Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Positive note… sort of?

I can finally see the end of the block, 2 days and I’m free for almost 2 weeks. It’s cliché but I can totally taste the freedom. In addition to my pending freedom/vacation I have some things happening in my love life that are definitely looking up. Someone quite regular and some other possibilities are perking up my personal life and making the net couple blocks seem very promising on the social front. I haven’t figured things out completely but I’m definitely feeling like some good things are going happen.

On a less long term note I just returned from CC’s library with some promising reads. Ever since high school and the drastic increase in work and effort that school involved, I’ve found that I’ve gone from reading multiple books a week (I was a bit of a book worm in middle school) to not reading for pleasure at all. I got a little taste of it during my senior project in which I worked at my school’s library and was my favorite librarians personal book reviewer. I spent more than my fair share of time with my nose in a book. I enjoyed every second and it was a welcome reprieve from TV and the monotony of school readings. Unfortunately after that I didn’t have much time or desire to read for pleasure and once I got to college all my readings were class assigned and plentiful. I’ve had a few spurts of pleasure reading, picking things up from time to time—I always find time to read Angela Davis and I read some Malcolm Gladwell as well—but I haven’t really put aside time to read. Now, with my upcoming vacation and new found free time I have a stack of books that is begging to be read:

The Physics of Star Trek

Sophie’s World (a personal favorite)

“Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman” Adventure of a Curious Character

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Roadside Picnic

There will be updates, hopefully I’ll have some new favorites. But alas it is time for me to finish my final paper.

A dopo!

Sunday, March 10, 2013

A little less than ideal…

So as the end of block 7 is drawing to a close and this semester is getting to the halfway point I’m kind of freaking out. Everyday I listen to my roommates and friends talk about all the things that they are applying for and what they are planning on doing this summer. As of now, I have tentative plans and no confirmations for anything, needless to say I feel like I am falling behind the pack. I have so many ideas of things that I want to do but I am kind of stuck in this rut of not knowing how to get the things that I want.

I made a tentative plan about a month ago: archaeology in Costa Rica, and then thesis research and an internship with either the Attorney General or the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. But since I don’t really know if any of them are going to happen I feel like I’m not doing all that I should to plan my summer. I barely made spring break plans, luckily I figured things out, but even that was a struggle.

Last year I felt like I had everything in place. I was in Italy, I knew what I was doing when I got back and I didn’t have this uncertainty. Now I just don’t know…

Hopefully things will come together in the next month or so, I don’t think that I would be sane if I went into 8th block not knowing what my summer was going to be like. So for now I’m just going to try not to stress too much about my summer and enjoy the rest of my junior year. In a week it will be spring break and I will be finishing applications, making phone calls and sending out emails, perhaps I’ll even make time to hang out with friends. A week after that I will be in Dayton Beach soaking up sun and hanging out with my roommate and a friend which will be a much needed reprieve. I’m super excited to actually have some time for a vacation and then I can come back fully refreshed and ready for my next block class which will be a class analyzing the music of Gershwin. It’s with one of my favorite professors who is currently writing a book about Gershwin so it’s going to be an amazing class.

I guess at this point I’m starting to really experience some of the uncertainty of the real world. I‘m not sure how I like having my life precariously balancing between order and total chaos but I guess it’s something that I will have to get used to. Maybe even one day I’ll embrace it. For now I’ll try to keep thing together as best as I can, and until then…

A dopo!