[then the system of strings tugs on the tip of my wings]
Ever been to a pep rally for a very big football school? I hadn't before the DB dragged me to ours last night. I still have the damned fight song (which they played something like infinity times) stuck in my head. It was pretty fun, I guess, but I still don't get the idea of team loyalty. I just... don't. Maybe it's because I wasn't raised into anything like it (geeky parents ftw), but I just have trouble getting into a frenzy over another damn football game. Nothing wrong with it, it's just not my thing, and the game night we all had after the rally, a crowd of fifteen packed into the Couch 11 lounge playing The Game Of Things and Skip-Bo, was the best part of the evening.
Yesterday I skipped fizzix to attend a panel on the Vatican's role in modern international affairs (I AM SUCH A FUCKING DELINQUENT RIGHT). Damn good panel. The panelists were the university's professor of interfaith studies, a former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, and Fr. Goins from my church. It was a good setup, because you had one totally impartial speaker, and then three levels of analysis, from the international to the domestic to the local. They did not answer my question, though! It was a good question, too. :< They ran out of time. But! The interviewer from KGOU who was present asked for my name afterward so he could ask it again. I'll see if I can dig up the broadcast after it goes up on Monday (regrettably coinciding exactly with fizzix. Damn that class.)
Oh - a week or two ago, in my cupcake decorating class, I met a couple of guys who were talking about their plans to attend Jon Stewart's rally later this month. They were jokingly discussing holding open auditions for the fourth place in their car. WELP, today one of them caught me on my way to the laundry room, to inform me that they were holding open auditions RIGHT THAT MINUTE.
SO UH.
YEAH. I INTERVIEWED FOR THE POSITION.
Driving 22 hours to D.C. with three guys I don't know to stay in the house of someone I've never even met? THIS IS DEFINITELY A GOOD IDEA, YOU GUYS. But if they pick me I will probably not refuse.
And finally: My parents found out about my intended plan to change my major... on Facebook.
So sometimes I guess I forget that the Internet is public. I'd intended to do more research before I told my parents I was eyeing an International Studies major with intense interest, buuuuuuut turns out they do read my status updates, and I got concerned phone calls from both of them during the Vatican panel.
This is how my parents encourage me to do things I want to do: They give me a list of reasons why I should not do it and will fail at it and cannot possibly succeed should I pursue it. I do not know if they do this consciously. But it's how they've operated all my life, and before I figured it out I let it stop me from doing some things I really wanted to do. But now I know that it just means that they don't want me to go into anything major uninformed. I have to know why I want what I want and what the consequences will be for pursuing it; I have to want it so much that I don't care about their opposition. If I can continue in the face of every argument they throw at me, then eventually they will accept that I made a good decision.
Sure, a little unconditional support would be nice every so often. But I'm pretty damn sure I want this major and could do something with it.
My parents are being weird about this one, though. They want me to be a lawyer. I told them I had vague law-school plans when I started college (more to get them the fuck off my back for picking music than anything else), and they seem to have latched on to that.
I never intended to do music when I graduated. This is a fact. Since I decided being a music teacher was never going to happen, I knew I wasn't going to use the music part of this degree. So, I found myself thinking, Why the hell am I in the music program? I don't need a degree to play music. If I'm going to be good at this vague-law-school-politics-government thing, I need to do that without distraction. And now my vague politick-y dreams seem to have settled themselves into a fascination with foreign relations, and-- shit I sound so indecisive. But I like this. I like my foreign politics class. I like the IS major's class schedule. I want to learn another language and live a year abroad, and writing about international economics and 21st-century American politics is already so much more interesting to me than the hours of practicing for my lessons. I feel like I'm not working hard enough right now. It bothers me.
My dad, who is a cynical pessimist about anything I want to do involving the gubmint, was careful to tell me that I would probably end up jaded and drowning in bureaucracy and possibly kidnapped and held for ransom or assassinated and nothing I did would have any effect in the long run anyway. This has very little to do with my dad's faith in me, which knows no bounds; it has more to do with his general faith in humanity, which is sorely lacking. But I'll find out the likelihood of that myself. I'll find something. (I promised him I'd try for an economics minor, which pacified him somewhat; he seems to believe that if I major in econ the secrets of the world will suddenly open before me and intergalactic domination will be mine.)
I don't know for sure yet. But not staying a music major seems like a step in the right direction. I'm going for major counseling this week and next week AND the week after; gonna set my affairs in order and try this.
If nothing else, it feels good to have a direction.
Yesterday I skipped fizzix to attend a panel on the Vatican's role in modern international affairs (I AM SUCH A FUCKING DELINQUENT RIGHT). Damn good panel. The panelists were the university's professor of interfaith studies, a former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, and Fr. Goins from my church. It was a good setup, because you had one totally impartial speaker, and then three levels of analysis, from the international to the domestic to the local. They did not answer my question, though! It was a good question, too. :< They ran out of time. But! The interviewer from KGOU who was present asked for my name afterward so he could ask it again. I'll see if I can dig up the broadcast after it goes up on Monday (regrettably coinciding exactly with fizzix. Damn that class.)
Oh - a week or two ago, in my cupcake decorating class, I met a couple of guys who were talking about their plans to attend Jon Stewart's rally later this month. They were jokingly discussing holding open auditions for the fourth place in their car. WELP, today one of them caught me on my way to the laundry room, to inform me that they were holding open auditions RIGHT THAT MINUTE.
SO UH.
YEAH. I INTERVIEWED FOR THE POSITION.
Driving 22 hours to D.C. with three guys I don't know to stay in the house of someone I've never even met? THIS IS DEFINITELY A GOOD IDEA, YOU GUYS. But if they pick me I will probably not refuse.
And finally: My parents found out about my intended plan to change my major... on Facebook.
So sometimes I guess I forget that the Internet is public. I'd intended to do more research before I told my parents I was eyeing an International Studies major with intense interest, buuuuuuut turns out they do read my status updates, and I got concerned phone calls from both of them during the Vatican panel.
This is how my parents encourage me to do things I want to do: They give me a list of reasons why I should not do it and will fail at it and cannot possibly succeed should I pursue it. I do not know if they do this consciously. But it's how they've operated all my life, and before I figured it out I let it stop me from doing some things I really wanted to do. But now I know that it just means that they don't want me to go into anything major uninformed. I have to know why I want what I want and what the consequences will be for pursuing it; I have to want it so much that I don't care about their opposition. If I can continue in the face of every argument they throw at me, then eventually they will accept that I made a good decision.
Sure, a little unconditional support would be nice every so often. But I'm pretty damn sure I want this major and could do something with it.
My parents are being weird about this one, though. They want me to be a lawyer. I told them I had vague law-school plans when I started college (more to get them the fuck off my back for picking music than anything else), and they seem to have latched on to that.
I never intended to do music when I graduated. This is a fact. Since I decided being a music teacher was never going to happen, I knew I wasn't going to use the music part of this degree. So, I found myself thinking, Why the hell am I in the music program? I don't need a degree to play music. If I'm going to be good at this vague-law-school-politics-government thing, I need to do that without distraction. And now my vague politick-y dreams seem to have settled themselves into a fascination with foreign relations, and-- shit I sound so indecisive. But I like this. I like my foreign politics class. I like the IS major's class schedule. I want to learn another language and live a year abroad, and writing about international economics and 21st-century American politics is already so much more interesting to me than the hours of practicing for my lessons. I feel like I'm not working hard enough right now. It bothers me.
My dad, who is a cynical pessimist about anything I want to do involving the gubmint, was careful to tell me that I would probably end up jaded and drowning in bureaucracy and possibly kidnapped and held for ransom or assassinated and nothing I did would have any effect in the long run anyway. This has very little to do with my dad's faith in me, which knows no bounds; it has more to do with his general faith in humanity, which is sorely lacking. But I'll find out the likelihood of that myself. I'll find something. (I promised him I'd try for an economics minor, which pacified him somewhat; he seems to believe that if I major in econ the secrets of the world will suddenly open before me and intergalactic domination will be mine.)
I don't know for sure yet. But not staying a music major seems like a step in the right direction. I'm going for major counseling this week and next week AND the week after; gonna set my affairs in order and try this.
If nothing else, it feels good to have a direction.