MY SEMESTER IS NOW OFFICIALLY OVER

And I mean "over" in the sense that it has now come to its natural conclusion, not that something so dramatically awful has happened that there's no point in continuing with it.)

NOW I CAN HAVE MY FIRST COMPLETE SUMMER BREAK EVER.

(And work on getting a job.  And a driver's license.  And a car.  And applying for things like scholarships and other schools.  But, you know.)

I AM HAPPY.  Even the fact that I had to walk a mile in the rain doesn't matter.  I had great conversations with my professor and the wonderful coffee hut lady and some dude on the bus who's a total European history buff.

[ Also, I have a brand-new tumblr and it's a lot of fun.  

I also have fantastic books out from the library that I'm rereading (because now I have TIME and spare brainpower!) and THEY ARE SO GOOD.   (The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner.)  Go.  Read.  (Seriously, you should read them.  They're some of my favorite books of all time.  The Thief is the first one.  Do not be put off by the slow pace at the beginning.) 

Hopefully, I didn't fail my math final.  Keeping my 4.0 GPA would be a really nice cake topper right now.  (Unfortunately, KVCC is going to make me wait THREE WEEKS before they post final grades.  Yrrrgh.)

…Urban Sociology.

Also known as the bane of my existence for the next two weeks, even ranking above Finite Mathematics, which stands a decent chance of ruining my 4.0 GPA; and Literary Interpretation, which is currently extremely time-consuming and much less enjoyable than usual because—a certain literary critic/author named Jack Zipes—grrrr; and my Economist assignments, which are terribly boring; and my volunteer plunge next Saturday which will be long and wearying, even if useful; and…Conceptual Physics, which is kind of like a blip on the radar that amounts to "Oh, right, I'll need to show up in class on Thursday to take that exam.  Never mind that this professor has almost failed to teach me much of anything, aside from refreshing some forgotten bits of science trivia I learned in eighth grade."

COLLEGE.

AAAAHHHHHHHH.

Also, I need to get up at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow so I can sit at the computer for two hours to register for fall classes so I can do this all over again.  Faugh.

Homework?  Sleep?  What are these strange things of which you speak?

*headdesk*

In Which I Grouse About the Worldsuck Currently Taking Up Residence In My Life

Having a fever/upset stomach/constant headache/sore throat/no energy at all was vaguely frustrating when I was sleeping for 22 straight hours, absolutely horrible for four-ish more hours when I wasn't sleeping, a little bit fun when I spent a day and a half doing absolutely nothing but watching television, irritating when I realized I was getting teary-eyed over a show I have contempt for when I'm sane, slightly eerie when I figured out I lost seven pounds in two days, and rather panic-inducing now that I have to get back into the swing of things and my sleep schedule is erratic/currently at least six hours off and I have a whole weekend's worth of homework to do in half a Sunday.  It's more homework than the usual weekend's homework, too, because my English professor assigned us two papers instead of one, on top of the usual two math assignments, Economist summary-response paper, sociology readings, and the physics homework that was actually due last Thursday but didn't get done because I was alternately sleeping/throwing up at the time, and studying for the makeup physics test I will hopefully be able to take since I missed taking the actual exam at the same time I missed turning in the homework, for the same reasons.

I'm trying to vent my frustrations without devolving into a virtual quivering, loquacious wad of self-pity.  It's extremely difficult.   I might be failing, but am not in a very edit-friendly mood, for once.

Possibly-at-least-partially-wasn't-that-a-pretentiously-run-on-opener-because it's five-thirty in the morning and I have not gotten one wink of sleep, and I have to leave the house again in three hours, and I'm scheduled for art and connection counter at church this morning, meaning I have to function with both capable hand-eye coordination and extroverted social skills, and be present and accounted for in both services.  And I'm still sick enough to feel totally justified in being exhausted and grumpy, but not quite the stay-home-scot-free level of sick anymore.

Oh, help.

I hate what happened to my life in the last three days.

I'm also trying really hard not to look ahead to the month of double-time homestretch-of-the-semester academic fun I'm stepping into on Monday (e.g, trying not to curl up into a literal sobbing and terrified wad of very-not-loquacious self-pity).  And I'm also trying really hard not to revert back to dwelling endlessly on all those giant bigger-than-me issues happening in the world around me that really and truly outrage me (I'm refraining.  I'm refraining…)

I'm seriously whining.  Yes.  Sorry.  IAMJUSTVERYUNHAPPYRIGHTNOW.

Right now, I'm really frustrated at myself for:

     a) accidentally emailing the only professor of the University of Michigan's MEMS 350 course who teaches a Tuesday/Thursday section instead of a Friday section.
     b) wanting to go to a prestigious university that happens to be a hundred miles away from Kalamazoo, so that visiting it on a Tuesday or Thursday guarantees missing three of my regular classes.

*headdesk*
It's times like this when I wonder…why am I an honors student again?  (i.e., "is free tuition really worth all the stress the requirements for this scholarship puts me through?!")
(…Aaaand the answer to that is probably a rhetorical "yes."  Augh.)

Thursday and a broken brain.

So, I'm fairly certain that I failed my math exam this morning.  I don't think this has ever happened to me before.  Once in a while I might be like, "I don't feel great about this test", which roughly translates to "There's a chance my grade might end up as low as a C on this test."  But this morning was a nightmare.  I literally could not remember how to do almost any of the problems, even the ones I aced on the homework and the ones we did in a review session half an hour before the exam.  I didn't even get to finish the whole test before the period was up and my professor had to leave.  I know for sure the highest grade I could possibly get is an 80%, and I will honestly be shocked if I get anything higher than a 60% at best.  My professor drops our lowest test grade at the end of the course, but I didn't want to use that failsafe so early in the semester.  

This first session of my half-semester yoga class was today, and that actually went pretty well.  I'm looking forward to this course.  It was the most relaxing thing—kind of like soaking, except without as much Jesus-happiness because you're thinking about your breathing and your spine and all of that jazz.  But I think it'll be really good, although it will make my Wednesdays way more homework-intensive now since I won't have time to squeeze in my French homework on Thursday afternoons anymore.

And then there was Intermediate French.  I think my brain literally stopped functioning normally.  People were saying things in English and I wasn't even comprehending them, let alone comprehending the new lesson, the imperative tense en français.  We were doing our normal oral exercises out of the textbook and the professor had to correct really basic grammar errors I was making.  I've almost never had such a hard time thinking straight—certainly not in the middle of class.  My grey matter just ground to a screeching halt.

Then I promptly proceeded, after leaving class, to take an inadvertent hourlong nap, despite having just drunk a whole bottle of caffeinated iced tea.  I also forgot the word "combination" while I was in the middle of talking to my dad, and spit out the words "convolution," "conversation," "confrontation," "condominium," and "confiture" (which isn't even English!  It's the French word for jam!) before I remembered "combination."  I am a limp welter of fatigue and lethargy and MY BRAIN DIDN'T WORK AT ALL TODAY.  Ce n'est pas un bon jour.

Thank.  God.  It's.  Thursday.  and I don't have to go back to school until Monday and I don't have to get any homework done tonight and I can just do some worship/soaking and go to bed.

Lots of sentences that start with grumpy "I want"s. …Sorry.

So, it's only nine days into the semester and I already want it to be over.
I want to take classes that I like with professors that don't intimidate me out of my skin.  I want more sleep (right this minute).  I want to not be stressed out all the time.  I really want to not be such a procrastinator.  I want to be a better studier.  I want to be articulate in conversations with people I respect but don't know well.  I want to really buckle down this weekend and NFTBA.  I want to have healthy eating habits.  I want to not get sick to my stomach.  I want to be better at replying to people's messages in a timely fashion.  I want to learn to take experienced people's advice (e.g., implement it, not just say, "What a good idea!" and forget about it).  I want French to make as much sense when I'm doing the homework as it did in class.  I want to know how to use a graphing calculator.  I want my woefully limited time to not be running away from me faster than I can figure out how to keep up.  I want to not feel guilty for opting not to murder myself with a ridiculously packed workload like some other honors students I know.  I want to not have to rely on the Internet for a third of my GPA.  I want to sit down somewhere and have a good cry and a cup of tea and then go accomplish Things.  I want my friends all to live nearby and be tangibly huggable.  I want to not have overdue library books that I didn't even get to finish.  I want to be motivated to seek God, every day, above all else.  I want to be consistent about praying for the people I promised to.

(I want to find better ways to get my point across when I'm depressed than using the semi-dubious syntax of most of the above sentences.)

I want to have ONE GOOD DAY (at minimum.)  instead of days that are purely drab, or days that start well and go sour, or days that start sour and take until evening to cheer up, or days that are just awkward as heck. I'm still waiting for one.  I haven't had one in some time (meaning, months.  I'm pretty sure.  I think there's a Switchfoot song about this).

Je vais retourner à l'école…

So, yesterday was the first day of school and it was not a fun day.   I woke up with a nasty headache, couldn't load my email, almost missed my bus, had trouble with getting my financial aid to go through, and spent all day stressing out over whether I could take intermediate French (which needs to be taken, but for which I had no backup plan if it turned out to be too much for my slightly rusty français.  I think it'll be okay, though.  If a lo of work, but hey.  I didn't really expect anything less in any case).  I also somehow happened to lose my brother's $90 graphing calculator. …Brilliant.
I actually think the highlight of the day might have been sitting in math class, and maybe running into a student I knew from last winter who visited his in-laws in England over summer break.   And maybe this:
Older guy on the bus, after complimenting me on my fedora:  "I love fedoras.  It's so great that you can buy them 2/$20 at Wal-Mart, because they're great to have on hand.  Especially the pinstripe ones, because I like to match my hats with my clothes—it's classy, you know—and you never know when someone's gonna die and you'll have to wear a suit to their funeral."
Oh man.  Will the bus never get old?  I forgot how much "fun" it was riding it in the fall.  I got so spoiled in the summer when there were only fifteen or twenty people on it at a time, instead of thirty-five or forty.  And I haven't even ridden it in the morning yet.  That'll really be fun.

Today's outlook is much sunnier than yesterday's, so far.  I get to start my TA for English 110 today, and go to psych 270 (which actually sounds horrendously boring, and it's taught by Mr. Louisell, who directs the honors program and chairs the psych department and is rather…intimidating), but I get to see all my honors homies from last year, so i'm looking forward to that.  ("Homies"? Did I just say that?)  I also purchased all my textbooks yesterday, so hopefully I'm done having to stand in 40-minute lines (I had to stand in three of them yesterday.  Buying textbooks online was definitely one of those things I meant to do weeks ago that got lost in the shuffle).

So, it's off into the wild yonder of breakfast and a shower and triple-checking the stuff I packed…adieu.
(I really hope this semester doesn't culminate in my posting frequent and gloomy posts about stress. Oy vey.)

Group presentation in nine and a half hours.  Really praying I don't freeze up (like I did in our practice run-through) or go over the time limit (which I am historically prone to do) or that our PowerPoint doesn't screw up (which also happened in our practice run-through, and has happened to me in past presentations).  Also praying my groupmates do great as well.
Because, by golly, we worked hard on this.

Prayer and practice and sleep.  —Serve me well.

I will be so relieved to have this class over with after tomorrow.

Monday sucks. / Birthday. / Monikers. / Birthday surprise!

I refuse to start this post with an excuse for why I haven't blogged in almost a month, so I won't.  (Partially because I don't have one, but mainly because they're obnoxious and unoriginal, unless it's a really good one.  And typically they aren't, I think.)

This past Monday seems to have been fairly universally horrid.  (Monday is usually begging to have someone light a match to it and laugh maniacally as it burns, but this one was particularly awful.)  It was big and bad and ugly for our immediate family for reasons I cannot presently expound upon on the Internet, but prayer for all of us would be welcome.  I found out tonight that someone very special to my grandma died on Monday (which was also her birthday, in a twist of bitter irony).  And a lot of my friends posted Facebook statuses about generally suckish things that were happening to them on Monday.  Though Hannah appeared to have a fun self-revelation on Monday, which is always exciting.  But mostly, Monday was really terrifically not terrific, and I've been trying to sort out the rest of my week bit by bit since then.  AUGH.  At least classwise, 'tis nearly done.

I am so sad that I didn't do a birthday post on the 8th.  i was going to do like a little journal-y thing with bits if things that happened and were observed by me throughout the day, and a screenshot of the birthday wishes email I got from YourPants.com, and it was uber cool, but then it was 6 minutes too late by the time I realized I hadn't actually posted it and I was kind of devastated.

So!  I have named my laptop at last!  Its name is Asfaloth.  That's the name of Glorfindel's white horse in the Fellowship of the Ring.  (For any non-book-devotees reading this, it was Arwen that rode Asfaloth in the movie, taking Frodo to Rivendell.)  That's one Accomplishment of Awesome achieved!  I need to go through my list and update what I have and have not accomplished…I know i've accomplished at least 4 or 5 (barely a dent in my 74 1/2 items, I know)  and failed one…Anywho.

My bamboo plant:  Spritely Fetch-the-Battle-Axe Takemoko.  I think.  The first name is still under debate (yes, it's supposed to be irony).  I'm thinking about something more Asian, possibly.  Or an obscure, long, and thus awesome adjective.  But I definitely like the last name and the middle addendum. 

Oh, and my friends threw me a surprise party last week.  Which was AMAZING.  Because I've wanted a surprise party since around the age of 11 (8ish years), but I didn't say anything about it, because, you know, my parents wouldn't remember that idea long-term and they couldn't use it the same year or it wouldn't be a surprise.  (Just the way parents work.  Or, mine do.)  (They did throw me one when I turned six, but it scared me and I ran and hid in a kitchen cupboard instead of being social, like you're supposed to do at your own birthday parties.)  The Sunday before, Gwen and I had actually had a conversation about surprise birthday parties, about which I promptly forgot and thus did not suspect a thing, even when Mom was like , "I have to go run errands at 7 at night!" and then "didn't hear" any of my queries about where we were going.  Thus, I was caught very off guard when lots of people leapt out from Adam and Terra's living room furniture and yelled, "SURPRISE!"  It has been reported that my face turned purple.  We ate lots of tasty party food and watched The Road to El Dorado (just about the best/most quotable movie ever, made before DreamWorks started making crappy live-action films) and lots of Tim Hawkins videos and it was SO MUCH FUN and MY FRIENDS ARE AWESOME, even if all of them couldn't be there.  
It made the previous Tuesday, which was my actual birthday, less depressingly anticlimactic, which is most bodacious.

So, it's forty minutes past midnight, and I still need to write a 600-word paper for my humanities class tomorrow. Thusly I bid you all a very fond farewell.  (I feel as though this is a quote from a movie in which someone dies immediately after saying that…Hm.)

(Oh—Bilbo Baggins says that right before he leaves the Shire forever.  Not really dying.  But still a drastic end to his life as he knows it.  Possibly good and possibly bad.  I sense that I'm about to launch a tangential and philosophical discussion right now, and I really need to not do that right now, so…guten nacht.  Maybe I will do this *points upwards* later.)

Break out the party horns! Kiersten finally got around to writing something!

All right.  I have been very remiss in blogging—on writing, journaling, vlogging, talking to people, period.  Mostly.  So I am here to remedy a little of that.  Hopefully in a relatively succinct and pithy fashion.

1. Ignition!  I want to blog about this eventually.  i just can't write a good post about this.  I'm sorry.
In a nutshell, lacking spit and polish and articulacy:
Friday night/most of Saturday = general feelings of I've-been-here-I've-done-this-what-am-I-going-to-get-out-of-this-but-emotional-high?  Kind of depressing.  Great conference, but I felt kind of on the outside, like I juts didn't have any really good reason to be there.
Saturday night = really good message.  God also kind of pointed out my "daddy issue" with Him.  I cried a little bit.  My hands did this weird shaky thing.  Chrissy and Emily and a couple of other blurry faces came and prayed for me, and I love them lots and lots and lots.  I might have made friends with Erica, which is pretty cool.  She's sweet.  And I love God.  A lot. And He's letting me know that He;s not passive about me.  He does care when I miss spending time with Him.  He really, really does.  And He cares whether I care.  Simple, right?  I feel like I should feel stupid for not realizing that before, but it was always one of those things that went in one ear and out the other, you know?  I never really felt like God loved me so much that he wanted to spend time with me every day.  I think I might have had a breakthrough there. *insert interjection for emphasis here* I hope so.  And having people pray for me was incredible—because, not by any fault of anyone else's, sometimes I forget that my friends love me too.  
I think spending my weekend on a youth retreat was worth it.

2. School.  Mostly, I like college.  I spend an astronomically smaller percentage of my time now being miserable than I did in high school.  But the last month has been insane.  It's spring break this week; I'm gad to have a breather.  I feel like such a wimp, taking 12 credit hours (which is full-time, but less than the average for an honors student.)  (I am so sick of hearing "honors" anything.)  and still feeling behind all the time.  But I am hanging on.  I really need to come up with a topic for my minimum-ten-page humanities paper about an aspect of life in a major urban city.  And I need to take this gargantuan International relations exa—worth 20% of my grade— which my professor has postponed for three weeks already and which will be five weeks late if we finally take it after spring break.  (Tuesday, March 8th—I get to take three exams on my nineteenth birthday.  Yahoo.)  I've  never wanted to be done with any exam so much.  I also need to study my part as Alice the Intern for a "team simulation" so I can…do…something that is a necessary part of my grade.  My, my.

3. I want a vintage chocolate pot.  I've always thought they were cool, and today I got to hold one in an antique market and it was GORGEOUS.  Unfortunately, the cheapest one I've seen thus far—doing a little hunting on the Internet—is about $95, and the most expensive was upwards of $4000 (though that one, admittedly, was somewhere around five hundred years old.  I didn't even know they had chocolate pots back then).  So—we shall see.  I want one.  A lot.  But I certainly cannot afford one myself, unemployed collegiate that I am.

4. Spring break…what am I ever going to do with myself for a whole week with no school?  WRITE. Hang out with some of my amazing friends, both the Kalamazoo residents and those visiting from elsewhere.  Try to get together enough of a D&D campaign to run an opening adventure.  Get tight with God, because I want so much to be in love with Him and I don't think I am.

So…life.  Crazy.  Right now i need some sleep.  Hopefully we (I'm not sure precisely who comprises that 'we" yet) making a trip to the Kalamazoo Art Institute after church tomorrow—should be fun!  Hopefully I'll also make it to C&C (remonikered Dwell) tomorrow night!  (For the first time in a month, dang.)  Sometimes I want my life to slow down and sometimes I want it to throw me for an insane loop, and right now I can't even tell the difference.  I just need to get some sleep.  I think.  I sort of want to cry for no reason, because crying, even when I'm not really upset, always seems to clear my head.  An oddity of Kiersten or a normalcy of my species?

Guten nacht.

Sunday night blues

I promise to get a post up about Ignition and awesome God-stuff soon.  I poured a slew of stuff into a draft last night, but it's not really publishable in its current state.  It's long and rambly and redundant and I would feel like a terrible writer if I let it loose on the Internet right now.  I didn't have time to edit it today, because I went to church ten minutes after hauling myself out of bed and since then have been simultaneously trying to do homework and catnap all day, because I basically have felt exhausted, headachey, and ponderous (in the physical and mental senses).  I've spent almost twelve consecutive hours now laboring over what should have been six hours' worth of homework at most.  I missed out on testimony night at youth group, and missed going to Dwell (second week in a row—bah) and now it's almost midnight and I'm lonely…if there is one thing that makes me outright miserable lately, it's being the only one awake in the house, not of choice, but because of homework I didn't do.  Maybe it's ridiculous, but it makes me feel sort of abandoned.  Faugh, this character analysis essay is letting me down (I love doing character analyses, but doing them on a deadline sucks), and I'm dog tired, and Jesus is my lifeline (believing that).  Anyway, I'll post about Ignition (hopefully) tomorrow.  School this week is going to need a healthy dose of optimism.  In addition to my normal homework load, I also have to do a six-page literature analysis of this 1980s movie and I have this ludicrously humongous International Relations exam on Thursday, which I'm getting more stressed about by the hour.

I do not want this week to happen.
Maybe it will look better after I've actually gotten some SLEEP.

Hannah, I should get those notes for you typed up soon! Hopefully tomorrow!
…Also, I got you and Gwen wristbands from Ignition, so (both of you, if you still read this, Gwen) remind me when you come to Kalamazoo!

A few disparate oddities...

I am in Panera on Gull Road, waiting for the bus, so I can go to school and give a presentation for my final class of the semester.  I desperately wish I could sit down and take a two-hour exam instead of standing up and talking for fifteen minutes; however...no such luck.  I'm starting to stress out and thusly feel rather ill.  Something has gone wrong every time I've had to do one of these things, and this professor is really stringent.  I brought it up at C&C yesterday, though, and everyone prayed, quite fervently.  Aaron M. even threw in a bit of prophetic awesomeness.  and this super nice, very extroverted girl named Kimmee (only other one there my age, actually) hugged me about eight times and gave me her phone number with strict instructions to text her and tell her how it went.  It was amazing; Jesus rocks.  I've been praying like mad.

They had no asiago cheese bagels today—alas and alack.  And I had to wait eight minutes for my caramel latte, so my bagel got cold and didn't melt the butter.  I should have splurged on some cream cheese.  In other weirdness, I am almost positive I stood in line behind Sam Patrie and Lonnie Saunders about an hour and a half ago; however, since I have only met either of them in person twice, and it's been seven months since I saw Lonnie and three years since I saw Sam, I'm not positive.  I'll have to Facebook Sam and ask, because my curiosity is quite piqued.  (I'm not brave enough to stand up and walk the twenty-five feet to where they're sitting and ask who they are. Haha.  And...now they've just gotten up and left.  Ah well.  Yay for the handiness of social networking; otherwise I'd never know.)

On to more carefree things—such as (hopefully!) ice skating on Thursday when Hannah is back in Kalamazoo!  And the Frentheways are coming; the Frentheways are coming!  Yay!  Now that it's starting to sink that that school is [almost, five and a half hours from now] done, I'm starting to get all aflutter for Christmas.  I haven't even thought about the fact that it's in five days.  I rather need to think about shopping.  I also need to stock up on library books; I've only got ONE out right now (The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins; unfortunately it took too long to get really interesting, and now I won't get to finish it) and it's due back today, so I won't have any books to sustain the introverted part of my life over my three weeks' break.  I wonder if I can check out books from the KVCC library even though it's the end of the semester?

Aah, no more time to write now...

In the homestretch...

...just over six days until semester's end.  I got in eleven of my required volunteer hours at the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission on Friday and Saturday, went to the New Day Christmas party, saw HPA's Little Women, spent the night at Emily's, and had a snow day on Monday (during which I was able to [mostly] catch up on sleep and get some desperately-needed alone time.  I love people, but being around them allthetime for days straight is exhausting!).  Adventure, hurrah.  The snow day also meant that I got out of doing mock interviews in Career  Decision-Making last night (yes!) and that our final online quiz for Modern Culture & the Arts is untimed because we didn't get to go over the material in class.  Just three more days in-class...math review tonight, humanities tomorrow, research portfolio due for English and math final Thursday, then humanities final and CareerDM final oral presentation (yuck) next Monday (again, yuck).  Almost there!  I'm quite excited to be done.  I'm pretty confident I'll four-point all my classes.  Though I still need four more volunteer hours by the beginning of January, and I need to purchase my books for next semester (and sell back this semester's).  I'm so excited to be almost done!  Right now I'm sitting in the Student Commons listening to (what I think is) a choir recital, which sounds great.  I'm also formulating plans to finish my math review packet for tonight and work on my English portfolio bibliography (26 pages so far...hurrah).  

One week from today, my blog posts can stop revolving around school and stress—at least for three weeks, ha.

Okay, I know I'm not the only one who's frightened of the future.  I know I'm not the only college student wandering around wondering what the heck I'm supposed to be doing, or what I'm doing right now for that matter.  But it definitely looks to me like everyone around me either 1) has everything neatly, confidently planned out, or 2) doesn't give two beans about their college career, so long as they graduate and have a halfway decent chance of making six figures.

But, oh God, I'm scared to death.  I feel like everything rests on me, you know?  I have to keep up my grades and plan out all this community service and make sure I'm not wasting time and money on classes I don't need to take (basically, I don't get to take any electives, because my stupid honors courses ate up all my electives.  Sucks.  — That's another thing.  I feel like like a crappy honors student.  I can do the coursework, for sure, but I'm not exactly the most confident or responsible 18-year-old out there. All I do is write good essays!)  I can make so many wrong choices.  I could do so many things wrong. There are so many ways to just mess up.  I feel so pressured to make the most of my time (I feel like I wasted a lot of it already.); to do something with myself.  

And I'm so scared, because I don't know what I'm doing.  I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.  And I don't have the self-motivation to take time to listen to God.  [expletive deleted] self-motivation that I don't have.  Being a spontaneous person instead of a goal-oriented one sucks so much right now.  I know I need to change, because, face it, I tend to be a rather irresponsible person and I can't afford to stay that way.  But I don't feel an urgent, desperate need to change, except in crunch time, and by then it's too late; and then I get through it, and on the other side it never looks so bad.  So I just keep doing the same stupid things over and over and never change.

And then there are things I'm terrified of—like taking a required physical education class.  I would, in all seriousness, do almost anything to get out of taking one.  Just thinking about it, just looking at the gym, makes me want to run, literally.  And I have no idea why I dread it in any form so much.  Even classes that seem like they'd be lots of fun, like karate or yoga or scuba diving, still scare the daylights out of me.  But I have to pick one eventually [eventually meaning "SOON!"].

Still, I'm scared to death.  I can't graduate in two years without either taking seventeen credits both semesters next year (impossible, unless I undergo some really drastic personality changes), or taking at least ten credits over the summer (am I capable of going to school full-time for twenty-one straight months without going insane?  I doubt it.)  I'm so frightened that my GPA will drift just a bit too low, or I'll procrastinate one day too far or on one project too many, or I'll get one night too little of sleep, or I'll fall in love with somebody and screw up my whole life, or I'll just plain lose my mind and go crazy.  Literally.  And I can't even listen to God, who I've been desperately asking for help.  I can't even bring myself to do that much.  I feel so desperately out of touch, out of time, out of anything but emotion.

I survived making lots of scary phone calls over the weekend!

official tally:  

two phone calls to my aunt Lise, so I could interview her about her career.

three phone calls to Terry, group mate #1. 

four phone calls to Jairen, group mate #3.

one phone call to the Richland Community Library, who had no ideas for potential interviewees.

I think my fear of bad grades is more influential than my fear of talking to people on the phone.  Combining both equals a lot of stress.  But it all went well  (err, mostly)!

That research project that I had to start over four days before the due date? I got my grade last night—100%!!  Simultaneously ecstatic and slightly disappointed.  By no means was that project my best work, so I'm actually slightly disappointed I didn't get a lower grade.  But I didn't get a terrible grade, so I'm also rather elated!  He put lots of nice comments on my paper, as well as pointed out some thought-provoking points he didn't agree with.  Interestingness.  YAY!

Amanda Lindauer gave me Jesus' Culture's new CD yesterday.  It's pretty darn awesome.  I hope my week is as awesome as this album.

I realized this morning that i forgot to put any of The Weepies' albums on my Christmas list.  Darn.  I wonder how I missed them when I was going over my List of Music I'd Really Like To Own Sometime Soon to make my Christmas wishlist.  Ach.  (This is what I can use my New Day Today Podcast iTunes gift card on!)

Alrighty.  Well, I must depart.  School calls.  Two weeks left! [ Plus an extra Monday.  :P ]

Perambulations on stress

I've only been out of bed for twenty minutes and already this is not shaping up to be a good day.  I was going to see Harry Potter with Emily today, but due to problems in obtaining a ride and a realization that I had a lot more homework than I thought I did, HP sadly had to be expelled in favor of less fun pursuits for the day.

And now my nervous system is a bit overtaxed.  Because I have math homework, and essays to read for English, and thirty pages to read for Modern Culture & the Arts.  And Career Decision-Making is the worst still, because I have to finish a paper for that class but I don't have enough material to fulfill the page requirement yet; I have to interview a publisher author/editor about their career and write a paper on that, but the person I thought I could interview fell through and now I don't know who I'm going to interview; and only one of my mates for the group project has followed through so far, so now I have to call up two guys I barely know and nag them (in a friendly manner) about sending their parts of the paper to me so I can put them together. 

Yes, you're probably all tired of hearing me list off all the things I have to do that're stressing me out, but that's pretty much taking up the bulk of my active prosencephalon right now. I'm kind of just venting to get this all out somewhere. I freaking don't know how I'm going to manage this (mostly the interview, since that's the one thing I absolutely cannot afford to not get done, except the group project, but I can still turn in my part even if no one else does, so I'll get at least partial credit.  But if I don't turn in my interview questions and the paper I have to write on it, I fail the whole class.  No joke.)

And I'm going to New Day today for the "community worship night" hosted by WorshipArts.  Under normal circumstances I would be at least fairly excited, but since this is cutting four hours out of my loaded day, I am not.   Help!

The Denouement of NaBloPoMo

I can't believe it's the last day of November.  In retrospect, it's astonishing to realize I actually wrote 32 bog posts over the course of the month (plus around eight more drafts, which may or may not be posted, or posted only in bits and pieces, as some of the are insanely lengthy).  It almost made the month seem longer, but not necessarily in a bad way.

Misfortunate morning aside, my day actually went pretty well once I got to school.  I hung out with Leah, Abby, Lydia, Andrew, Chris, a girl named Lucinda (for a few minutes) and a guy known only to me as Bob, which I'm pretty sure is not his real name.  We had lots of fun, and then we went to class, where we experienced this piece of sheer awesomeness, discussed two essays called "Meatless Days" and "How I Started To Write", got our annotated bibliography drafts back (149 out of 150 points!  So exciting).  Then I had a deep and thought-provoking debate with Abby, renovated my blog, and did simple interest problems in math (which I got out of 25 minutes early, not like it really matters since I take the bus) and had a Twix bar.

Only three and a half weeks left of the semester!  Hurrah!

I plan to keep posting pretty regularly, possibly every day, in December in beyond.  I seriously can't believe that we only have 31 days left before we're into the second decade of the 2000s.  Makes me feel old (yes, I know, that's a blasphemous thing for an 18-year-old to say).  

So, goodnight, sleep tight, may all your dreams come true...  (This is a joke, fyi.  At least five of my blog readers should get it.)

Happy birthday to my uber awesome dad (I'll be a good daughter and not divulge his age ;).  Love you lots! 

(Also, in case anyone was curious, a denouement is the last half of a Greek-style tragedy, after the hero's reversal of fortune.  It can also mean the end of something in a not-as-tragic sense, which is the context in which I'm using it here.  Sorry.  I'm rambling on in my geekiness.)

I overheard a girl ranting about how much the newest incarnation of Doctor Who sucks today. It made me curious to see Season 5.

(Emily—I'm five episodes into Season 3.)  

So, my day was long.  And relatively boring.  I went really early to school so I could figure out why the KVCC website wouldn't let me pay my tuition.  Due to my ride-hijacking arrangement with my mother, in order to get to school early at all, I had to go three hours early.  And then it took all of 20 seconds to get it worked out, so I could have done it in the 10 spare minutes I had before class if I'd gone at my normal time.  And I forgot to bring a snack, so I didn't eat all afternoon until about half an hour ago.  And then I sat through two hours of talking about the Romantics and the Realists and the Impressionists and the Modernists and Academic Art (basically, a LOT of 19th-century European painting).  I actually find all of it fairly interesting, but today my mind was off somewhere north of Jupiter's moons.  I hope i took enough notes to pass the exam the day after tomorrow.  Then I went to the library to meet with my group for a group project we're doing this week, and only one other guy showed up.  (We got it worked out after class, though...I'm putting together the portions of the paper everyone is writing.  The other guys are doing the PowerPoint, even though it turns out i'm the only one who's actually used PP before...but one guy was like, "You wanna be a writer?  Girl, this is RIGHT UP YO' ALLEY!")  (The group for this project [business protocol in Italy] consists of me, this middle-aged divorced smoker, and two crazy black guys.  It's interesting...) I also found out that the KVCC library is shelved according the Library of Congress system, which has been bugging me for a while.  Now I know why all the books have eight to ten-digit call numbers.  I also found out that they have a special career section, which explains the random lone bookshelf in the middle of the library thirty feet away from all the other bookshelves.  (I checked out Careers for Introverts and Other Solitary Types, and Careers for Perfectionists and Other Meticulous Types.  Wow, that combination makes me sound like such a standoffishly boring person, hahaha.)  So.  Then I caught the bus, listened to a This American Life podcast, made a cup of tea, read my friends' blog posts, and am now going to bed because I haven't gotten a decent night's sleep in several days and I'm exhausted.  Yech.
(Also, one of my fellow honors students Facebooked me to ask if I'd proofread his English essay for him.  Oo, I feel a slight shade of awesome.  But mostly just still tired.)

This is my Wednesday November 24th post.

I finally got my humanities research project done.  And turned in.  Just under the wire.  

I submitted it and then burst into tears.

Wow.

I am SO HAPPY to have that over with.