what my life is going to look like for the next couple of months.
Monday:
11:30 - 1:00 = Argumentation & Advocacy
1:10 - 2:40 = Ethnicity, Conflict & Nationalism (Fun fact! I have both these classes with my lovely roommate Allison!)
Tuesday:
10:30 - 2:30 = Research Methods in Political Science (Lecture & Lab!)
6:30 - 7:30 = Tai-Chi For Health (Y, hallo thar last minute rush to get my gym credits out of the way!)
Wednesday:
11:30 - 1:00 = Argumentation & Advocacy
1:10 - 2:40 = Ethnicity, Conflict & Nationalism
6:00- 9:00 = Introduction to Writing For the Print Media (You'd think I would have taken this class *before* I did an internship for a whole month writing for a newspaper, but no.)
Thursday: (Same a Tuesday)
Friday: Nothing, for the first time in my college career!
Again, it doesn't look so bad. But Professor Ra's class, the Research Methods one, is going to kill me. It's known at Hollins as being the hardest course my school offers, and it's all … statistic-y, and writing 20 page papers-y and just … intimidating, as hell. Long as hell too though I'm pretty sure we get at least a half hour break for lunch somewhere in there.
On top of that, there's still my school's shitty, shitty newspaper which, essentially I run with my lovely roommate Allison. The actual editor, Sarah, told us at the end of last semester that we're definitely going to be the head co-editors next year. You know, I only joined the newspaper because Allison wanted to, and we thought it'd be funny because of how much everyone on campus hates the paper, with all the different clubs that boycott it; we thought we could just write whatever we wanted because, you know, absolutely no one reads it. Except, instead, we got roped into being section editors after the first edition, and then we got all crazy sucked into it (like a black hole in so many ways), and now it's like … a serious, “this is our way to leave behind a legacy here” deal. I'm not even joking when I say last semester I think I spent more time working on that shitty, shitty newspaper than I did any of my classes.
I'm also a member of my school's branch of Habit for Humanity. (Again: with Allison; we kind of come as a co-dependent pair on campus, and I'd like to say that's an exaggeration but … no) Not gonna lie, I just joined that one 'cause I thought it'd look good on a resume, and also because I thought it'd be a nice, free way to learn some repair-y skills for the home. The whole helping people was more of a secondary motivator. But, um here's the thing about Habitat. The people who run it kind of suck at it. It's awkward because all the officer types are sophomores and freshmen, and then there's Allison and me who are juniors, and we're the only ones without … official titles/duties. So we kind of get stuck doing all the grunt work, when it comes to the fundraisers and all. Which is a little shitty. I think we'll stick with it though, 'cause we want to see if we can get Hollins to pay for us to spend our spring break in New Orleans, building houses.
Another goal of mine for the semester that I have absolutely no time for: re-starting up my school's Democrat Club. Yeah, that's right. My lezzy, lezzy lesbian school is currently without an active Democrats club. It's ridiculous, and I really feel like something needs to be done about it. Especially given the current political climate, coming into the '10 congressional elections. It's bad enough that in Virginia this year, not only did they run a weak ass candidate in Creigh Deeds, he fucking lost to that git McDonnell - Mr. Let Me Show You My Master's Thesis On Why Women Belong in the Home And their Being in the Workplace is the Downfall of Society as We Know It. (Okay, admittedly, college is a time where people play with and share some of the most extreme view points they ever have in their lives; it's a time for radical view points because, I dunno, you drink a lot of beer. And if your view points on the world haven't changed or been re-evaluated *at all* in the decades since you left college, you have way bigger problems than just thinking women should be barefoot and pregnant. But at the same time, *really* McDonnell? Seriously. It's not like you went to college in the '60s, assface.) Add in the loss of Ted Kennedy's seat to Senator-Elect Sexy Brown (fuuuuuuuck you, massholes) and, you know, I think now is a very important time to have active Democrat clubs on college campuses.
So, yes. I have to try to find time to do that. For, like, humanity and Rahm Emanuel's sake.
I'm only mostly kidding about that.
Anyways, this feels like a very long update, so I think I'm going to stop now. The only reason why it's this long so far is because I'm typing it on the train while riding back to Washington on Monday. I'm in New York, actually, as I'm typing this. I hope the train empties out a little once we hit Penn Station; I mean, the guy sitting next to me this time is okay. Unlike on my ride home, where I had a man ask me if I played the piano with my toes, and other assorted creepiness. (Fun story that one.) I've been typing this entry up while sitting next to him, 'cause I'd feel like a creeper writing fic with someone close enough to read over my shoulder.
P.S. I highly recommend the Amtrak experience for traveling. Yes it may ultimately be longer than flying, but you know what? VP Joey B is totally right: trains are fucking awesome! They're cheaper, have more comfortable seats, cheaper (and a wider variety of) food, and are easier to get on because there's, like, absolutely no security to go through (… which is actually kind of alarming? But I'm counting it as a good for the moment, because the hassle of airports has been annoying me lately). I'd really like to see more rail-as-mass-transport built into this country; hopefully the promise the President made to bring a high speed train to … Miami I think it was, in the State of the Union, is legit and not like that one time during the Bush year's where we got promised we'd be on Mars by, like, 2012 during a SotU. Oh, President Bush. You might have earned back a couple of cool points if you could have gotten us on the road to Mars. Superficial cool points, but cool points none the less.