I started my countdown-to-graduation journal right after Thanksgiving. (And had another countdown-to-SYMBOLIC-graduation last April/May) It was a good motivator to write, among other things.
It’s also a good way to force myself to get things done before the new year, because then I can write about it. Do you know Microsoft word marks “new year” as a grammatical error if you don’t capitalize it? I don’t think ‘new year’ needs to be capitalized unless you’re referring specifically to the holiday. But I digress.
Anyway. In 34 days it will be 2006. I will have survived my first year in The Real World and be more than half way through the experimental “time off.” My only goals are to finish the three applications that are due in December, and to not have a horrible New Years Eve. The latter will probably be accomplished by actually going to bed at 10 PM, as I should have done last year, instead of carousing through the city with HeWhoShallNotBeNamed. I mean, that was technically New Year’s Eve-Eve, and it was a really fun night, but obviously god agreed with…well all my friends who told me not to go, because that evening ended disastrously. Sebastian, the only one of my friends who is religious, must have made some kind of deal. But I digress.
I am currently at work, having just finished a project, and am tooling around until I get more work. I am worrying about a variety of things; my nails are bitten down to nothing. NaNo-ing has simply not happened as much as I would have liked this year. I meant to go to more meet-up things (and I miss the Capital District chats that Emily was always setting up last year) but grad school stuff, and other busyness got in the way. I actually have over 45,000 words of essaying and could easily make it to 50,000 if I threw myself into writing these next few nights, but it’s certainly not a novel, and it’s certainly not anything that’s near a finished product. The essay I really want to write is still not happening, but HTLAR has been progressing swimmingly. Regardless, I’m going to attend the TGIO gathering on Thursday. I suppose I could say once again that I digress, but then I would have to have had a point from which to digress.
I’m going to go back to crafting the perfect Chicago SOP. I should automatically be granted admission, because I think the reading group I was in Spring 2004 was kind of Straussian. Plus, it’s very U Chicago to spend a weekend night (and the weekend did indeed start on Thursday at Skidmore. It was Rule #1 according to my Comp. Politics professor) discussing bio-ethics, and freshman curriculum, and Genesis. Especially when it’s done over beer.
The few hours I slept, I was dreaming about taking my Modern final.
My hands have been shaking since 8 PM last night.
“A few more hours to be complete” etc.
2 papers down, 1 final done, only THE final left to go.
I spent the morning hanging out in the government department lounge. Then I took my final, which was ridiculously easy, went to Scotty’s with Laura, went X-Mas shopping, and then napped. I’ve had butterflies in my stomach and have been mildly anxious since I woke up. I’m slightly nervous about my Modern final because I’m never sure if I’ve studied enough and I’m starting to go into shock that I’m really finished tomorrow.
This semester went by ridiculously fast. When I got back to school in September I never imagined I would wind up where I am now. Hitting rock bottom in early October meant things really did have no where to go but up. Stupid optimism. I know “who are you and what have you done with Rachel” etc. It’s nice to hear that question again, it’s been too many years.
I have a million things to say, and I’m not sure I can actually articulate them all. But it will have to wait until after THE final.
Oh, and “Time of Your Life” was on the radio on the way home from Dunkin’ Donuts, and although I have not had the time of my life, (these past 2 months excluded, of course!) upon hearing that song I almost lost it. It should be an interesting 24 hours.
I spent Sunday being incredibly social, especially if one is to count the post midnight, pre-sleeping hours, but being that it is not tomorrow until you wake up, I qualify that as part of Saturday. Today was breakfast with Keith, coffee with Di, studying with Matt, gettting steak and beer with Kristen to celebrate going to school together an insane amount of years, movie watching with the housemates, voluntarily speaking on the phone for more than 5 minutes, falling into bed exhausted and now NOT BEING ABLE TO FALL BACK SLEEP. I’ve gotten very little sleep in the past few days. It’s affecting my eidetic memory and power of coherence. When I get my act together and start a blog I’m totally using Eidetic in the title.
I need to revise my 3.5 years essay because it’s lacking something and I don’t know what.
I have my list of things I’m going to miss about this place (or rather, people I’m going to miss) but I’m very much looking forward to going home, and seeing my Jersey boys, diner-ing, making Brent buy me drinks with his poker winnings, seeing Ray, who is home from Italy, letting Jon educate me about The City, psuedo-intellectual-Neo-Victorian coffee, etc. While I’m not looking forward to making lattes with my college degree, I’m looking forward to seeing the cafe superheroes and having my day brightened by all the cool booksellers.
I don’t think the fact that I’m done with college is going to sink in until the end of winter break, when everyone at home goes back to school and I stay in O-Town and go insane and speak German and study Wittgenstein and fall further in love with Nietzsche. I’m a really awful Jew. And my family is doing a very Jewish X-Mas this year, with Chinese food, movies, barbecuing, and no tree. This is on request of my father who is the one member of my immediate family that is not 100% Jewish and actually grew up celebrating X-Mas and being raised Protestant. Jewishness, however, has clearly corrupted him because Jews are a powerful, persuasive, and awesome race.
Thirty-ish hours until I’m done with finals. Then, calling up everyone I know to shriek “OMG I’m DONE!”, saying good-bye to people, one more Dunkin’ Donuts/confessional drive evening, packing, probably some crying because endings, good or bad, are naturally bittersweet. I’ll be in Jersey by dinnertime on Wednesday and hopefully in the vapid mobile sometime later that night.
Tocqueville tormented me for seven days. But I love him anyway.
How typical (insert appropriate AIM face)
Things I Don’t Want to Do
-Go to my Tuesday/Thursday classes (4 more)
-Write my Tocqueville paper (I’m like, not sure, if like, I GRASP what like, Tocqueville’s argument about equality is, like, do you know what I mean, like?/ NO. I DON’T LIKE, KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN, LIKE!)
-Study for my Middle Eastern Politics final. Because I haven’t done any of the reading. All semester. Oh, it’s just like Comp Pol…
-Drink anymore “Silver Tequilla.” It gives me a headache
The Plan for Next “Semester”
-German classes, yay!
-TESOL certification
-40 hours @ cafe.
-Going stir crazy in Jersey, finding teaching job in Austria, Italy, or Germany.
So, at this time next year I’ll be in Europe.
It is amazing how little I care about my Middle Eastern politics class.
It’s almost worse than Comp Pol last semester. Almost. If Laura and Kenny and Mike weren’t there, I’d shoot myself. Mike is cute, Kenny is from Jersey, and Laura is my newest partner in crime.
Laura and I went to Scotty’s under the guise of studying on Monday night. We wound up eating breakfast food and ice cream, and having a really good talk. It is so good to talk to another intellectual female who prefers to spend most Friday nights reading; there are far fewer intellectual-elitist girls per capita than guys. She also understands some things that none of my other friends do, specifically regarding HWSNBN. It feels as if a giant weight of uncertainty has been lifted off my shoulders.
And overnight we have all this inside joke material and shared knowledge…oh “the vault.”
And it’s also wonderful to sit in the Government Department Lounge and fall off chairs laughing while Sebastian looks at us like we’re crazy. We are. Crazy for Nietzsche, that is.
Even though I was just home, I cannot wait for Thanksgiving. Tuesday night Brent and I are going wacky driving and diner dwelling. I remarked a few nights ago, that it’s wonderful we can spend our Senior Thanksgiving Break the same way we spent out Freshman Thanksgiving Break.
I have to write a Russia paper before leaving. And decide if I want to do intensive language study in Russian or German. Either way, I’ll be on the path to world domination
Whenever I think that my zen-like-ness has transferred me from a political animal
(and speaking of political animals, thank you perfect memory for being able to discuss what Aristotle meant by political animal based on reading from GO 103, two years ago in Modern on Wednesday, because it made me look smarter than I really am.)
into a calm, resigned, apolitical, voter-for-Badnarik, person, I’ll read something that will remind me how much I hate George W. Bush, and how angry he can make me, and I remember why I doubt the intelligence of people who would actually want to vote for him, even though that is technically judgemental and wrong.
That was quite a long sentence, and I am Stephen King-like (Bachman reference! which book was this in?) in my use of parenthesis. Speaking of Stephen King, I saw the newest and last Dark Tower (why the hell did Stephen King decide to write all three and then release them within a few months of each other. My dad and my brother have been bitching about the Dark Towers not being out for years. Why couldn’t he just have released 5 when it was done, and then written 6, etc, etc, because who has the time to read a million pages of creepy, sociopathic-ish writing all at once) at B&N yesterday, and the cover is freaky. And they are remaking “IT”, and telling it from Beverly’s point of view, and it will possibly suck even more than the first movie, because it’s hard to make a movie out of a book that 1100 pages, and shut up everyone, because the ending DOES make sense. And “Derry- The Last Interlude”; so,so,so,so sad.
And “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”? Advice recieved on this movie: “Ug, don’t watch that movie. It’s the type of movie that makes you want to get back together with your ex-boyfriends, and makes you glorify the good parts of every stupid fling you ever had” Heh. The movie is quite decent, and Kate Winslet if gorgeous, and it’s the first ‘Jim-Carrey-as-a-dramatic-actor’ movie I’ve seen. Except I cried so hard I think I scared my housemates. Yes.
-It’s raining here. Remnants of Hurricane Ivan. Appropriate since much of my Russian reading this week has been Ivan III (The Great) and Ivan IV (The Terrible). Russian names sound so threatening and evil.
-”Drinking Green Mountain coffee is virtuous [because it's fair trade coffee]. You’re not addicted to caffeine. You’re addicted to helping people get fair pay for growing coffee.” – Modern Political Thought on Wednesday.
-Saratoga has the oldest operating race track in the country. That’s because after the Battle of Saratoga George Washington was like “We have all these ponies…lets have them run around in a circle and people can bet on them.” Yes. Ponies.- my brilliant housemate
-Buckley and Beer. And Baseball!
-I want to go to Russia. Or Italy.
I’m back at Skidmore.
Classes have started
In approximately 105 days I will take my last final (Modern Political Thought, the morning of December 22) and I will be a college graduate.
I have no computer (currently in the library, being an overachiever, or procrastinating being an overachiever)
Sitting in Modern yesterday afternoon, surrounded by mostly juniors, and a few seniors whose names I don’t know, it felt wrong to be there.
I should have graduated in May.
Finals. Done. My Grades? Not saved.
I am in trouble whenever I think a paper is good. This was confirmed to me yesterday. Clearly, I should know by now not to turn in papers I think are any good. Clearly.
APD Final? What are these “exams” you speech of? I’m a Hampshire girl at heart, I ain’t accustomed to these old-fashioned test things. In fact, they may even be a form of patriarchial oppression!
I kid, I kid. Everyone knows patriarchial oppression rules!
