| I'm currently sitting in our van, which is parked in a rest stop in Middle of Nowhere, Oregon, waiting for my parents to finish lunch. Middle of Nowhere, Oregon, shockingly has a wireless signal, which meant I could check my e-mail, facebook, and compulsively check to see if I've gotten my grades back yet. And yet I need no wireless signal to start to write, and considering this is most likely going to be a marathon entry, I should begin.
The further I go from campus, the more distance I get--both physically (…duh) and emotionally. This is turning into psycho-babble, so let me rephrase that. The further I go from campus, the easier it is to get perspective. I am no longer right there, so involved and invested in everything, and therefore it's not a problem for me to give a relatively candid summary of my freshman experience, although if this is a summary, I'd hate to see what my in-depth analysis would look like. It comes back to the attitude I've had that if I weren't the one living my life, I'd probably be incredibly amused, but as it is, since I am the one in the middle of it and having to deal with everything, it's not so funny. And so the further I get from campus, the less it seems like my life, and more like recounting a very odd, sometimes amusing, and vaguely confusing story.
Since I haven't blogged in months, and I can't even remember the last time I wrote a detailed account of my life (the first few college stories don't count, and the summary of my summer job did not count either, making the last "detailed" account the one of Pennsylvania, I think...and that was nearly a year ago), it's worth giving a recap. Call it the Prologue to The Freshman Experience of Anna.
I was never very college-oriented. I accompanied my older sister on some of her college visits, and I was so sick of the whole thing that it wasn't until the end of my junior year that I thought I should start seriously looking into what I wanted to do after high school. Even though I had looked down on the game of college, by that time I had had enough of Idaho, homeschooling in particular (clarification: not homeschooling itself, but rather the homeschoolers). I needed to get out. Solution = college.
But then, where to go? I didn't have many specific qualifications for colleges to be allowed in the running, and those few qualifications nixed the majority of schools. Small-ish liberal arts school, out of Idaho, secular, relative political balance in the student body, good academic reputation, merit-based financial aid, and not a large party/Greek-life scene. If anyone remembers, that didn't leave me many options. I had originally intended to apply to five schools. One I threw out after sitting down to write the typical "And why do you want to attend our school?" essay and could only stare blankly. Two I rejected after visiting them and being completely unimpressed. One put me on the waitlist, and we later found out that it wasn't particularly friendly toward homeschoolers and the students were worked to death, something that would not have been a good idea for on-again/off-again slacker me. Oregon's Willamette University won by default. It wasn't that I hadn't liked it when I visited. I did, and I could even almost see myself as one of the students there. It wasn't any type of "O dream school of mine, where hast thou been all my college search?" reaction, though. In general, I still didn't have an excited attitude toward college. It wasn't something I was ecstatic about. It wasn't something I was dreading. It was something to do besides the nothing I was currently doing.
Mom says she remembers my attitude throughout my shopping for college-related items and packing everything up being a constant "I can't believe I'm packing for college. This is so unreal." We drove to Oregon. We arrived on campus. We unpacked the million things I had brought along. It was still surreal. This seemed like a short excursion. We'd stay around, sit in on a couple classes, and pack up and go home. Or maybe it was a joke - "Haha, very funny that this will be my home for the next four years--can we go home now?" It was very hard to get it through my head that everyone I was meeting would be around for, at bare minimum, the next year, and at maximum, the. next. four. years.
So, it's hard to remember the exact series of events, but the first night there when I was supposed to stay in my room for the first time, I started sobbing and had a breakdown because for the first time I realized I had NO idea why I was here and how I had gotten here and what I was going to do here and I really didn't want to be there either. Oh, and I had hated the first "Colloquium" (fancy name for freshman "discussion-based" seminar class) class and felt out of place everywhere in general. It would be unrealistic to say I was scared to death, but I felt completely out of place, exactly like a visitor. Certain things didn't help. In my "Opening Days" group (the freshmen were divided up into groups of about fifteen that were led by two older students - the groups were designed to introduce us to college life, give us a base of friends, etc.), we played the typical game where you introduce yourselves and then throw a ball around. The point of the game is, of course, that you must say the name of the person to whom you're throwing the ball, thereby learning everyone's names. Someone has to be the last person to whom the ball is thrown, but for insecure out-of-place little me, it was on the distressing side.
I stayed in the hotel with my family that night because I was so upset, and they were a little concerned about whether they should cross their fingers things would get better for me, or adopt a bleeding-heart approach and pack up and go home. As evil and conniving as it sounds, I don't think there was ever any question in MY mind of not staying. I totally told myself "So if you go back, you pretty much fail at life, the universe, and everything," in so many words. (I just realized that expression, "in so many words," is very odd, because if you take it literally, it might mean that something was said in very many words, or in exactly as many words as the paraphrase, which is not its meaning at all. Sorry, tangential. On with the story.) Besides, as I said, it would be inaccurate to say I was terrified. You (maybe) know me - I'm insanely stubborn, and at least in the last couple years, if I'm in a sink or swim situation, I'll tell myself "If you sink you literally DID fail at life..." and start swimming. Yes, I started sobbing again when my parents dropped me off for good, but immediately after they ("the boat") pulled away, I hardened my heart and moved on to face the cruel, dark world that stretched out its grasping, skeletal fingers to welcome me in a sadistic embrace...
...wrong genre, moving on...
In general, I was fine from then on. An extremely broad generalization, to be sure, but put in perspective, life was mostly harmless. It would have helped if I had known that back then, but if wishes were wings, the airlines would be out of business. Anyway, yes, I quit having meltdowns, except when I'd call home. This is an interesting phenomenon, actually. I think since there was no one at school to whom I could run, my rational side informed me that it would do absolutely no good to get upset. But home was somewhere to run, and so when I did call home, I had nothing holding me back from melting down again (I'm melting, I'm melting! sometimes I enjoy making fun of myself a little too much...forgive me...). Within a week I had stopped that nonsense, though, I think. A lot of things from back then are hazy.
Another thing that didn't help was that I'd compare everyone I met to the homeschoolers back home. So-and-so would remind me of that person's face, another person of some other homeschooler, and on and on. Now I remember those comparisons and either can't remotely see the resemblance or can't even remember what comparison I made. I remember randomly deciding that a guy in College Republicans was an ultra-conservative Protestant, and now I can only look back on that insane judgment and think "...WHAT???"
I have very odd memories of that time. I remember the first time I met the RA for my hall, I thought she looked very old (why am I reminded of my five-or-six-year-old self thinking that my babysitters were really really old when they were probably in junior high?), although she did look a little unsure of herself (duh...she was a sophomore and it was her first time being an RA - she must have been nearly as worried as I was, but I didn't use my brain much back then). Before my family left, I remember playing my dorm's lounge piano while they listened, and I remember some other people from my dorm coming into the room to listen to the last few measures of the song I was playing (I remember which one it was - Jon Schmidt's "All of Me" - odd how details like that stay fixed in your mind). It's funny, because I'm almost completely certain of who those people were. At least one or two of them are now (were? who knows...) my friends and I sort of kind of know the other two, although I would hardly expect them to remember this first "meeting," considering it was...oh, our first day there. I think I remember thinking they looked kind of young to be in college. I have no idea why I expected people to look old. I have no idea why I thought a lot of things. After my family left, I remember another time of playing the piano, finishing a song (no, I don't remember which one this was), and turning to see that a guy had been listening to part of it. I think he said he had come down because he heard someone playing the piano, and that it sounded good, but I was in enough of a freezing-up state that I had no idea if I had heard him correctly, and so didn't want to say thank you in case he hadn't said it sounded good, and so I just sat there with an expression probably reminiscent of a deer in headlights. I know him now, too, and would be amused (shocked? horrified? ambivalent? couldn't care less?) if he remembered that.
That latter incident probably sums up how I acted at first in general. Unsure of everything, afraid to say the wrong thing, way too quiet, not nearly assertive enough, etc. All the activities meant to help the freshmen "bond" were completely uncondusive to my feeling at home. No, a square-dancing/hip-hop outside dance is not my thing. No, discussing "Straight Talk" (a production that consisted of older students acting out "skits" or giving speeches about issues facing campus, such as drinking, racism, multiculturalism, sexual orientation, [date] rape, pregnancy, eating disorders, and suicidal tendencies - WAY TO GO making these issues into "skits," guys, and welcome to Willamette) with my OD (Opening Days) group did not teach me anything or help me bond with people in any way. No, having dinner at the house of an alumnus (singular of alumni, woooo for limited knowledge of Latin, I'm great, you're not impressed, never mind) so the guy could reminisce at us about how great his Willamette experience was did not really make me think any higher of our dear school. No, I doubt at least half of my OD group would remember I was in their group, although to be fair, I am still friends with four people from the group, and still talk to and am on friendly terms with (or am relatively sure they have some idea of who I am) a few others.
I'm continuously tempted to say I was "scared to death" about things and keep having to figuratively whack myself over the head because it's inaccurate. However, I realized that even if I wasn't scared "to death," I was definitely scared of my advisor to some degree. I don't think it's a particularly good idea for the Colloquium professors also to be their students' advisors. The professors get all the stats about their incoming students, and so at my first "advising" meeting with my professor, the first thing she told me was "Oh, so you're by far the best student in my class." How confusing. We had had...what, one or two classes? How could she have known a single bloody thing about how good a student I was? I was predisposed not to like her, too, because on the first few days of class she did a lot of things that seemed like foolish, academia elitism, like writing random Greek words on the whiteboard that none of us had any need to know, and she has a bit of an abrasive, extremely blunt personality. It turned out that she was basing her attitude toward my "scholarship" (and in this case, I am using that word to mean something like "the property of being a student/scholar," not "financial aid based on academic performance" </Lemony Snicket mimickery>) on my test scores. You (maybe) know my attitude toward test scores. ABSOLUTE HEAP OF RUBBISH, and I just LOVE having the numbers tattooed on my forehead and being judged on that. She was also curious about my being homeschooled - not skeptical, but curious, and, I expected, one of those people who, if I turned out to be a poor student or just exceptionally unwilling to speak up in class, would blame it on my being homeschooled, not on my personality, whereas if a public-schooled student acted like that, his or her education would never be brought up as a possible cause. I tried to assure her hastily that I wasn't one of the religious-fanatic homeschoolers (think opening of "Mean Girls"), and she seemed to like me. In fact, I kind of liked her, too, outside of the classroom (in the classroom, she continued to annoy me with her academic elitism, occasional inclusion of her politics in our thoroughly unpolitical subject matter, insistence on bringing everything back to sex, and thorough belief that her way was the only way when it came to interpreting texts and writing essays), despite my being scared of her and desperate to prove that my test-score tattoo hadn't been an accident, and that I wasn't an inept homeschooler.
It was an interesting crowd of people, too. I was almost immediately friends with one of the girls in the class, and to this day she's one of my favorite people on campus. I've reconnected with another girl from Colloquium, even though we barely talked (although we were friendly to each other) back then. I see the other people around campus all the time, but we never talk and I'm relatively sure a lot of them would have trouble placing how I know them. It was still...a very interesting crowd. The two girls who seemed to be competing for the title of well-read know-it-all, the guy who I'll always remember as the one who randomly threw out the word "transcendalist" when transcendalism had absolutely nothing to do with anything, the guy who had a perpetually dazed grin on his face and didn't say anything that belied his looks, the guy who was famous to all of us because he barely ever showed up to class and was apparently getting high off of cough syrup, and the guy who was AWESOME at bringing up completely random pop-culture subjects, BSing his way through discussions about readings he hadn't completed, one day commented to our professor "Nice sweater" (which seemed to freak her out, because we all laughed that she barely ever wore a sweater after that, and never that one), and one famous day told her that she probably had it pretty easy and didn't have to work very hard, to which she said something along the lines of "I work my a-- off, so f--- you!" which evidently impressed him and shut him up. The rest of the people were mostly forgettable, although I remember them. I guess you could say we were a pretty close group by the end of the class, especially because we had to take turns leading the class for half the period, and we'd try to help each other out by keeping the discussion going and make it last a half hour.
You could say the class was successful, even though at the end of the class while we filled out the course evaluation forms with the professor out of the room, we asked each other what the class was about, exactly, and couldn't come to any conclusion. I was more comfortable speaking up in class by the time it finished. Although I wasn't particularly happy with my first full paper's grade (and this being only because I'm a perfectionist and compare myself to everyone else), I resisted the temptation to go sob about it as I might have done in years past, and instead stormed around about the unfairness of her grading me down for not including everything she would have had she written it. My grade moved up a half-grade with each of the two successive papers, and in her course sum-up note, my professor told me that she didn't think I had gained a lot out of the course because I had already come in as a strong writer. I don't think I let the world of homeschooling down, improved my "public-speaking" skillz, made two friends, and had a satisfactory grade. True, the subject matter wasn't always exactly fascinating, but other than that, it was a success.
Maybe it would be accurate to say I _was_ scared to death of my French class. I had only done French with my mom, and had no idea if my French skillz (yay for random Zs on the end of words) would be on par with what was expected of me. It turned out to be not that hard at all, and I was a lot less scared of our professor that most of the people in the class. The grammar we covered was all review, although it gave me a much more solid understanding of it and more practice at understanding spoken French and speaking it myself, so it was worthwhile. It was a rather large class and we didn't really bond. I never got to know some of my classmates who seemed like they could have been interesting, and a few I never got to know until we were in the tiny class of Intermediate French II the following semester. Most of the people in that class would most likely never remember we were in the same class, although, as always, I could name most of them off. The one friend I thought I'd made in the class joined one of the sorority houses, and I haven't really seen her since. However, the class went fine, the grade was satisfactory, and my understanding of French increased, so it can be dubbed a success.
Two and a half hours later, I am still in Middle of Nowhere, Oregon, although Middle of Nowhere has changed locations to Baker City, instead of middle-of-nowhere Middle of Nowhere, and my laptop battery is showing only twenty minutes remaining. I'll be home in about two hours anyway, so the rest of this chronicle, which has already surpassed about 3300 words, meaning altogether it will be a fearsome creature, will have to wait. Until then, I remain your partial, prejudiced, and ignorant historian.
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It is now 11:36 PM MST (10:36 Oregon-time), I have wasted a significant enough amount of time getting settled back down into the house, moving boxes and luggage everywhere, eating watermelon, and watching fragments of Mean Girls and A Walk to Remember (two vaguely entertaining but relatively vapid movies) on Youtube, and I am ready to continue writing this darn thing.
I was lucky enough to get into "Introduction to Ceramics" in first semester, which turned out to be a very fun class. It was so relaxing, and even if the class didn't precisely "bond," we all knew each other by name by the time class was over and talked a lot, because a lot of class was sitting at tables and playing around with clay. What more could you want? I was a tiny bit worried about making original enough work in the class, since our professor told us straight off that part of our grade would be based on creativity (yes, it's a bit oxymoronic to be judging and grading creativity, but...what can I say...). It was quite the exercise in realizing that people may be looking at your own work, thinking "Why didn't I think of that? Is that more creative than mine?" the same way you're looking at theirs (of course, I don't actually _know_ if anyone looked at my work that way, but it's possible). I thought I had made a friend in the class - I sat across from a nice girl who was in one of the sorority houses (in fact, the same one my friend from French joined), and I enjoyed talking to her...and then as sorority recruitment came up, she sent me some uncomfortable messages along the lines of "Recruitment's coming up and I'd LOVE to guide you through it - let me know if you have any questions!" I told her no, I wasn't interested, as nicely as possible, and she seemed fine with it. Then, after the semester ended, she e-mailed me saying I should reconsider going through recruitment, because it was a lot of fun, and there was no pressure to join at the end of it (but if I wasn't planning on joining, exactly what would have been the point of going through it and getting people's hopes up?). I told her no again, nicely, and it was either after that or after she sent _another_ e-mail that any communication between us broke off. It didn't help that in all of her messages, she'd end each sentence with a :) Yes, I like smiley faces. No, not that much. Yes, alternative punctuation is a good thing, and will you please. bloody. stop. smiling? It was too bad that she stopped trying to talk to me after that. I'm not going to forgive Delta Gamma that easily for coming between a couple of friends and me.
Ceramics was still great overall. There were some stupid people, one in particular, but that's a different story. Some of them would sit around talking about what they would do while they were high - go figure. Get a life, too. Despite some stupidity, it was wonderful to have a class whose work didn't consist of staring at a computer screen and writing essays, or reading until your eyes fall out. Granted, there was some frustration. I am no master of clay, and it was hard to get it to do what I wanted at times. Working with the pottery wheel was especially frustrating. Potters make it look so easy, and then you try leaning over your lump of clay and want to tear your hair out (but can't, because your hands are caked in gunk) because it's so hard to get the clay centered on the wheel and shape it correctly, and any time you DO come up with something you like, one slip of one finger and you've destroyed the whole thing. Plus, the mess takes ten to twenty minutes to clean up, and your clothes get covered with clay. It was still a highly enjoyable class, though, even though it was my lowest grade of the semester (silly creativity grade). I'll post pictures of my stuff sometime, but this entry is long enough as it is without pictures. Pictures will come later.
Creative writing was my last class that semester. The professor was wonderful - he was this young, funny guy who didn't fit any of the English teacher stereotypes. Anytime someone would try to get into prissy English symbolism, he'd shoot them down ("Hoooooold on there, that's getting way too meta"). It was wonderful. He was very engaging (otherwise, that once a week, three-hour-long class would have been torture) and provided useful feedback. I would have preferred more writing and less reading of published short stories, but you can't have everything. The first draft of the story I wrote was, quite frankly, a piece of overreactive emo crap. I think in one of the few college blog entries I wrote, I said I was terrified of getting my story peer-edited. It wasn't too bad, actually, but it was funny to see different people's reactions. The story dealt with the main character having trouble differentiating between her daydreams and reality, and most people in the class said it was confusing and they wanted clarification, while one guy absolutely loved it and wanted me to play with the readers' minds even more (...go figure). The story changed from first-person narrative to third-person at the very end; some people thought it was well-done, while others didn't think it worked. Some people thought it was a fitting end that I had my character kill herself (I can see the odd looks coming my way!), while others were a little disappointed, my professor fitting in the latter category. I was much happier with my revision, which was a lot less whiny, emo, and I-want-the-story-to-end-so-I'll-kill-her-yay!-ish. The classmate situation there was so-so. I made one pretty good friend whom I still see (but only because we were in another class together the next semester), a few friendly acquaintances, and the rest seemed nice but I didn't really talk to them (and it's another case of being convinced no one would remember me from that class, or at least very few).
Apart from classes, which you could say I lucked out on and were quite good overall, life sucked. Having a lot of distance from it by now, I can say that there was nothing in particular that was awful about it, but it still pretty much sucked. I guess I had enough self-awareness that I thought I had acted enough like a deer in headlights during OD that I wanted to avoid/pretend I didn't see anyone from my OD group who walked by. My hall was tiny - about ten people total. I was in a triple room. One of my roommates was from Hawaii, although she was not Hawaiian. My other roommate was from Japan, and although her English was a bit broken, she still had very good comprehension and was very outgoing. My roommate from Hawaii was the only other freshman on our hall. The three of us got along very well in general. We sometimes went to meals together, or to the mall once or twice (Them: "oooh Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria's Secret..."; Me: "sword-shop! shiny pointed objects!") and were incredibly dissimilar. The important thing was that we talked and got along most of the time. There were times when my roommate from Hawaii would have friends over or be on the phone and talk about who was pretty and who was ugly on myspace and who was going out with whom and the like, and I felt like my head would explode (or I would) if I had to listen to any more of it, and I'd retreat to the basement.
So that was one of the first things that went "wrong." No, I did not insta-bond with my roommates. No, I did not have a hall full of freshmen with whom I could bond because of our "shared" freshman experience. No, I did not know anyone from high school who was also going to Willamette (oh wait, I didn't go to high school...never mind, that's not the point). No, I did not (immediately) bond with many people from my OD group. No, I did not really really bond with many people in Colloquium. No, I did not see any friends I thought I had in the other classes outside of class much. No, I did not join an athletic team that would become a second home. No, I did not get involved in musical groups that would have provided something similar. Yes, I joined three clubs (Jewish Student Union, College Republicans, and Harry Potter Club), and no, I did not feel very at home in any of them.
Can you say....loooooooooner.
Except for times when I'd go to meals with my roommates, or on the very rare occasion when we'd have hall dinners (and that only happened twice or so), I pretty much always ate by myself. There were a few times when I tried randomly sitting down with people, but it took so much effort, usually for very little gain, that I usually didn't even try. My insecure side hated eating by myself, afraid that anyone I knew who saw me would think I was such a loser and if they invited me over, it would be out of pity. I highly, highly resented the groups of people I saw who _always_ went to dinner together and seemed so bloody happy (such as a group of people from my dorm whom I'd always see eating together - I can't begin to say how much I resented/envied that they had that, although it's funny that I know all of them at least slightly now and have no idea what I was thinking back then). All the freshmen seemed to bond immediately. They found their group of people. They stuck by that group of people. They had a support group. Everybody had found somewhere to belong, everyone except me. Perspective (yay!) tells me that it was very, very likely a mutual need for people to cling to that brought these people together, and it's unlikely that the tight groups will stick (and it would be highly unhealthy if they did). Freshmen were trying to build a house with absolutely no foundation to it, and unfortunately the houses are going to fall apart sooner or later without that foundation. It was still...tough. Other people are great actors when it comes to looking like they've found their soul mates and are deleriously happy. I wish I had spent more time outside my room. I wish I had made more of an effort to get together with people I liked. I wish I hadn't cared so much what people thought of me, such as the time I was wandering across campus by myself in the dark and passed one of the girls from my creative writing class, and freaked out deciding that she thought I was my character, who walked across her campus in the dark and was rather insane and suicidal to boot.
It wouldn't be accurate to say I didn't try at all. I did join those clubs, and unfortunately found that I didn't feel much of a connection to any of them. I did try reaching out to people to some extent. Within the first week or two, I thought I had made a friend from College Republicans, and when I facebook-messaged him saying that I had enjoyed hanging out with him once and that if he had time, we should hang out again, he never responded. He was also *cough* in my ceramics class, and he stopped talking to me, and would do such things as walk through the door I held open for him without saying a word to me. That's the stupid ceramics person story for you, but I found out that he's not even returning for sophomore year. I won't say something nasty like "...which just proves that there IS justice in the world," because it's not even something of concern to me anymore and hasn't been for a long time, but at the time, it did provide fodder for angst and for my emo story. The no-acknowledgement attitude left me feeling a little burned with respect to trying to reach out to people, though. I think I had a bad attitude toward making friendships in general. I reconnected with two people from OD group when they found out I played the piano (one of them sang and the other played viola), and we got together to jam a bit. They introduced me to some friends of theirs, and I found out that one of those friends liked the same obscure band that I did (well, one of them!), E.S. Posthumus. She said something like she "could already tell that we were going to be great friends" and I just smiled uncertainly in return, not exactly expecting that to happen. Besides, they already had a set group. They had done the freshman-bonding thing. Who was I to intrude? I wasn't very encouraged when I passed this girl on the sidewalk a couple weeks later and her words were "Oh, it's you," something that told me she had absolutely no memory of my name. Of course we were going to be great friends, of course.
The last few weeks of class, I made the considerably (at the time) brave move of asking this group if I could join them at their table a couple times. It was a big move for me, and they seemed nice, and they introduced me to a few more people, and although I was starting to feel a little more at home, I was certainly still a scared little girl who would get tongue-tied over everything and not say a word for the most part. And yet they didn't seem to mind too much...
It's like those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books where a bunch of different paths cross, and you choose a certain one, but it's interesting to look back to see what other paths you could have taken and what would have happened had you chosen those paths. What would have happened had I not made the move of sitting with them? My freshman experience might have turned out very, very differently...heh. What would have happened had I not lost both my roommates? As I said in a previous entry, I had always known that my Japanese roommate would be returning to Japan at the end of the semester, but it was a shock when my roommate from Hawaii said she wasn't returning. She didn't like mainland culture much, hadn't really tried to make mainland friends (she had the attitude "I have my friends back home; why do I need anyone here?"), was failing some classes, and got food poisoning the last couple weeks of class, so...she left. I only had one final (French) because the other classes weren't final-able (Colloquium ended before Thanksgiving, Ceramics just had a final project, and Creative writing's "final" was the final draft of the story), and went home for the holidays, feeling a little apprehensive but also eager for the next semester. It seemed like I had finally laid some kind of foundation for friendships, found a group I could get along with, was getting more comfortable in my own skin, was better at speaking up in class, and all that. I was still very dependent on other people and unsure of myself, but no, the person who came home for winter break was not the same person who had been sobbing about being at left at school for a semester.
Now we transition to Spring semester and its multitude of melodramatic meanderings, but, unfortunately, the clock striketh 12:40 (it's a figurative clock), I did not get a very good night's sleep last night, had a long day of lifting heavy things and driving a long time (well, I wasn't the one doing the actual driving, but still), and need to go to bed. I shall try to finish this tomorrow, but since at the moment, no one actually knows I'm writing it and has no expectations of when it will be posted...does it really matter? (To me, yes, but I'm strange.) Good night, sweet future readers. This is going to totally pwn by far any of my previous entries in terms of length (and content, hopefully).
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It is tomorrow and today, and it is time to transition to the Spring semester. Since I only wrote one relatively short entry concerning that semester, this is going to be very...interesting...to write out. Ha...ha...ha. Academics first, melodrama (best/worst for last!) later.
One of the things that bothered me about the Fall semester was that I felt like I was slacking. Ceramics took a LOT of time in the studio, but to most of campus, a studio art class like that, without "real" homework, is not a "real" and "difficult" class, even it's time-consuming. Creative writing was only once a week, even if it was a three-hour class. French was all review. Colloquium was, well, a first-year seminar, and not supposed to be extremely challenging. In short, because I did quite well in all four classes, still had a lot of spare time to read insanely long books like installments in the Wheel of Time series, and only had one final, I felt incredibly guilty that somehow I had been a slacker and still done well when other people had done so poorly that they weren't even returning for a second semester, or were returning and had gotten good marks, but seemed to have worked a heck of a lot harder than I did.
Accordingly, I was apprehensive about the Spring semester academic aspect, to say the least. I was taking five classes, even if one was only half a credit and met two hours a week. None of the classes took place once a week, and none were fun studio art courses. But again, it was a sink or swim situation - for me, there's no question of giving up and sinking, because that means I pretty much fail at life (I like that expression - so sue me).
French was...fine. It was my smallest class of the year, with about eight students total. I knew most of them from the previous semester, and by the time the class was over, we had kind of bonded because it would be nearly impossible not to do so in that small a class. We had the same professor as last semester, and with that same professor and several people I already knew, it was a comfortable I-don't-have-to-adapt-all-over-again atmosphere. The subject matter still wasn't very hard. I was a little nervous about re-studying things like the subjunctive, which always frustrated me, but everything went well. I got to know one of the girls quite well (we were in the same dorm, although not the same floor), and we'd study together sometimes. I even got to know one of the girls from the previous semester whom I hadn't liked at all (I still don't like her a LOT, but at least she smiles at me now).
The hard part of that class came when we were supposed to take our oral exam. We were divided into three groups, two groups of three and one of two, and were supposed to write a script for a "skit" we'd act out that gave an ending for an open-ended story we'd read in class. It was only 10% of the grade, and the two other girls in my group didn't really care about it. I tried to schedule times for us to write the script and practice it, but in the end, we only met twice - once to write the initial script, and once to revise it/add more to it. We never actually rehearsed it - the one rehearsal we had planned was canceled by one of my group members. Our professor said we couldn't have the script in front of us when we presented, but we could have notecards. So, I took an extremely small scrap of paper (think about 3" x 3" at most) and wrote a few notes to myself. We were the last group to present. The first group had brought their scripts up and read off them a lot. Like an idiot, I thought "Oh, so the specifications have changed, and I can bring my script up." I didn't even end up reading off of it, and only glanced at my notecard. It could have been one of those situations like the nightmares you have where you arrive at an important test and realize you haven't studied at all, but I thought it actually went pretty well. Then the next week we got our grades. I was told I had a 75. Bit of a shock. No, I hadn't cared that much about the oral exam, thinking I didn't need a perfect score but an 85 or 90 would be fine, but this? The professor said we hadn't practiced with Lucie, the French assistant (something I thought was optional, if we were having trouble with the script, but not required), it was evident we hadn't rehearsed much, I had read from my script (I had most certainly not!), and we just hadn't put a lot of effort into it. I froze and tried to look apologetic (we met individually with her for her to give us our oral exam grades), and then decided to e-mail her afterward, apologizing for not putting as much effort into it as I should have, but explaining that I didn't know working with Lucie was required, I had mistakenly assumed things from the first group's reading off their script, I had had a bit of a hard time getting my group members to cooperate, and no, I had not read off my script. I also studied harder for the final exam that I had originally intended, just to prove to myself and the professor that I hadn't slacked off. After I finished the exam, I talked to her for a few minutes and she seemed semi-understanding of what had gone on. She also told me that I was a good enough student that even if the oral exam had technically brought my __ grade down to a __, she'd still give me the first __ because I didn't deserve the lower one. Besides, the very few things of which I was unsure on the final exam, I looked up when I got back, and I had chosen correctly (such as the subjunctive of the verb "recouvrir" or something like that).
In conclusion to that class, I can say that it was a very good experience. I enjoyed the smaller class, it was great to have a bond with my classmates, and e-mailing/talking to my professor about the oral exam was something that I would never have had the courage to do just a little while ago.
British Literature: the Grail was a mostly good experience. It was a larger class, with somewhere between fifteen to twenty students, but our professor was very friendly and enthusiastic about the subject matter. We read all kinds of Grail-related texts, from selections from The Mabinogian (Celtic tales) to "The Quest of the Holy Grail" (agh, hated that one; way too moralistic and not enough story) to Chretien de Troyes' "Arthurian Romances" to Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur." Plus, we watched "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and "The Fisher King" in class (well, on scheduled in-classroom movie nights, but not during actual class time), and "Excalibur" on our time. It was more reading than the other classes, but it was enjoyable, and although I really didn't get to know many of my classmates, everyone seemed nice, and one of my OD friends was in the class, so I got to know her better. We were required to give a 10-15 minute presentation on something relating to the Grail legend, and I chose to do mine on "The Mists of Avalon" (yes, it's a vague obsession of mine). I had thought of looking it up on SparkNotes to get the major plot points, because I had already read it a couple years ago, but because I have a masochistic side and during the last few weeks of class (my presentation was scheduled for the next-to-last day of class), I really didn't have much work (minus finals) for the other classes, I decided to re-read the entire 876-page monstrosity. I enjoyed it, though, and had a lot of fun making my Powerpoint presentation. It was the first time I had used Powerpoint, but I had way too much fun using my graphic design skillz (haha) to make an Avalon-esque background with a Celtic cross on it to indicate the struggle between Druidism and Christianity that's a major plot point in the book, and picking out images from the movie to use as eye candy, and of course selecting a few Celtic fonts for headers. At the beginning of the class, when the professor mentioned our having to give a presentation, I was a bit terrified, and by the time it actually came to giving the presentation, I was excited for it and had fun. We were assigned three full essays over the semester, and even if it's inaccurate to say I had "fun" with the first two, I did feel confident about them - the assigned topic was to trace an element of the "Matter of Britain" (i.e. the Arthurian legends) through the works we had covered, so for the first essay, I wrote about the role the women play as catalysts for quests, temptresses, or very passive figures in general, but never 3-D characters. For the second, I wrote about how Guinevere's character changes over the course of the texts from being a sympathetic character to, well, not so much.
The third "essay" was not really an essay at all, or at least mine wasn't. The assigned topic was the same as the first, except the texts we had to include were T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," the movie "The Fisher King," and...ourselves. In other words, we had to talk about our own personal "Grail quests." We were given the option of using a "creative medium" for this final project. It could be an art project, a film, a story...anything that was the rough equivalent to a five-page essay. I decided to write a story for my final project, and by the time I had gotten to this point in the semester, it was all too evident to see what the "Waste Land" was...but I'll come back to that later, because I'm still talking about academics. Anyway, I enjoyed the class very much in general.
Since I was considering becoming a studio art major and all the studio classes filled up long before my registration time, I decided to take an art history course, which fulfilled two general education requirements and counted toward a studio art major. The topic was Western art history, from the prehistoric to gothic periods. My first memory of that class is the first day of it, being completely and utterly terrified because I had carried an empty backpack to class - I had left my notebook in my room, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that at this point, I was scared to death that I would need to write something down and wouldn't be able to do so. I didn't need to write anything down, in fact, and I was fine with the class after that. It wasn't always extremely interesting. There was practically no discussion, just listening to our professor lecture about the slides she showed us. Some were interesting, sometimes the historical context was interesting, but not always. The exams were something to remember. We had to memorize the title, artist (if known), location (for architectural pieces), culture (Egyptian, Roman, etc.), art history period (Neolithic, Sumerian, Imperial, Romanesque, etc.), and date (specific date or art history period date)...for each key monument. I made flash cards. Lots of flash cards. I flashcarded myself to near death. We also had to learn art history vocabulary terms. This was naturally a lot of work, but it paid off. I was mostly confident on the first midterm, except when I realized for the slide identification section, we had to give the information I listed, PLUS important characteristics of the piece. Me: "wait, WHAT? I DIDN'T STUDY FOR THAT!" But I managed to flub my way through that aspect, and had a better idea of what I should take notes on after that exam. I had to write a descriptive/analysis paper of a piece of art in the university's art museum, something I wasn't sure exactly how to do, but it turned out fine, and it was amazing what I started to notice after staring at the piece for an hour. The second exam went better than I had thought it did (I was annoyed that on the multiple choice vocabulary section, I was debating between two choices each for "parapet" and "caryatid" (sp?), and in both cases, chose the wrong definition), amusingly scoring half a point higher than the first exam did.
I was rather nervous for the final exam. Thankfully it was NOT comprehensive; we were only tested on what we had studied since the previous exam. However, we were severely behind in the schedule, so a lot of pieces that should have been in the second midterm were now included in the final. I had to memorize 65 of these monument-piece-things, and since we were into the Early Medieval, Romanesque, and Gothic periods, we studied a LOT of architecture. Sure, architecture is art, but I did not sign up for the class to learn about the plans of different French Gothic cathedrals and how to define nave, aisle, narthex, clerestory, apse, atrium, radiating chapel, lancet, triforium, flying buttress (well, that one's easy), and the like. It was...difficult studying for that thing. Plus, we had to write an outline for a comprehensive essay on the exam, something I put off until the night before the exam (hey, I was having a lot more fun procrastinating by writing a Weird-Al-inspired parody of High School Musical's "Breaking Free" called "Freshman Glee"). I found that the best way to remember all the information was to make word-play memory tricks for myself. Here's one of the odder examples:
"The mosaic panted. It created a crater (er, krator). It was running away from being crucified. In fact, it was running away from becoming the Pantokrator and Crucifixion Mosaics, but did not succeed. A Monastery church (we know this because "Mosaics" is like to "Monastery") caught it by making it go to sleep, because it's the Monastery church of the Dormitions, who make everyone fall asleep. They're just a bit daft, which could explain why they're from Daphne, Greece. But it's Middle Byzantine (Dormiddlebyzantions!), which is 843-1204, which for some reason is an easy series of dates to remember."
(It was actually the Monastery church of the Dormition, not plural, but I caught that before I took the exam - I just didn't change it on my notes.)
The final went well, although I know I missed two or three vocabulary terms, and messed up when I said that the Good Shepherd mosaic from the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia was from the Early Byzantine period (it was from the Early Christian period, idiot, arg! and I had a good memory trick for that one, too), but I know I got one of the extra credit slides spot-on, so...there's no point obsessing over how I did. It was an interesting experience, confidence-boosting that I didn't have too much of a problem memorizing all that information, and, oh, right, my professor from that class is now my advisor because right before Spring break, I declared my major as Studio Art. I now have leave to wear bohemian clothes and dangly earrings because I'm a weird Portland studio art major.
My fourth class was called Philosophical Problems. I had thought the class would be examining ethical dilemmas. I'm still trying to remember why I decided to take it when so many other classes could have fulfilled the same general education requirement. It's possible I thought I might want to take upper-level philosophy courses and this class was a prerequisite for all of them, but anyway, as my Colloquium professor advisor told me (this was at the advising session I had with her just before I declared my major and therefore got a new advisor in that department), "Freshman year is the year of really stupid decisions." Taking the philosophy class and not dropping it was one of those really stupid decisions.
First of all, it was not about examining ethical dilemmas. It was very abstract "Do we exist? How can we tell? Does God maybe exist? (But we won't get too deeply into THAT)" stuff. The professor may have been brilliant and had a great grasp of the material herself, but she was pretty much an awful teacher. She had no organization. She'd start at what seemed a logical point in the material, and five minutes into her lecture, say "Oh, but wait, I need to back up" and go off in a completely different direction. I stopped taking notes very early on in that class, but if I had tried, I would have found it impossible to make any coherent outline of what she was trying to say. Early in that class I was extremely annoyed that she was so condescending, defining for us what "rationalization" as opposed to "rational" meant, and saying "Do you follow what I'm saying?" every two minutes. She got better about that, but it got harder to follow what she was saying and sometimes I stopped trying. At the beginning of the class, I thought reading Descartes was a little annoying and that her review session before the exam on his writing was hard to follow, but then we moved onto studying George Berkeley, and the only reason I pulled off that exam (her review session was impossible to make sense out of) was that I studied SparkNotes' summaries of Berkeley's dialogues fastidiously. They made a lot more sense than she did, which is a little depressing if you calculate how much I'm paying for each of those classes from which I barely learned anything at all. We also studied Freud, which was very odd, both because Freud is odd and because I'd more expect to study Freud in psychology, not philosophy. Everyone in that class more or less hated the class. I wasn't above making fun of it, but some of them were simply cruel about it. One girl used a piece of paper to keep track of every odd amusing thing our professor said that would just make the professor look like a complete fool if her remarks were taken out of context. And this girl passed the paper around to different people in the class, and...other people would only say that they thought Descartes must have been tripping on something to write what he did, and yes, in general, that class was highly annoying. Oh, plus obnoxious-ceramics guy was in it, although at that point I didn't care. There was absolutely no class unity, I didn't know everyone's names (highly unusual for me), and a couple times I resorted to writing random ramblings in my notebook instead of listening to the disorganized jumble spilling from our professor's mouth. We didn't have a lot of work in the class besides a little reading, two exams, and a final paper, so it was a really easy but highly boring class. It was the year of really stupid decisions.
My fifth class was Basics of Singing. I had no idea what it would be like, and was relieved that it was a relaxed, supportive atmosphere. Everyone was a little amateur-sounding. One girl I already knew from A-U (that was funny, when we found out on A-U that we went to the same school) was in the class, as was a girl from College Republicans. I also made friends with one of the international students in the class who was from Germany. We all bonded by the end of the class. The last day almost seemed bittersweet, seeing this group of people who were so different come together and radically improve their singing together. Even if in general, freshman year was the year of really stupid decisions, this was one of my smarter ones. I felt like I improved my voice and really increased my confidence. Even if I didn't learn a ton from the actual class, the experience made me want to sing more, and practicing so much was what really helped me improve, I think.
And now we get to the interesting stuff :) It's funny, this is going to be well over 10,000 words. Mwahahaha! And people think I'm quiet because I don't have anything to say *insert major, major eye-rolling*
So, if you recall, at the end of the Fall semester, I was encouraged that I seemed to have found a group where I could fit in, I was starting to meet people I thought seemed really nice, I was reconnecting with people, and...in general, it was encouraging. I was encouraged that on the shuttle ride back to campus, I sat next to one of the girls I knew from Colloquium and had fun talking to her, and that the first full day I was back on campus, I was surprised at how many people I knew. And I began sitting with what has come to be known as (at least in my world) as The Group, or The Clique. I was uncomfortable about it at first; I absolutely hate feeling like I'm forcing my presence on people and intruding on a set group. However, I jokingly told a girl in The Group who had been one of my friends from OD that I was a little uneasy sitting down with groups of people because I expected them to look at me incredulously about why I was sitting down with them (it was a joke, it was a joke! I don't actually think that), and she looked a little horrified that I'd think they'd do that. And...I was in. I was a part of them. It was oddly fast. But I stopped sitting by myself, and started looking for them at dinner all the time. The OD girl would call me about when they'd go to dinner, and I'd wait for her call instead of going whenever I felt like it.
I grew dependent on having a group like that frighteningly quickly. The first full weekend back, I was miserable. I recounted this in my previous entry, but I had grown so used to having a group around that being faced with...no one...and a completely empty weekend...seemed a shock. I recovered my independence for that weekend, but went back to The Group (they're going to be The Group for now, because they didn't turn into The Clique for me until later). Most of the time, I had fun with them. I really liked a few of the people. Some were ok, but I was just a bit starry-eyed about finally finding a group of people to hang around with like all the other freshmen had done, so I thought I'd give them all a chance and not judge them. A couple weeks later, they talked about a weekend trip they were planning - this was the first I'd heard about it, and it was a slap in the face that they'd talk about it right in front of me when I had no idea whether I was invited or not. It turned out that I was, but it was a weird situation and showed a lack of thoughtfulness and a plethora of narcissism. But I went back.
Conversation soon seemed a little less than intelligent. There was a lot of white and nerdy discussion of video games and the like, and I soon began to see that they were all too fond of making sexual innuendo jokes that weren't even clever. I've been desensitized to them, but they're still annoying. If I had thought that this was all the members of The Group were capable of, I might have left, but I was convinced they were more intelligent than this, and it was to be expected that the greater the number of people, the higher the level of stupidity. They weren't always like this, a lot of them were more intelligent than this especially on a smaller group or individual level, and I continued to stick around. We all went to Black Tie, Willamette's formal dance event in Portland, as a group, and had a lot of fun...so they couldn't be too bad, right?
Somewhere around then, they started to morph in my mind from a group to The Clique. I found that I got along really well with one of the guys in The Group who had been in OD with me (he's not exactly straight, so don't make assumptions) - he was the one who sang when we jammed with the other girl from OD. Since I was now singing more as a result of my singing class, we started hanging out more and jamming by ourselves (this was what I'm convinced really improved my singing). Then there was this one time when The Group decided to get ice cream (that's one thing about them - nothing could be simple, we had to drive everywhere - everything had to be an extragavant "epic quest"), acted like utter dorks in the store (were they having fun? or were they playing to the group dynamic and being clowns and showing off? there's a fine line...), and then had the bright idea of turning up one of the cars' radios really loudly and dancing hip-hop in the deserted parking lot. I don't dance hip-hop. I think it's obnoxious and I'd either start laughing or want to shoot myself promptly if I tried to move like that. So my OD friend and I sort of branched off from the rest of The Group and tried out some ballet moves. He tried to teach me some modern dance moves, and I showed him some figure skating jumps and stuff. The next day we got guilt-tripped. "We felt like you were ashamed of us. We felt like you were breaking off from us. We felt like you didn't want to be part of the group."
Excuse me? Who decided what the group was doing? Who decided that if you didn't follow along like sheep, you were ashamed of the group (well, in my case...ummmm...) and weren't "one with the group"?
It got worse. We went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry as a group, and somehow the rest of the group went off to explore the museum and I was exploring it with my OD friend. When we got tired of it, we walked around outside and into Portland a little bit, and then back at the appointed time at which we were supposed to meet the rest of the group. We got back and they were already all gathered around, and...the looks we got...anywhere from saddened to utterly accusing to...I don't know, it was one of the oddest "...wow, suddenly I don't feel very loved" moments of that semester.
It got worse. Everyone was so guilty-trippy, so clingy, so bloody group-oriented. Everything was "we" or "us" - no, we're not individuals - how could you ever think that? Group mentality. Everyone thinks one way. Everyone wants the same thing. It was...The Clique. Conversation degenerated, too. It was depressing to see people I liked who could be so much more intelligent fall into their roles as the group clowns or whatever other stereotypical role they were appointed. It became this "tradition" for everyone in The Clique to be thrown an extravagant "surprise" birthday party, and I was quite glad that my birthday party would be in the summer so they couldn't plan anything. Not that I was sure they would. I always felt like a bit of an outsider. It was unforgettable when one of the girls boasted that she had the cell number of everyone in The Clique, when I knew full well that she didn't have mine, unless she had nabbed it from someone else. If she had everyone's number, then I must have been nobody.
I began to see the whole mindset had so much wrong with it. Utterly narcissistic. It was almost as if there were a bunch of monologues going around, because no one really seemed interested in what someone else was saying, and would just use it as a jumping-off point to talk about themselves, and on and on and on. I never felt like I really knew most of the people, because none of the conversations were about getting to know each other; it was about putting ourselves up. There was this constant competition to see who could be the most witty and clever and...whatever...but life shouldn't be about that, should it? How can you say people are your friends when you use them to listen about how great you are (my family's expression is that everything people say can be boiled down to "I'm great - aren't you impressed?") and don't really care about what they are saying? I can't live like that. There was a lot of gossip, too, and if they can tear someone apart who just left the table, they can do it to you. I knew they thought I was a little too aloof and quiet, and I wanted to be more open, but every time they'd tear someone else apart, it would make me less willing to share anything, which in turn reinforced their talking behind my back that I was so aloof and didn't trust them and they thought they'd probably disagree with me on a lot (well that's for damn sure! forgive the language...), and yes, I know for certain that they said that. Conversations were so unintelligent and self-centered. People were forced into roles, and if they tried to get out of them at all, such as someone in the clown role trying to say something serious, people usually wouldn't listen. I'd note all the times someone would try to say something and be cut off because no one cared what anyone had to say besides themselves. There was some obnoxious flirting, too, and clinginess such as freaking out if someone wasn't called about when dinner was taking place, although it took place at the same bloody time every single bloody night.
Spring break arrived. Spring break was great. I got to see my favorite people from home, got along really well with my family, got some perspective, and returned to campus not at all the same person I had been at the start of the semester (it was a gradual change throughout the semester, but Spring break sped up the change). The first day back, we met in the room of some of The Clique people. We were all gathered there. They hadn't changed. Why the heck would they have? I sat there thinking over and over again "I don't want to be here. I want to be home. I don't want to be here. I...don't...want...to...be...here." We went out to dinner, and I saw more evidence of vapid conversation and a frantic need to belong. I started distancing myself from them after that. Then one of the girls invited me to go to the mall with her, just the two of us, and I thought that this might be the opportune moment to discuss my problems with The Clique. First, she ended up bringing another girl in The Clique with us. Second, I rather doubted whether she would have noticed if I turned into a smiling, nodding robot who said "I see" every so often, because I had absolutely no opportunity to talk about anything related to me, and I ended up trailing the other two girls around the mall the whole time. Dinner--this was the first time I'd eaten with The Clique in a few days--was as vapid as ever, except when most of the people left, and suddenly the conversation turned a bit intelligent, but I had to ask myself who was missing to allow this to happen, because if certain people had been there, such a conversation would have immediately degenerated into something idiotic. Later, I got a facebook wall message from one of The Clique's girls that was about how some innuendo joke she made was so great, and how I should have been there to hear it, and the whole thing ticked me off. No, I would have not thought it was funny. No, I would not have liked being there. No, I did not want that on my wall for all my friends to see. And so I deleted it, and from then on had absolutely nothing to do with The Clique.
It was harder than it sounds. When you've relied on a group of people for so long and then just take off, you get into a group-withdrawal phase. It was healthier and I loved being free again - it's hard to imagine just how relieving it is to be able to go to meals whenever you want and sit wherever you want and all that. I wish I had been brave enough to tell them why I was leaving instead of slinking off, although I doubt it would have changed them. It was a little painful that no one ever called me to see what happened, even though up until then I had eaten at least two meals a day with them. They could have had no idea whether I was dead or alive, and yet no one called - and this is from a group that has members who freak if they're not called daily. Did they always care that little, or was it just toward the end of the road that they sensed I thought they were on the lame side and they acted accordingly? I'll never know. I tried to stay friends with a few people from The Clique--"tried"? sometimes I couldn't have done anything more short of throwing myself at their feet--but I really don't know if that worked. It's kind of sad, because right when I needed a friend the most, no one was there, no one except my singing friend from OD, who also left The Clique at approximately the same time, albeit for different reasons. Oh well. I was able to try to concentrate on individual friendships that had nothing to do with The Clique again, and it was a relief. I still tried to avoid them as much as possible at first - it was easier.
No one ever asked me why I left. That's kind of sad, too. But if they did, what would I tell them? It wouldn't be dishonest to say that I left because it would have been utterly selfish and unfair to say "I don't like the way things are, so everyone else change to suit ME," and I thought it was unfair to everyone in The Clique for me to hang around them when more and more, it wasn't something I enjoyed. No, no one ever did anything specific that made me want to leave. I was never personally attacked. But it doesn't really matter - the end result and feeling is pretty much the same.
So by the time I was concentrating on my final project for the Grail class, it was pretty obvious what the Waste Land was. All I had to do was incorporate the imagery and message of "The Waste Land," as well as the themes of the movie "The Fisher King," into a story very much based on my cutting loose from The Clique, and I had my story. My professor thought it was excellent, so...success. Who says you can't turn rotten experiences to your own use?
Sure, it was a bit of a distressing experience at times. But...ah, you (maybe) know me. I love quoting song lyrics. So two snippets of songs can say it better than I can:
But in the end, what leaves you broken
In the end, makes you better
~Plumb, "Better"
Makes me that much stronger
Makes me work a little bit harder
It makes me that much wiser
So thanks for making me a fighter
Made me learn a little bit faster
Made my skin a little bit thicker
Makes me that much smarter
So thanks for making me a fighter
~Christina Aguilera, "Fighter"
I had my final singing performance (I sang "Listen to Your Heart" by D.H.T.). I turned in my final projects/essays. I took my finals. I started packing. My parents arrived. We finished packing (my ceramics projects = total horror to pack up). We drove back to Idaho. I can count on one hand the people to whom I said good bye/who said good bye to me. I'm still in a bit of a limbo state as to where I stand with some people, particularly within The Clique, and it will be interesting to see what happens sophomore year (this is why near the beginning of this entry, I put a question mark next to whether some people were still my friends). But now I'm back home, and it's not worth obsessing over people and replaying conversations and scenes in my mind. It's over for now, and what must be, shall be.
And that was basically my college experience. Although I have some holes in the story, so I'll fill them in and then give my concluding thoughts (I can feel the anticipation in the air...).
I didn't have any roommates in my huge triple room for the first few weeks. Then I got two Japanese roommates. They were...hmm...an interesting experience? They barely understand any English, and after a few initial attempts to try to talk to them in English that seemed more awkward and embarassing for them than useful and fun, we kind of gave up trying to talk to each other. They weren't shy, though, because they'd chatter away to each other in Japanese, sometimes a little loudly when I was still asleep. They weren't incapable of talking in English if they needed to, because a couple times they'd ask me to help with their English homework, and both asked me if I'd room with them next year (I told them both "maybe," an awkward situation already, and then thought about it and politely told them no). Even if I wasn't bosom buddies with my roommates of last semester, being able to talk to them and go places with them was better than what I had this semester. People who became such good friends with their random roommates, or at least had a semi-friendly relationship, have no idea how lucky they are. I didn't find anyone I wanted to room with who didn't already have housing plans, so I filled out the roommate preference card again and will hopefully get an English-speaking roommate with whom I'll get along next semester.
I realized I liked my Colloquium professor. After getting distance and not being in a class with her as my professor anymore, I realized I loved her very biting sense of humor. When I met with her for advising before I declared my major, she asked about what I was doing for a roommate next semester, and when I said I didn't have plans yet, she said I should look into it because I "didn't want to be stuck with a loser of a roommate," and of course she had the line about freshman year being the year of really stupid decisions. I'll miss her a little bit, but she's not in the art department, so it's ok.
The local homeschoolers are completely yesterday now. They have no bearing on my life. In the words of Weird Al's parody of "You're Beautiful" called "You're Pitiful,"
Lalalala, lalalala, lalalala loser
You're pitiful, you're pitiful, you're pitiful, it's true
(This does not apply to my beloved friends who were homeschooled but are completely unlike the majority of local homeschoolers. Ok, and so it's a little harsh, but it's mostly true.)
I learned to be a lot less judgmental. People being in College Republicans or saying they're conservative doesn't mean they'll be nice. People being liberal doesn't mean they won't be nice. People who seem unfriendly and distant may just seem that way. People who share some of your interests and seem like they might grow on you might turn out to be really not worth getting to know. People who seem to have a problem with you for some reason might turn nice if you treat them like you haven't noticed they have a problem with you. People who look happy are not necessarily happy at all.
You may feel like your life's falling apart, and yet to other people you seem calm, collected, and like you have it all together. You can listen to gothic/atmospheric doom metal and silly pop songs and weird techno-trance and if people look at you oddly, then they just need to take their own advice and be open-minded. You might think what you're saying is common sense and people aren't really listening, but in the end what you've said may make more of an impression than you ever thought.
Anything is not better than to be alone. Brutal honesty is underrated. Having a set group is just as limiting as I originally thought it could be. Trying to talk things out and maybe failing is better than never trying at all. Sometimes it's not worth challenging people on issues. Sometimes you need to stand up for yourself and not care what the backlash will be. Sometimes you have to let people go. Sometimes you have to wait until the school year's over to have enough distance about your experience to write down the whole thing in a blog entry that's well over 10,000 words. Sometimes you wonder whether anyone on earth is going to read to the end. Hi.
Next year I'll be living one door down from the room I was in this year. I don't know who my roommate will be yet. I'll be taking Color & Composition (for my major), Critical Reading & Writing (in case I decide to switch to an English major), Introduction to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (because it's worth knowing more about it than I do currently), and Computing Concepts (because I like computers and it fulfills one of the math-centered general education requirements).
The Anna who came back for second semester was not the same Anna who had been sobbing about being left at school. The Anna who came back after Spring break was not the same Anna who came back for second semester. The Anna who is done with her freshman year is not the same Anna who came back after Spring break.
It was a school year to remember.
Signing off.
If by some bizarre twist of fate, anyone from Willamette ends up reading this, umm...please don't hate me...? I did say brutal honesty was underrated.
13,295 words. I win. |
) because I thought I'd have so much fun hanging out with college friends on weekends, and I wasn't even sure I wanted to come home for Spring break.
).
