This is my final essay for my writing class. If I get an A on it, I get an A in the class. It’s due Tuesday. So…opinions would be welcome. And actually, I’m begging. C’mon people, I’m all alone in my Scribner House, I graduate on Tuesday and I’m going cross-eyed from staring at my computer screen. LJ is going to screw with the formatting, but ignore that.
Ten Things To Do in Ten Days
1) Drive my favorite aimless drive route
2) Spend the day hanging around the government department doing work
3) Uncommon Grounds for superior cappucino with Di
4) Confessional Drive
5) Parting Glass with the former reading group
6) Scotty’s with the misanthropes
7) Celebrate graduating with Xina with ridiculously expensive dinner
Trip to Dunkin Donuts after midnight
9) Jersey coffee with Kristen
10) Smoke cloves on my back porch, write insanely long essay on “Three-Point-Five-Years”
Take finals, graduate, pack, drive home
And live happily ever after.
I’m in the last month now. It’s almost over.
Today:
“Is there anything you would do over? Is there anything you want to do that you haven’t done [at college]?”
(What’s the point of regret/They’re just lessons/We haven’t learned yet)
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
-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.
My grades aren’t that awful; my first semester grades from Skidmore were worse than these, and I’m not even so concerned about the numbers on my transcript (because I can get by, I can still got to grad school if I want…I hope) so much as about this pattern I’m in, this terrible pattern of sliding backwards and caring less and less. I’m so deeply sick of everything. Work has always been my stress relief, where I buried myself when I was lonely and needed to keep from falling apart.
It’s not that learning doesn’t seem meaningful to me anymore. It’s just that when I look at my college career and how I’ve spent it, I feel empty, like, what the fuck have I done in the past 3 years that will be of value to me a year from now, or even six months from now? Very little. Graduating in a few months is terrifying, but I’ll die if I have to stay at Skidmore any longer. The past 3 years haven’t been good. They haven’t been awful, but they haven’t been good, and since leaving Hampshire I haven’t let myself ever admit that. I’ve toughed myself up, hardly ever cried (the last month excluded) and I’ve survived on caffeine and anxiety and pride and drive.
I wrote an LJ entry back in December, only a line long “I have never wanted something I can’t have this badly in my life.”
I still want what I wanted then, and despite evidence to contrary, I’m no closer to getting it. It’s all I want, all I can see, it’s like I have blinders on, and the importance of everything else fades because I know deep down I’m still weak enough to give it all up for that.
This has all come at the worse possible time, second semester of my junior year. THE time to make myself look as impressive as possible, and I blew it, and I only half care. This summer I need to work my ass off, make some money, try to forget what I need to forget, let go of what I need to let go of. I need to stop crying, to stop feeling, to stop being such a fucking mess. I need to stop over thinking, hell I need to stop thinking. I need to work as many hours as possible, even though I’ll stare off into space and daydream when I’m making cappuccinos, entering data, wiping down countertops and making photocopies. I’ll daydream, but at least I’ll get paid while I’m doing it. I need to ride out this lazy phase, throw myself into reading ‘intellectual’ books, take some OCD notes, rearrange the pieces of my academic life, and hope and pray the rest falls into place.
I need to follow through on this, but I’m terrified I won’t be able to.
I am not the notoriously cynical, pessimistic, voted most sarcastic girl I was in high school here. In high school I was good about being the very vocal minority, who (sometimes condescendingly) dismissed the views of my classmates. I bitched about the ridiculousness of a system that reward stupid kids who spit back rhetoric with a high class rank. I tried to avoid getting into NHS. I was a star academic decathalete (and loved it!!!) with Cs in Chemistry, Spanish, and Math. I wasn’t a contradiction, but some might of saw me that way.
I am the token libertarian member of SYRA. If my parents knew I had joined a club with Republican in the title I think they’d cry. I speak up in class and I’m not shy about expressing my opinions if you ask, but I don’t go out of my way to make it known that I’m probably one of the more conservative people on this campus. I don’t write articles for the SkidNews, that’s bashed my club every week. Even though I can write coherent articles it just seems pointless to publish something that people will dismiss because its ‘conservative.’ I don’t know.
Maybe I’m not putting enough faith in the Skidmore community, but in the past year and a half, I’ve found that the ‘collegiate liberals’ here are barely better than Hampshire. Sure they shower more often, and don’t think money is evil, since most of them have quite a lot, but they hold similar narrow-minded views that they refuse to see past. And I don’t understand. College is, ideally, supposed to challenge you, and challenge you’re perceptions of the world. Skidmore doesn’t do that. Most students enter Skidmore as relatively liberal, and take Liberal Studies which is supposed to teach you to think about things the way you never did before, but really just confirms all the comfortable ideas most people already have. It’s approach is normative and no conclusions are drawn. The class would have been controversial in my upper middle class white high school, filled with kids whose parents “Vote for Reagan” signs on their lawns had scared my hippie mother when we first moved to the area. At Skidmore, it just seems to enforce what almost everyone already believes. It doesn’t challenge any assumptions.
Again, maybe I’m just being cynical, but its been a long time since I felt this disillusioned. At Hampshire I found crazy hippies somewhere to the left of communist who spouted endless ridiculous rhetoric and discounted my view because I’m white and straight. At Skidmore I’ve found classes full of people who don’t do their reading, liberals who think the views they acquired freshman year will guide them through the rest of their lives, and a community that is rather intolerant of views that do not fit into its touchy-feely liberal scheme. You’ll certainly never find “The Closing of the American Mind” in LS1 or read a Phyllis Schafly article in Women Studies 101. If the general population doesn’t agree with it, it isn’t discussed. So many viewpoints, so many ideas are discounted, and even ignored. In high school, the focus was narrow and I was under the impression that that changed in college. I was wrong.
I’ve changed since graduating high school, I’m still dramatic, but more quiet – a product of barely uttering a word my entire tenure at Hampshire. I’m less cynical, less bitter, and less angry, because I am more content with my surroundings (sometimes) and my life. I’m not as notorious. I’m somewhat alienated from a good part of campus life, and getting here a year late didn’t help that. I’m not unhappy with that. I like “my” version of college life, even though its often atypical. I love the government department and talking to my professors and getting obsessed with my reading.
But I don’t like being attacked in the paper in a baseless article. I don’t like being in class and having everyone in the room gang up on me, and rudely tell me I’m wrong without even letting me finish my sentence. I don’t expect people to agree with me, in fact, I’m perfectly willing to engage anyone who disagrees with me. I’m not afraid to defend what I believe. I am, however, insulted by the fact that liberals here are so threatened by conservative views that they have to result to anti-SYRA propaganda. I find it appauling that if I try to express myself before Senate I’m accused of breaking the honor code because my opinion is apparently aligned with ‘not upholding the integrity of Skidmore College.’ I find it depressing when people raise completely irrational ideas in class that have no basis in reality and are applauded for their compassionate liberal thinking. And sometimes, I’m lonely, because all I want to do is have a beer and argue about books and politics and ideas, and that’s when I really miss my o-town friends.
Skidmore is not what I expected it to be. I knew it was liberal (and that fits with a lot of my views, actually). I knew it was a mix of hippies and rich kids. I didn’t know they’d lie to me like this. I was promised a challenge and what I’ve gotten is a place where I can whip out a 10 page paper 2 days before and get an A, when Ms Roeser would have just shook her head and used the “STOP” stamp. I’m not unhappy here. College, overall, has just not been what I’ve expected. I’ve created my own form of the college experience, and I’m fine with that, most of the time. It just makes me cynical sometimes. I am, after all, “the cynical one” of the LTTC.
I want beer and good conversation and I want college liberals to stop being so afraid of the views that they try to so hard to counter.
But I’ll take 2 out of 3 (but don’t be sad cause 2 out of 3 ain’t bad)
After Senate meeting last night, I was basically too angry to be coherent. It was absolutely ridiculous. There are no words for how ridiculous people are – Skidmore needs a professional hand holder or something, if stupid liberals are going to CRY because an election official makes them sign a piece of paper saying they will not break the law.
Anyway, SYRA has unofficially nominated me to write something about it. This is what I have so far:
I have quite a lot to say about the local election and the drama surrounding it, but I’m also sick of talking about it, sick of hearing about it, and sick of stressing out about it.
The Whiny Martyr Liberals are still whining about the injustice of it all…these people, of course, have no idea what real injustice is.
Not like I do, I’m as white and privledged as the rest of them, but at least I don’t cry when someone makes me sign a paper saying I won’t break the law.
-i am sick to death of the California Recall. Elect Arnold, get it over with, whofucking cares
-i really, really, really, really, really, really, really hope they take away Skidmore’s voting booth
-beer is sometimes neccesary to soothe the savage beast inside your soul (or you know, at least help you deal with too much estrogen)
-the protector of fluffy bunnies club (aka the Greens, aka Progressives, aka Peace & Justice & Other Non-Violent Things (or smtg) are debating, sorry rountabling with SYRA on OCt 22 in ICC, everyone should come watch
-screw volleyball, give the hockey team money
-watch out for oranges!
-3 guys trying to sell opium (non-students) were arrested at skidmore on thursday. they also stole a lot of shit because people are too stupid to lock their doors
-gummy bears look like retarded bears, therefore, they must have been modeled after retarded bears
Examples of Skidmore’s Touchy-Feely, Everyone Is A Unique & Beautiful Snowflake, Over-the-top Anti-Dog-Eat Dog Liberalism
1) The Greens are changing their name to something equivalent to “Students for Everything that is Good and Fluffy Bunnies” Actually they’re changing their name to “Students for Peace and Justice” (or something) which makes sense because:
a) the only thing they did last year was protest the war
b) The actual Green Party is technically supposed to be a single interest party, the environment. And we already have an environment club.
2) Instead of having debates between SYRA and the Greens (the fluffy bunny club) we have to have roundtables, because debates are too scary and offensive. Plus if the table we use is actually round, then its nice, and equivalent, and non-offensive.
3) There is a new a cappella group forming for all the people who didn’t make the real a cappella groups. If you are a male, you have the chance to try out for two groups. If you are female there are THREE groups, and one of them isn’t very good in the first place. If you don’t make it into any of those groups, there is a reason. Plus, the posters for the group are all like “Feeling Rejected, etc etc.” Well, they are not just feeling rejected they WERE rejected. For a reason.
4) There is a radio show for the discussion of political issues. It is called “The Liberal Democratic Cause”
5) The Greens are whining about the town of Saratoga Springs taking away “our” voting booth. Never mind the fact that there are not voting booths in hospitals, nursing homes, etc. Apparently, voting is not that important to them, or to anyone on Skidmore campus who is “convinced” to vote here because they can’t go downtown to do so. Because to get downtown they’d either have to a) drive, and we know the greens think cars are evil or something. b) walk, and that’s hard, because the greens like to go barefoot (including this girl in my feminist political thought class who puts her bare, dirty feet on the table right next to me)
6) Our new motto for admissions material is “Creative Thought Matters” ie, everyone is a unique and beautiful snowflake, and with the amount of money we paid some PR people, this new slogan cost tens of thousands of dollars a word.
7) LS curriculum has been changed, in part, because people weren’t doing well enough, because they apparently can’t write simple 5 page papers
8. We’re cutting men’s hockey, which will cause freshman and sophomore guys to transfer out, and giving money to girls sports, even though we are already in Title 9 Compliance. And the money is going to the volleyball team (we have a volleyball team?????) and increasing Yoga classes.
Considering I’m back in the world of academia I should have something intelligent, thoughtful, and perhaps deep to say, but I don’t. This is quickly turning from a political rants journal to a regular live journal, although I’m not spilling out any deep dark secrets (sorry profile pirates). Speaking of pirates, someone drew a really cool pirate ship on our transfer mural in Moore.
Transfers! I’ll talk about transfers.
So yeah.
Running transfer orientation went really well. We have a good group, who seem to ‘mesh’ well. They actually came to our community service event (ours was painting a mural, we were lucky…most freshman got stuck raking leaves, cleaning up trash and painting trees ((what the hell is painting trees anyway))). There’s no way to say “welcome” like “Hi, its your second day here! Guess what you’re doing!?! Picking up trash because the college is broke and can’t pay someone to do it! So we’re going to dress it up like a community service project, even though its doing nothing for the community!” But I digress.
Anyway, mural painting with the transfers was lots of fun, and then most of them came to our house on Monday night, and our living room was overflowing with people. We kept them seperated from the freshman for the most part, because they know how to go to college, and we didn’t like all the stupid frosh-events they had us do when we transferred. So yay for our successful transfer orientation.
Hm. I’m not even going to try to bullshit on why this is political.
It’s Friday late morning and I have class today…Class on Friday is an outrage, especially for a former Hampshire student. But its just IA 101, so its easy and not until after 12, so if I suddenly become a social butterfly this semester I can go out on Thursday nights. But that probably won’t happen.
I leave in less than 48 hours and I’m not even packed yet. Going back to school snuck up on me this year, I guess because I’m used to being stuck at home for a week with no one around, since everyone’s school seems to start earlier than mine. Yay for running transfer orientation or something.
I am milling around my room putting stuff in boxes, changing my mind about what box it goes in, and working on my Atlas Shrugged essay that should be done already.
When I get to Skidmore I have a million bureaucratic things to take care of — final plans for transfer orientation, filling out forms for my self-determined major, and finding out more about Washington Semester.
Washington Semester looks like it would be a great opportunity — classes in foreign policy that I can’t get at Skidmore, and have a good internship. Yet I’m still all unsure about going, because in some ways I feel like I just got to Skidmore, and just settled in. Educationally, and even career wise, going to Washington would be the best move. I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to get the Self-Determined Major committee to approve it. Blah. I have gotten bad with decisions ever since my super bad decision to go the Hampshire
Oh well. I will figure it out, etc, etc, etc, etc. Right now I’m excited to get back to school see everyone, and feel as if I’m accomplishing something.
1st weekend bonding, being saved from the awful roommate, confessional why I transfered stories, knowing why never to ask the question “Why Did You Transfer?” in mixed company.
Girly movies, the mat with the ladybugs, singing the 1776 window song, Cherry Garcia drag show ice cream, Robo-Amazon-Truck-Driver. Cheater! the big sweatshirt, “it’s the guy in the furry Russian hat”,
“thats sketch”, thursday night dinners, i want to be japanese! i hate it when i tell the truth, this is gour-fucking-met, Di dancing in the d-hall, THIS IS ALL THE MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM! i wish i could be delusional & naive & then I could think I was going to just be a rock star, Matzoh ball soup addictions, he’s sketchy, there are a lot of somalians, pssst, north quad vs south quad (South Quad Rules),
Walking to Uncommon Grounds and ranting, and confessing. Mostly forgotten Friday night of ‘Fun Day’ a school event that was actually amusing. The pond, running around barefoot, in the middle of an open, viewable field, then running around the campus being giggly drunk girls and having conversations and taking twenty minutes to explain what should take 2 seconds. waking up with the Worst. Hangover. Ever. but enjoying the feeling of being a typical college student.
The non naked table, “I just saw the boots and freaked out”, I can’t stand it when people I hate are liked by other people. Especially when its by people that I like. short rides in cars for runs and conversations and honesty, our long lost sister, and that we all listened to the same Jimmy Eat World song the past summer
It just takes some time, little girl
You’re in the middle after all
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be alright.
And getting the house for next year. Perfect.
The end of a school year is always so weird. It is such a nostalgic time for remembering past end of school years and such, and expressing disbelief that the year is over.
Sociology today was so sad. It’s without a doubt the best class I’ve taken in my college career. Everyone else in the class is intelligent, well spoken, and fun — we have had amazing discussions, and a great dynamic. It’s very rare to find a ‘perfect college class’ but this was about as close as you could come. Mike, who did my Weber critique and is probably one of the nicest people I’ve ever met is a senior and graduating, and even though I really don’t know him personally, just from class, it made me kind of sad that I’ll never have the opportunity to talk to him again.
College is kind of depressing like that. You make connections with people in class on an intellectual level and many times you don’t have the chance to ever talk to that person again besides a nodd when you see them walking across the Green…I’m ranting, and its not making any sense.
I can’t really be articulate about what I’m thinking about all this. Whats that literary term when one part symbolizes a whole? Because I think that is what I’m getting at, or something.
One more class today, N/W Lit, my least favorite class. I don’t want to go, but I do want to give the professor a scathing evaluation. Then I have a lecture tonight that my sadistic professor is requiring us to go to on the LAST DAY OF CLASSES. But I’m exhausted from not sleeping last night and after this weekend, I’m not eager to drink any time soon, so its not like its too big a deal. More a hassle than anything else. So yeah. These entries are getting more and more boring, but I swear they are all very political and sociological and libertarian. Yeah.
I can’t believe this year is over.
So yeah
It’s nearly the end of the semester, classes end in a week and I have tons of papers to do and no motivation to do them. Yay, run on sentences.
It’s really odd to believe the year is ending, especially when I associate the end of school with warm weather, and it’s going to snow tomorrow. Stupid upstate New York…in 3 weeks I’ll be in Florence where the weather will be warm. I should be really excited, but I’m not yet because of all the bureaucratic stuff I still have to do before I leave. Plus I’m going to be gone for 6+ weeks and will really miss Ryan, because we’ve never gone longer then 3 weeks without seeing each other (and usually it’s a lot less than that) and diner trips with Brenty, and Jersey, even though it’s the same old same old at home. I still want to take a drive on the Pulaski Skyway and witness the strangely beautiful view before I trade in smog and turnpikes and factories and cars for villas and green hills and architecture.
~pouring salt on the table
~Jesus lives there! (on the 11th floor of tower!)
~North Quad vs. South Quad (Wait Hall being weird and awful, Tower having a lot of really dumb, slutty people in it.
~I killed Jesus and that’s why you got your god damn Easter Basket
“That girl has dreadlocks & I can’t see over her” –Katherine
~There are lots of Somalians living in Lewisiton, Maine
~Christina being a racist because she hates the Quebeckers and getting stuck behind one coming back from jersey, and wanting to pop a giant easter bunny
~“What if the guys next to us are really loud” “Christina, I’ll take care of it” (because I will be the assassin of Hick A next year)
~“he’s probably coming over here because of the shirt”-Katherien, on why Will was going to come sit with Diane. Diane freaking out and realizing she left her top shirt unbuttoned.
~“It was a short, passionate love affair”-Diane about the yellow fruit things
~“Mocha java whateverthefuck”
Upon Hearing My Complaints on Hippies Here
Brent: skidmore is like hampshire lite
Me: I KNOW
Brent: it’s like the six flags to disney world
Me: six flags tries to be disney world though, skidmore doesn’t try to be hampshire
