oceanchild
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2009 27 March :: 12.38pm
Spring break
As the title implies, I'm enjoying a week of freedom before my final quarter at university. For the first bit I was really worried that, due to a mix-up over the submission of my final paper, I was going to fail my senior seminar. That would have been fixable, because since I've got one quarter remaining I could have taken another, but it would have been really unpleasant.
Grades came out yesterday though and I found that I had passed. I was so relieved.
So now I'm at home, watching altogether too much Bleach and occasionally going out on the town with my mom. Yesterday we went to the Capital Nursery and bought plants. Mine is called an anthurium, and it looks like this:
I'm going to make our apartment look like the rainforest.
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oceanchild
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2009 3 March :: 2.19pm
I get e-mailed "breaking news alerts" from the Sacramento Bee. I like to keep aprised of what's going on in my hometown. For the past few weeks, all I've been getting are things like this:
CALIFORNIA DROUGHT CRISIS
GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER TO DECLARE DROUGHT STATE OF EMERGENCY
WATER SUPPLY TO LOCAL FARMERS CUT OFF DUE TO DROUGHT
and today, I get this:
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ISSUES FLOOD WARNING IN SACRAMENTO
When it rains it pours, I guess -- for real!
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oceanchild
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2009 22 February :: 4.12pm
:: Music: NCIS soundtrack
Academic woes
Although I'm apprehensive about my prospects in finding a fulfilling and lucrative career after graduation (I don't feel that I have any particularly specialized or honed skills to offer, nor that I even can find a field that I'm both qualified for and interested in...but this is all a story for a different day), lately I've been feeling that it can't come soon enough. Maybe it's that senior year is exponentially harder than all the rest; maybe it's that I picked the wrong major, and so the literature-intensive courses I'm taking aren't well suited to my abilities or interests; either way, week after week I feel less like I belong at university and I wonder more and more what I'm doing there and why I've been wasting my time. It's honestly like pulling teeth. It seems like everyone I have class with gets something that I just don't get. I try to convince myself it's that literary criticism is a bunch of bullshit, but more often I end up blaming my own naivete or lack of intelligence.
Of course, I've never had confidence in the intelligence other people tell me I've got, which contributes in large part to my growing disillusionment with academia as a whole.
Perhaps it's just been so long since high school that I don't remember what senioritis feels like. In any case, the light at the end of the tunnel doesn't seem to be getting much closer much faster, and it's ironic to me that I should feel closer to giving up now, when I'm almost at the end, than I ever have in the past.
I decided that, since I've almost completely finished the requirements for my major already, in spring quarter I'm going to stay as far away from literature classes as I possibly can. I'll be taking global politics, to satisfy one last gen ed, and evolution of the universe, because I've always had more interest in the sky than in foundationless analysis of hidden themes in book that the authors never intended in the first place.
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oceanchild
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2009 5 February :: 9.16am
I'm writing a paper about a related topic and I'm curious what you guys think. If language is technology, what does that make reading?
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oceanchild
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2009 18 January :: 11.28pm
Last weekend I finally confessed to Nathan how upset I was about his mixed messages on whether we'd be living together after graduation. On the one hand, he kept saying things like 'I hope someday we can make this permanent' and 'maybe it would be fun to move to Oregon with you after all,' but on the other, he would always speak hypothetically ('if we're still together, maybe if we're living together again later,' etc. etc.). It was driving me crazy. It was getting to the point where I felt like maybe I ought to just break up with him because we wanted different things -- and since I didn't want marriage, I felt like it was wrong of me to demand any other kind of serious commitment. Still, the thought that maybe our relationship was based on convenience rather than a real desire to be together ate at me.
He heard me out and then he apologized, and he explained that he was shy about commitment because he had been confusing 'long-term' with 'permanent,' and not thinking about them as separate things. He said that his opinion had changed since our original conversation, where he'd flat-out refused to go with me somewhere simply for the sake of staying together, and said that now, if I'd have him, he wanted to follow me if I left.
I was so relieved I cried.
So it looks like we'll be moving to Oregon at the end of the summer. We're not sure where, yet. I wanted Eugene, but he's hesitant because it's apparently hard to find work there. He said Portland, but I'm not convinced there because I might be forced to socialize with the awkward family I have there. I'm thinking maybe Corvallis or Albany, now. We'll just have to see what happens. Maybe over the summer we can drive up and visit a bunch of cities to see where we think we'd fit best.
I'm just so excited that this is happening.
4 had an epiphany |
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oceanchild
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2009 4 January :: 12.31pm
I went out to lunch with Jeff yesterday. When we don't talk politics he's actually quite nice to be around. I was afraid that it would be awkward, but we never even close to ran out of things to say to each other. Maybe it won't be so hard to get back in touch with my high school friends.
After lunch I went to my grandparents' house to download a font for my grandmother. They paid me in chocolate and had me help them finish a crossword puzzle.
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oceanchild
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2009 2 January :: 4.53pm
My grandfather is improving slowly. We spent a lot of time at their house over the holidays, helping out with work. I fixed their TV and DVD player and helped them put together a jigsaw puzzle of an antique world map.
I had a CAT scan today, to make sure it isn't cancer or some other structural problem causing my chronic headaches. They gave me a prescription for some preventative meds when I went in initially a week or so ago, though, and I've felt much better since, so I'm not too worried.
Nathan got his journal out to write something yesterday, and as he sat down on the couch next to me and opened it up I happened to read the first line of his most recent entry. "Lily and I got in a big fight last night." I'd mostly stopped thinking about that -- it was one of the worst fights we've had -- but accidentally reading that brought back all the insecurity and the despair over how he says he wants to be with me but won't give definite answers or make any plans for the future together. I don't want to think that our relationship is based solely on convenience and if he's going to keep implying that he hopes it's permanent, can't he stop speaking in ifs and maybes? I spent the rest of the night morose, playing flash games on the internet.
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