BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Weekend Festivities
My college graduation ceremony is this weekend, and I'm looking forward to it. I actually graduated after the Fall '07 semester, thanks to cramming in 20 units and earning 6 more units of competency exams before Xmas, but I wanted to "walk" in the actual ceremony, and that's what's going down Saturday. Dad and mom/stepdad are coming up to see, and Malaya and the IG will be in attendance as well, so that should be interesting. My parents haven't seen Malaya since we broke up 1.5 years ago, and she and the IG have never met, and my mom and dad have been divorced for nearly 30 years and though they're not fighting, they only see each other about twice a year (during my Xmas visits, usually) despite living just a few miles apart. I might be the only student there with 5 guests sitting in 4 different places?
Adding fuel to the fire (almost literally) is the crazy weather. It hadn't been over 80 here more than a few days all year, despite being a very sunny and dry spring. Suddenly, just in time for graduation and this mini-family reunion, El Sol has erupted directly overhead, and it's supposed to be (fucking) 97 today. The average high for May in San Rafael? 73. The all time record for May is 100, so with some "luck" we might break that this afternoon. I'd be perfectly happy to never feel weather over 70 at any point during the rest of my life, so you can imagine my happiness at this development.
It's supposed to be cooler (as the frying pan is to the fire) over the weekend, with the mercury plummeting to 92 by Saturday. At least I won't be standing around for hours in the sun in a long black robe and hat. Oh wait...
The last time it was this hot was the summer of 2006, when weeks of a humid heat wave eventually drove Malaya and me to spend the best $349 ever. (That $349 has been sitting, unused, on her back patio ever since that summer ended, but I still say it was worth it. I'd bring it over here to replace the puny a/c unit in my apt, but the hole in my apt wall is way too small, and I don't plan on living here so much longer that I'm willing to go home carpentry style and thereby entirely give up my $1200 damage deposit.)
It's far from that miserably-hot now, and it's only supposed to be this hot for a few days, but here's the irony. Around the time it was so super hot in 2006 was just before Malaya's graduation. She was getting her PhD then, so she's still a couple of degrees ahead of me, but my parents were impressed enough to want to come see the festivities. So the last time they were up here was 2 years ago, for a college graduation, and it was hella hot. Now they're returning, for a college graduation... and it's hella hot. That's almost enough to put me off of my thoughts of grad school.
Speaking of grad school, that won't be starting any time soon. If at all. Like about 90% of the applicants, I was not accepted to the writing program I applied to. No idea why not, they don't explain their decisions, but since I never seriously expected to be accepted, I wasn't surprised. I was disappointed, but not terribly, and one benefit of them taking so long to notify me is that I've largely forgotten why I wanted to go. When I applied I was just finished with my 18 month return to college, and thought more of it, in a school that was actually challenging, would be fun. I'd improve my writing craft, I'd make connections in the publishing industry, I'd gain education in areas I'm interested in, and I might even meet some intelligent young women who shared my interest in the written word.
I still think that would be kind of cool, but is it worth delaying the start of my real career another two years? At $22k a year? Not so sure. I could, in theory, manage the graduate writing program course load while also working on my novels and outside writing at the same time, but in reality I think it would lead to brain burn out. There's only so much time I can spend reading, writing, and writing about what I'm reading without needing to spend some time and some brain cycles on non-literary pursuits. I could write novels at night while attending business or law school (I'd probably need to to clear my head of the technical stuff), but I'm not sure the streams wouldn't get hopelessly crossed and snarled if I were trying that while working my way through a "2 novels a week" writing program.
So sure, working on and publishing fantasy novels while doing a writing grad program focused on non-fiction, great books, classics, the publishing industry, etc, is possible, but likely? I've got some time to think it over now, at least, and I'm planning to spend this summer getting really serious about editing my fantasy novel and contacting literary agents while I start working on the sequel. Come the fall, depending on how that's going, I'll decide if I'm still interested in graduate writing programs.
The deadline for applying to most schools is around January 1st. Since I didn't think seriously about grad writing programs until Xmas, I missed the cutoff for several programs that sounded good. If they still appeal to me in 6 months I might try my luck again, but by applying to several this time, instead of just one very selective one in my immediate vicinity. Perhaps I'll have something more impressive to put on my resume by then?
(Though honestly, I have no idea if published mainstream fiction is a good thing on a grad writing program resume. The prestigious grad school writing programs have a reputation as being fiercely and defiantly artsy-fartsy, which is why I never really thought I had a chance. My stated goal was to write high quality work, but high quality commercial fantasy/horror novels -- not nuanced poetry that will never be read by more than fifty people, a dozen of whom might actually understand it. Poetry is a noble goal, but it's not my goal, since 1) I don't get it, and 2) I'd like to do this for a living.)
If you ever wonder why rewriting takes so long, here's a photo of the first page of my novel, as it stood before I reworked it, and the next 5 pages (5 pages in that point size/margins = 14 in double spaced, 1" margin, TNR), into the writing sample portion of my grad school application. The amount of corrections, changes, and side notes to this page are pretty typical for me/this book, and I made quite a few other edits while working on the typed version on my computer.
Click the image to see this page in huge, readable size, if you're curious/nosy.
I'm trying not to change too much stuff as I rewrite now, since my long-standing habit is to rewrite whole pages. The changes always seem like a good idea at the time (or else I wouldn't make them), but when I look back a week later, or compare the before and after, most of the movement is lateral -- it's different, but not necessarily much/any better. Which wouldn't be a problem, except that it's a waste of my creative time to endlessly tinker with the same project, and there's the whole "earn a living from this bullshit" aspect of things that requires me to actually finish book(s), before moving on to new ones.
One thing I did change was the first line. It had read "left them to bleed and steam." since I first wrote it years ago and it was set in the Diablo world, long before I had any idea what the whole story would be about, etc. I don't know when/why I changed it to "bleed and die," but I like the original better. "Steam" is so much more evocative, even if it's less precisely descriptive... which is probably why I changed it, since I wanted to be clear that the guards were mortally wounded. Ideas; they come and go.
I do my best writing, non or fiction, with a deadline, simply because I know I can't screw around. So I don't. Everything I do on a deadline could be better if I had more time, (including the writing sample and the the critically-important Statement of Purpose I included in my grad school application) but the concept of "good enough" is one I've got to embrace more with my fiction. I do with my non-fiction, since it's written quickly for this blog or for a deadline in a college class. But I don't put as much importance on non-fiction, especially in the play of language and arrangement of words.
I certainly could, and I'm sure some nonfiction writers spend as much time tweaking their prose as I do with my fiction, but for me nonfiction is more about ideas and concepts, and the writing can be shiny, but it's most important that it's functional. I aim more for evocative and stirring in fiction, and sometimes achieve it, but 1) most readers don't know, notice, or care, 2) it takes forever by encouraging endless tinkerin, and 3) that time could be far better spent on quantity increases over (arguable) quality improvements.
The hard part is enforcing a deadline on my fiction. You'd think financial realities would help out there, but to add to the motivation, I'm going to finalize a bunch of query letters to literary agents and mail them out, along with a chunk of chapter one as a sample, in the next week or 2. I just bought Writer's Market 2008, so I've got the addresses and info at my fingertips, and a list of agents I culled from the Writer's Market 2006 two years ago, when I was at precisely the same point in my fictional fiction career. I just have to see if they're still good choices, see if any others should be added to the list, and print out and fire off a bunch of packets.
This is a deadline enforcer since while chapter one is suitable, chapters 2-4 are a fucking disaster. And if/when some of the agents hunt through their slush pile and think my chapter has enough promise to pursue, they'll mail me back asking to see more of/the rest of the work. And at that point I don't want to be like, "Um... chapter two is 500% longer than it needs to be, and I need to rewrite much of chapters 3 and 4 to insert lots of details and events to set up cool stuff that happens in the second half of the book. So can I get back to you in six months?"
So, continued editing on chapter two, a steel-toed boot stomping my delaying, perpetual perfectionism into the dirt, and the hope of professional connections to spur the whole process on. I'm not thinking about the prospect of grad school at this point; I won't find out about that for another 6-8 weeks, and if I worry about it now I'll get nothing done in the meantime. Besides, whether or not I'm accepted I'll still be toiling away on this novel. If not then I'll have be motivated by bitter "prove them wrong" spite, and the crushing reality of no more time spent in the cloistered halls of academia. And if I'm accepted, that's further motivation from the $20k a year in expenses, 30 hours a week of school work, and the potential for massive on-campus bragging rights.
Type, little dude, type. Fast as your little fingers will go!
I got my grad school application package sent out today, approximately 22 minutes before the post office closed. It had to be postmarked today, and after nibbling at it for the past couple of weeks, I spent about 12 hours straight working on it yesterday, running straight through the night until 9:30am. At that point I sent the 5-page Statement of Purpose off to my mom, dad, and Malaya and asked for some comments/ideas for improvement. I then went to bfed for 3 hours, got up at 1, read some useful suggestions by my correspondents, and made a bunch of changes. I also finished up the required resume, did a last time over the 15 page writing sample, and then frantically filled out the various forms while the printer was working.
I very nearly forgot to put in the check for the application fee, but remembered that just as I was sealing the manila envelope. I'd set out my checkbook for that purpose yesterday, but had forgotten to write the check and have it ready. Just imagine if I'd sent everything off, and then returned home and seen the check book and realized my error, 5 minutes after the post office closed for the day? Oh, how I would have laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed.
At any rate, it's been submitted and my fingers are crossed. I don't want to say where I've applied, but I will say it's a very good writing program, that it's expensive, that they accept fewer than 10% of applicants, that admission is based almost entirely on the writing sample and Statement of Purpose, and that I wont find out the good (or bad) news until at least April. Now let us never speak/think of it again.
While I'm not going to school this semester, my friend and very imaginary girlfriend is. I really need a nick for her, since we're friends and we hang out, but she's not "dating" me (or anyone else) in a romantic sense, so calling her the IG is misleading. Neither she, nor I, imagine that she is my GF. Anyway, she's started her semester at one of the many fine colleges over in The City, and as usual, tons of guys are hitting on her. She's very cute and personable, but is too nice for her own good, since when some guy comes on too strong and makes a fool of himself *cough*, she doesn't tell him to fuck off, but is polite and tolerant. As a result, she ends up with various mental patients, sad puppy dogs, "nice guys," and plenty of others trying to get up the nerve to ask her out, or asking her out and refusing to take a hint, or even a direct "No." for an answer. This causes her no end of exasperation, but does give her some funny stories to tell.
Last week some guy in one of her classes latched onto her like a remora, and followed her around for a couple of hours after class, while she was killing time before her next class began. As she said to me, "I stupidly told him I didn't have anything to do until 2 when he asked, so he stayed beside me the entire time. I've never been so eager for my theology class to begin." I of course made a joke about her thanking God that it was time for theology.
Anyway, here's the list of the expert dating techniques he displayed during 90 of the longest minutes of the IG's life. Keep in mind that this guy had just met her that day, and the extent of their experiences together were sitting all-too-near each other for a 2 hour college course.
Sitting way too close beside her.
Breathing on her with his stank breath.
Staring at her from about a foot away thanks to the circular chair arrangement in the class.
Waiting literally a foot from the bathroom door when she went to pee after class.
Taking a big uninvited sip of her fruit juice, through her straw, when she went to get a drink after class.
Repeatedly putting his arm over her shoulder, or around her waist, or over her back while walking next to her, despite her shoving him off each time.
Asking if her dad let her date.
Asking if she was a virgin.
Asking if she did one night stands or had boyfriends.
Inviting her over to his place for lunch, since he claimed to live very near campus.
Saying his girlfriend experiences involved a lot of one night stands. "You know, just the 'in and out.'"
Saying he sells a lot of pot, but that it's okay since God made plants for us to enjoy.
Asking repeatedly if she wanted to come over and get high.
Asking what religion she was, proclaiming how totally devoted to Christ he was, saying he was very tolerant of all religions, and then going on a vindictive rant about how Muslims are the root of all evil in the world.
There was even more, but you get the idea. I guess the moral of this story, and it's not one you need to be reminded of if you've been reading my coverage of The Evolution of Desire, is that the behaviors men think women will like are very seldom the behaviors women actually like. Also, guys... just because a woman doesn't come out and tell you that you're an asshole and she'd like to see you eaten by a tiger doesn't necessarily mean she's enjoying your company or you constant sexual comments and innuendos.
It's quite interesting to me to hear the IG's stories, since every guy she goes out with or gets to know, who is anywhere near 21, is just impossibly stupid, sexist, sex-obsessed, ignorant, rude, crude, uncouth, etc. And when I think back to myself at that age.. I wasn't much different. I can recall the burning need to put a sexual comment into virtually every sentence, when I was talking with a girl. After all, how else would she know that I was, you know, interested in sex?
To all the 21 y/o men out there... trust me, girls know. They're not nearly as stupid or oblivious to social clues and cues as you are, and you're not the first 21 y/o to come slobbering after them. You do not need to mention sex, blowjobs, how hot her ass is, how nice her tits look, pubic hair shaving vs. waxing techniques, etc, etc, etc. She's quite aware that the vast majority of your thoughts stem from about 2" of dangle between your thighs, and the more you bring it up, so to speak, the less interested she's going to be in engaging in the behavior you so desperately want her to engage in. There's this thing called "subtlety," and if you know a guy who isn't rich or a big jock stud, and still seems to get laid a lot, he's got it, and you don't.
This is kind of an awkward transition in subject, but is there any possible connection or correlation between date rape, and a cat sleeping on you when you're asleep? See, Jinxie and I have a bed-sharing arrangement. I sleep on the left side, by the window, and she gets on the right. She never sleeps on the left anymore, and when I go into the bedroom and find her already on the bed, she's invariably on the left side, up near the top of the comforter. About neck height, on the invisible person who might be sleeping there. She occasionally sleeps leaning against my side, but most often she's at chest height and arm's length from my right shoulder.
The date rape part has come lately.I've had some sudden nap urges in the evenings, since I'm not sleeping very long at night (which is usually in the day), since I keep waking up after 5 hours with financial worries and thoughts about all the work I want/need to do, and grad school ideas, and story ideas, and more, that I can't get back to sleep. Nor do I want to, when I can get up and start working.
Unfortunately, my inferior meat unit of a body can't go indefinitely on 5 hours of sleep, especially not when I'm working out 90-120 minutes every other day, plus martial arts. Hence... naps.
The weird part is that if I nap on the left side of the bed, jinx sleeps right beside me, whether I'm under the covers or on top or just rolled up in the comforter. But if I sleep in the center of the bed, or on the right, I invariably wake up with Jinx sleeping on top of me. My position doesn't matter either; she'll get on my back if I'm face down, or my stomach if I'm on my back, or perch awkwardly on my hip if I'm fetal'ed. And she's never there when I fall asleep; she only comes in once I'm out, and settles herself down on me.
The worst was a few days ago when I woke up from vaguely sexual dreams with a boner and a desperate need to pee, only to find Jinx hunched right on my groin, in a reverse cowgirl, with her back end right on my bladder. I had on pants, and was rolled up in the comforter, thankfully. I was lucky I didn't piss myself, she was so creating a simulation of male pregnancy kitty, and that's not the kind of wet dream I'm interested in experiencing. Not for another 40 or 50 years yet, anyway, until they're feeding me full of dog food and rolling me onto the rubber sheets.
So, I'll repeat my question. Is a cat taking advantage of your (or my) unconscious, helpless, yet apparently desirable and welcoming body, the equivalent of feline date rape? I did not grant consent for this activity, Mrs. Jinxles!
Finally, can someone pass a law allowing for the sport shooting of any really, really loud motorcycle? Especially when the same asshole rides it slowly around your block, like ten times in a row? All young men on motorcycles are just organ donors anyway, and anyone who makes that much noise in a residential area, without involving dynamite, deserves to die. My only concern is that stray bullets might strike innocent, deafened bystanders, or that people with poor aim would land a gut shot, and ruin the valuable chest meats that human pinata is riding around with. Still, I think it's a fair trade off, given the level of disturbance those Harley-riding assholes create. I'll be happy to co-sponsor any appropriate legislation in the upcoming congressional session.
Despite my protestations about the high prices and lack of selection, I did manage to use up my Gap gift certificate this week. The Gap at the mall near my apt is tiny and useless, as described in that previous post. There's a far larger one about 8 miles down 101 in the super-bougie Corte Madera mall, and I met the IG there Tuesday, on a joint Xmas gift cert mission. She had virtual money to blow at Banana Republic, and after she found nothing to her liking in that deceptively non-tropical clothier, we adjourned to the Gap, and were pleasantly surprised to find the store occupied two stories, with substantially more merchandise on both the lower and upper levels than we found in the entire store in the thoroughly inadequate Northgate mall.
Downstairs was all women's stuff, plus there was a Gap Body adjoined to the main store, with sub-Victoria's Secret quality undergarments galore. I didn't know Gap sold such things, and when I failed in my efforts to persuade the IG to model some for me, I turned to their website to satisfy my curiosity. It's women's underwear; look if you enjoy that sort of thing. I will give them props for the technology; you click on an item and a new page opens up where you can see the panties or bra on a fetching model, plus there's a nifty little perv-o-cam square viewing box, which you can drag around to magnify the view as you hunt for stray hairs and/or labial indentations. Basement dwellers are jerking off to this right now.
As for the Gap store, the entire downstairs was women's stuff, including a whole wall of clearance/sale stuff of all types. The IG nearly got swallowed up in it, but came to her senses and remembered that we were there to use my gift cert. So up the stairs we went, to find that the upper level was about half the size of the downstairs, and that half of that was devoted to very overpriced kids clothing. The men's stuff was off in the back corner, and as is usually the case in non-discount clothing stores, the women's section was busy with female customers, and the men's section was less busy... with women customers. Most men would wear the same jeans and t-shirt they got last Xmas, every day, until it rotted away. And yes, I've got some nerve making that claim after my last Gap-related bitch-fest. And yes, I was there... looking for jeans and a t-shirt for an Xmas present.
At any rate, we moved past the "I bet this would look good on my son/husband" females, and dove in. The IG made suggestions, I demurred with the illogic that distinguishes my "fashion" sense, and we made our way through the selection merrily enough. Though the quarter or fifth of the store that housed menswear wasn't huge, it still had far more variety than other Gap stores I've been in, and while it was all still basically jeans, khakis, belts, and polos, I eyed some black slacks, before picking out a chocolate brown, semi-shiny button up shirt that I didn't hate. It cost $40, and I would never have paid more than $16 for it at my usual Ross/Marshalls shopping destinations, but I didn't want to carry around that gift cert forever. So I hypnotized myself into believing that the item was actually $10, ignoring the fact that the $30 on the card was real money, and left with a new shirt in a plastic bag, for $12 after tax. What a deal!
More enjoyable was our next stop at the mall, when the IG pulled me into a J Crew store, and picked out a miniskirt and hoodie, which she eventually modeled for me, accessorized with knee-high stripper boots, courtesy of a cell phone cam shot. And no, you can't see it. Hell, I can hardly see it; when will flashes become standard equipment on cell phone cams?
In other news, I did something new on Friday. I guest lectured in a friend's college course. She's teaching a class on online communities via computer games, and I spoke to her class of game freaks and geeks about fansites, internet communities, the history of MMORPGs, and (my senior project topic) storytelling in videogames. I was scheduled to speak for at lest an hour, and wasn't sure I could go that long, but ended up doing 90 minutes, including some questions and discussion. It was fun. I'd never "lectured" on anything in an even semi-formal setting, and while I had (to take) a Speech/Rhetoric class as part of my General Education requirements to earn my degree, and we gave five speeches in that class, they were all limited to 5 minutes. A ridiculously short time that I regularly crashed past in my effort to relay some actual content, but even my last speech, on the historical context of religion as a man-made meme, only went 8 minutes. From there to 60 is quite a leap, much less to 90, and I'm surprised how easy it was to make.
Of course my lecture was pretty crap; I knew the material very well, from living it these last 10 years and having written several research papers on it in the last 2 years, but I had never presented it all at once before, and my organization was all over the place. I kept forgetting points and going back to them 10 minutes later, I talked way too fast as I usually do (thank god the class was young and still sharp-eared; I might as well be a dog whistle to old people when I get going on a topic), and I should have prepared more with specific names and dates and quotes, since I kept alluding to things that I couldn't remember well enough to cite specifically. I have no idea how Hitchens does that in all of his speeches and interviews; how he keeps exact quotes in memory, along with who wrote/said them, in which book, etc. I'm more like, "I read this in a book somewhere. By someone. Let me clumsily paraphrase it for you."
When I told the IG about the guest lecturing gig, she was excited and said the expected, "Do you think you might want to be a teacher? I think you'd like it and be good at it!" I shuddered then, as I always have when someone suggests that. I would not make a good teacher, and even if I would, I don't want to be one. I don't like kids, and I don't like putting up with their chattering bullshit. I hated attending school; I certainly don't want to return there now.
That being said, I could probably refrain from slitting my wrists if I were a college professor. Yeah, it would suck talking at the disinterested 13th graders in all the intro classes, but there's no presumption that I'm supposed to care about them, or be a role model, and when they don't pay attention and bomb their tests I can flunk them and teach them the lesson their coddling parents never did. (Well, once I have tenure, anyway). Plus, the 10% of students who are bright and engaged and taking some interest in their $40k a year education are worth interacting with, and as for the rest, well we're still some decades away from fully automated gas stations and fast food restaurants, so the ones who can't get a job from in daddy's business will have something to fall back on. The ones not wise enough to work as bloggers/fansite webmasters/perpetually aspiring novelists, I mean.
Lastly, I joined a gym. A big 24 Hour Fitness in Larkspur (even the town's name is bougie), about 5 miles down the freeway from me. It's in a very rich area and the gym isn't cheap; $52 a month on top of the membership fee and one of those "fuck you" one time fees. Those amount to something like $160 to put your name into their computer, and then you get to pay $624 a year for membership. Or, you can take the 12 months for just that club for $300, with no signup fee at all. Better yet, they had a New Year's special with the 12 months for $199. So, $16.58 a month it is, then.
I've enjoyed all the mountain biking I've been doing in the nearby semi-mountains, and my legs and cardio are great, but it rains about 20 days a month from now until May, and it's cold, and I miss lifting weights. I've got the 30 pound, "sometimes, things are heavy" dumbbells here, and if I were self motivated and spent 20 minutes a day doing various lifts with those, I wouldn't need the gym. I'm not, 5 minutes every other day isn't getting it done, and using a variety of weight lifting machines is much more fun. Plus, gyms are sometimes known to contain attractive, physical fit, tight pants-wearing females, and I would not at all object to the regular presence of one, or more, such creatures in my life.
I do have to wonder about the necessity of the 24 hour nature of this gym, though. It was one of the main reasons I signed up; along with the price. I'm a night owl and have long longed for the option of heading off to the gym at 2am. Especially since I prefer to avoid the crowd and not have to wait for machines. However, my first late night visit to the gym was not only solitary, it was downright creepy. I went late night Friday, and I was literally the only person there. Well, me and muscles at the front desk, but he hardly appeared alert/alive enough to register on an EKG, so it was just me in the vast fitness warehouse for about 45 minutes. I can't complain; I was the one who wanted no waiting, after all, but it was a bit like some place Will Smith might have worked out with a German Shepherd and an assault rifle.
Eventually a creepy old guy came in; but he just talked to the guy at the front desk. The old guy was wearing a puffy vest over a shiny running jacket, a ski cap, running shoes, and short jogging shorts. All the better to show off his veiny, hairy, knobby-kneed old man legs. Because what else would you wear to the gym on a rainy night, in 50 degree weather, in January, at 3am?
Update: I made another less-late night visit to the gym this evening, and found about 6 people there at midnight. Only 2 were left by the time I departed at 1:30, and I've got a photo to (not really) prove it.
You can tell it's a manly gym by the mega-heavy dumbbells they've got stacked up. These boys run the entire end of the gym, and they're not very wisely arranged. On the top row they start at 50lbs (23kg) and go all the way up to about 120 lbs (55kg). I haven't been to this new gym that many times, but I've never seen any of the dumbbells missing from the racks on the top row. The lower row has dumbbells from 20-45lbs, (lighter ones are in racks to the side and in another back room) and all of the 20 and 25s are usually scattered all around the weight room, with fewer of the 30s and heavier missing.
The question then, is why are there a million weights heavier than any sub-bodybuilder needs, and why are they displayed on the top row where they're always visible, while the weights people actually use are down below and harder to reach? Even if some football team someday comes to the gym and uses the big ones, they'll probably leave them lying all over the place, and then someone on the staff will throw out their back having to lift all of those weights up to more than waist height to put them back in their appropriate slots.
My old gym near Malaya's condo was not a manly gym. There were a lot fewer dumbbells, and most of them were from 5-20 pounds. Of the heavier ones, there were only like one pair each of 25, 30, and 35, with the masters of them all, a pair of 42.5 pound juggernauts. Logically, all the lighter weights went on the top row of the storage rack, and the heavy ones that none of the mostly-female clientèle could lift squatted on the bottom row, where dirty, sweaty, smelly men like myself had to hunker down and drag them out, like really heavy sex toys from that box you think no one knows you've got under one side of your bed.
Inconvenient storage aside, I like that there are big dumbbells sitting there, staring. Taunting. They give me motivation to bulk up enough to need them. I use 30 pounders now, but I do a fair number of reps in different positions. I could probably do some curls with 50 or 55lbs now, to save my life, but I'd make like one rep and need a break and possibly a nap, and what's the point in that? There is no point; at least not at night, when there aren't any spandex-pantsed bunnies to hurt myself trying to impress.
I posted last week that I was all but done with my degree. I was done with the semester and had no mystery about passing my classes; the only doubt there is if I'll get a 4.0 for the term or not. I think I will, but an A- could creep in from Speech & Rhetoric, the only non-major, non-upper division class I was taking (and the one I put by far the least importance on). Not that my grades matter, for any reason I can think of. But if I'm taking classes I'm interested (for the most part) in, I figure I might as well get something out of them. And in almost every class I've taken in my (now-concluded) return to college, getting an A has almost been an unavoidable result of coming to class, keeping up with the readings, and paying attention to the lectures.
I did as little of those things as possible in high school, since I wasn't learning anything interesting, and I hated having to be there. In college, this time around at least, I've done it willingly and paid quite a bit for the privilege, so of course I'm paying attention in class and trying to learn from the material. My objective wasn't to slide through with a degree while making as little effort as possible; my objective was to learn from and enjoy the experience along the way. And I did, for the most part, and as a natural extension of that effort, I got good grades.
So I passed everything pretty easily, including the final hurdle, a math competency exam I took this morning. Great success! I was worried going in, since I hadn't exactly been killing the practice tests (more on those in a bit), and if I didn't pass the test I would have to enroll for the spring semester, simply to take a single piddling math class to meet my graduation requirement. Why a Humanities degree requires a math class, I couldn't entirely say. I guess it's just part of the whole well-rounded, liberal arts education concept. I never used any math in any of my classes.
The exam, as longed for and simultaneously dreaded as an accurate account of Jennifer Love Hewitt's measurements, was called the CLEP, and as the official site discusses, these tests can be used to meet basic requirements and save time/money at college. I took the basic English Composition test before I resumed my college career 18 months ago, since I was not about to sit through English 101 when I could dismiss that requirement, and earn 3 units, with one 60 minute, $90, computer-scored exam. I remember nothing about it, other than that it was almost entirely sentence structure and reading comprehension and vocabulary, acquired writing skills that I roll 18s in, at this point. At least in comparison to the average incoming college student.
I knew I needed to take the CLEP College Math exam too, or else take a 3 unit math class, but I put it off, and put it off, until finally I was a month from graduating, with every requirement set to be met... every requirement except that math competency test. So I scheduled it for mid-November, and then postponed it since I was just swamped by other work and didn't have time to study. The next test date was December 14th, and that was the last time I could take it and still have Fall '07 be my last semester. So it was on, and if you're about to suggest that I spent the week+ since my last final studying diligently for this crucial math test... you must experience a lot of disappointment when your expectations fail to mesh with reality.
I'd talk about the test now that I've passed it, but 1) I'd be talking about a math test, which has to be pretty much chloroform in print except for some small, deviant population of math geeks that I might belong to, and 2) I'd be breaking the law. Well, not the law, but before starting the computerized test I had to click through about five pages reminiscent of those software installment agreements we all skim over without reading and then proceed to break without a hint of guilt. In this case, I'm going to shu' my mouf', since included in the terms of taking the CLEP were things like, not transmitting any info about it, including via email or other online sources, with penalties like having my exam score invalidated. I can't imagine anyone would ever know or check or care, but just in case... Besides, see point #1 above. You're not missing anything.
I will point you to the official College Board page for the math test though, and quite briefly (and selectively) from it. Here are the topics covered on the test, with their approximate importance. See the linked page for more details.
10% -- Sets
10% -- Logic
20% -- Real Number System
20% -- Functions and Their Graphs
25% -- Probability and Statistics
15% -- Additional Topics from Algebra and Geometry
If you want more detail (I'm sure most of you are simply quivering for it), check the test books section of your local library or bookstore, and you'll see numerous competing guides. I bought books by The Princeton Review and Research and Educational Association, and checked out Peterson's CLEP Success. All of them have basic info about the tests, study material, practice tests for a variety of CLEP exams. The verdict? They all suck.
Well, let me clarify. I would not have passed the test without studying these guides, since I was way, way, way out of practice on most of the skills required (since high school, in many cases), but the quality of instruction and information vary widely between the various books, and none of them did a very good job preparing me for what would be on the actual test. I was able to relearn and remind myself of things from working through these books though, and my overall comprehension of the math issues was sufficient, so I can't really complain. The test has 60 questions, only some of which are scored. I don't know how they weight the questions; all are supposed to be equally important, but 80 is a perfect score. I needed 50 to pass, and I got 65, and knew I was fine 20 minutes into the exam, when I was sure about my answers on maybe 28 or 30 out of the first 35.
That stood in marked contrast to my experience with almost all of the practice tests, which were all much harder than the actual exam, and simply choked with trick questions, sneaky definitions, deceptive wording, and much more difficult problems than they presented in the pre-test review material. The Peterson's book was both the best and worst. It had about 20 pages of excellent basic math review on everything I needed for the CLEP. That part was great. It followed those pages, and the numerous review problems that concluded each review section, with a 65 question test that had questions written by some sort of malevolent cyber-professor, out to crush the spirit and desire of the worthless meat units.
I spent about 4 hours last night going through the whole Peterson's guide, figuring out all the sample problems and background info, solving every review question, and feeling like I had a pretty good handle on things. And then I got to their sample test, and often found myself laughing out loud at the questions, they were so unrelated to the review material 5 pages earlier. Routinely I'd read a question, curse the imaginary math gods, and flip back to the review section to see if it was as completely removed from the sample test question as it seemed to me. In almost every case the answer was yes. Yes it was.
Happily, the actual exam was not all full of weird problems, trick questions, or super-complicated equations that vastly exceeded the basic competency-testing point of the exercise. So I passed, and now I'm actually done, save for the registrar completing paperwork and approving course substitutions and getting the official results of my CLEP exam, etc. Which once again begs the questions... what now?
Well, short term I'm trying to relax and enjoy some vacation time. I'm going down to San Diego to visit the folks for a week over Xmas, and plan to do quite a bit of nothing while I'm there, and perhaps eat too much. I can probably stand to, since I've lost weight from all the work and stress during this past semester. That and my main recreation/fitness activity/stress reliever has become bike riding. There are some really nice mountain bike trials all over a small mountain/nature preserve a few miles from my condo here in San Rafael, and I've taken to riding 2-3 hours there a couple of times a week. I cover about 25 miles each time, at least 15 of that up and down rather steep hills/rough terrain, and while I've got no idea of the actual mileage or what my heart rate is, I'm as fit as I've been in years, and certainly have the flattest, washyboardy abs I've had since about 22. No, no pics. Do try to control your disappointment.
Extended periods of non-stop pedaling along winding, occasionally-precipitous forest paths is a great deal more fun than walking in place on a gym machine, though I must admit the lack of any opportunities to eyeball nubile young women in spandex is a drawback. Well, they're not entirely lacking, it's just that the few I see are usually flashing past on their own bikes, which isn't quite the same as seeing one take her turn in the buttblaster leg lift machine. Pleasant as the imagery it evokes may be, I have to admit my comparison is flawed, and entirely hypothetical. I've not been to a gym since I moved 12 months ago, and the gym Malaya and I went to was almost entirely populated by aging housewives anyway.
Yes, I digress. Too many thoughts in my head today.
So I passed the math CLEP, and found out the minute the test was over, since it's computer graded. It was about 11am then, and since I'd gotten just a 2.5 hour nap before the test, after staying up until 6:30, I had my sights set on a nap. Driving home I called back a friend who'd just texted to wish me well, then spent a few minutes giggling and shrieking in relieved happiness, before parking my car, walking into my apt, and finding Jinx still nestled deeply into my heavy comforter, where I'd left her 2 hours earlier. Way to miss Daddy, little kettle!
I wanted to pace and scream and shout, and I was hella hungry, but I settled for undressing, lying down, turning on the wall heater, propping my cold toesies in front of it, and texting the news to Malaya and my parents. Next thing I knew it was afternoon, Jinx was lying halfway over my right shoulder, my neck was sore, and I had nothing approaching the energy or gumption to get out and bundle up for a bike ride, even though the day was sunny. So I dozed a while longer, then got up and started pacing. And I'm still at it, 4 hours later. I've been surfing peripatetically, doing housework, washing dishes, watering plants, playing with Jinx (who finally woke up to go sit in the living room window and enjoy the last of the day's sun), and wishing anyone I knew in real life had time for me tonight.
For the last few months I've been friends with a lovely young woman I met at college. She's curious to see herself blogged about here, but hasn't been able to come up with a satisfactory alias yet, so at this point I'll just call her IG, short for "imaginary girlfriend." Which she is. To me anyway. We're good friends and have been talking, texting, and emailing all semester, and have gone on a number of "dates" since our bi-weekly, history-class meetings came to an end in late November, but she's not ready to commit to anything more than companionship. I'm not sure if I am either, but I wouldn't mind moving kinda in that direction. And who knows; maybe we will. At any rate, she's the person I've been spending most of my social time with, and we had a great time doing a mutual celebration of the end of the semester. Unfortunately, she's busy with family obligations tonight and has to work and do other things all weekend, so we can't get together again until next Tuesday. With IG off the social menu, I tried to turn to my ex-girlfriend but still good friend, Malaya. She's been incommunicado all afternoon/evening though, and would probably have had other work-related tasks tonight anyway.
That left... no one. I know various other people, through Kali and school, but none of them are people I socialize with, or want to be around when I'm happy and wanting to have fun. Or vice versa, I suspect. The penalty of being a relatively private person, or at least one who's picky about who he socializes with.
The irony is that in the old days, i.e. anytime before about July, I'd have been quite happy being alone tonight. I spent a decade enjoying my own company more than that of anyone else, and was much happier writing, or surfing, or gaming, than doing anything social. That was always the case when I lived in San Diego, and it didn't change much once I moved up to the Bay Area to live with Malaya. I just had a girlfriend who was about as close to a soulmate as I'm likely ever to meet, and we had highly overlapping interests (hence my soulmate mention) and generally enjoyed doing the same thing. Eventually it became clear that she liked to go out and do things more often than I did, and that was a source of some friction.
Ironic friction, since in retrospect I can now empathize with her, since I've been doing similar academic activities to the ones she was frequently laboring through, and now I want to go out and do fun stuff after days or weeks or months of heard school work. Pity I didn't get into the back to university thing 3 years ago, or we'd have had that much more in common, and could have really enjoyed relaxing and partying when our semesters ended.
So now I've got no one to party with, at least tonight, and as this entry keeps getting longer and longer, and I keep falling victim to distraction and diversion, then returning to continue its interminable construction composition it. I considered going out, but I can't find enough restlessness/interest to do that on my own. Where would I go? What would I do? Movies and eating out aren't any fun solo, and I can't think what I want to eat anyway. Maybe I'll go get a pizza once I post this: I haven't had one of those in weeks.
I don't have any interest in going to a bar, especially not a singles bar, and I don't play arcade games anymore, nor even know where an arcade might be found these days, other than in the lobby of a movie theater. I don't want to watch a movie, or a DVD, or buy/rent a new one, and I had the cable turned off months ago, so even if I wanted to watch TV, I don't have that option. I'm too restless to get into a book, even though I've got a stack of good ones I've been itching to get into all semester. Worst of all, I've got no desire to play videogames. I've not had time for that since the summer, aside from what I stole to spend doing some Hellgate: London alpha/beta testing. I didn't buy a copy of the game upon release though, since I wouldn't have had time to play anyway, but also since I was waiting to hear from Flagship's moribund community relations team if they'd be providing copies and monthly subscriptions to fansite admins. (That's the industry standard now; people who run ites that cover games like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, etc get free games and their monthly subscriptions paid for by the manufacturers.)
Apparently the answer about free games was "no." since I could never get an answer beyond "We'll look into it." so I finally ordered a copy of HGL through my own "buy crap" link, for that big 4% payback, and it arrived last week. I've played about 2 hours since then, and even though I was spending a lot of time studying for the stupid math test, I could have played more. I didn't really want to, though. It's not the game, I think it's fun and potentially addictive. I've just grown out of the habit of playing games for longer than 10 or 15 minutes at a time, and I'm not sure I want to get back into it. I feel like a 14 y/o who's just "discovered girls," but honestly, I'd so much rather spend time talking or shopping or eating lunch or just taking a walk with an interesting young woman than I would sitting at my computer and killing pixels with other pixels, that the whole concept of videogames seems kind of quaint at this point. The fact that my IG isn't a gamer probably factors in there somewhat (Malaya and I played a lot of D2 together in the early days.), but it's mostly about me. I've gotten used to doing so much stuff, with the hours of school work and thinking and being active, that returning to my old, self-despising ways of gaming to kill time seems uninviting. The fact that I'm supposedly running an HGL fansite is a complicating factor in that equation, but not one I'm prepared to address at this point, either in thought or in blog.
So, I don't know what I want to do tonight, or this weekend, or next week, other than on Tuesday when I've got a date with the IG, and then martial arts class that evening. I don't need to figure it out at this point though, since I'm off to San Diego Thursday morning. The interesting time will come in late December and early January, when I'm back here without any pressing school projects of any kind, the IGs still out of town visiting relatives, and I won't be able to put off "what do I do now?" considerations any longer. Stay tuned.
I do have huge plans for work; RL work, of the kind that provides financial remuneration, as well as hours a day booked for working on my fiction/novel, more time to redesign and re-engineer and relaunch this website, and hours more (in theory) on the HGL site, as well as considerations about apply to/preparing for (maybe) grad school come the fall. But will that be enough? Not that doing more is required for humans, and most of us don't fully engage in life, since just doing what's got to be done to get by is much easier. I don't want to slip back into that, though. Too many years have passed, leaving me little more than unwelcome memories and balky knees. Enough. Time for better.
My last final was Wednesday evening, and after breezing through it I wandered out to my car and drove home, wondering what now. I'm done, finished my degree, B.A. in Humanities, and yeah, I should probably be more emotional at this point. I had a semi-hysterical breakdown Monday night, but in a good way, after making it through 2 finals that day, after having been up all night finishing my senior project and getting it printed up and bound at a 24 hour Kinkos. The senior project was an insane rush to finish, thanks to my procrastinating on it, and my primary reader was too busy last week to look over it. He was supposed to get on it over the weekend and get comments to me over the weekend, and when Sunday night came and went without any word from him, I was a little panicked. I went ahead and finished a last edit/draft, and took the 34 pages to Kinkos to get it printed up in two copies on good paper and bounded (spiral folder type thing), and sent him a late night email with the final .doc attached, saying I'd drop off the hard copies at his office in the morning and that they were due that day, and I needed his signature on both copies.
I got to sleep around 5, set my alarm for 10, and at 7:45 when my alarm clock/cell phone singing, I picked it up with no idea who it was. It was helpful that I was too asleep to speak or think, since it was the man I'd been so eager to contact, and he had good news. He'd read (well, skimmed) my paper and thought it was very good, and would be happy to sign off on it, and would meet me in his office early that afternoon. So that was that, worries over with, but I was too relieved to get back to sleep. So I laid in bed for 3 hours, sort of dozing but mostly thinking about everything, then got up and took a long shower and spent an hour studying for my first final of the day, then headed out to get his damn thing so I could be rid of it.
That went smoothly, and I went from his office hither and yon, getting the other required signatures and turning the two copies in at last. From there I went right to my first final, making it through a ridiculously long and overdone exam (for a stupid GE requirement Speech/Rhetoric class that hadn't taught me a thing all term) writing with a pen that might as well have used liquid manure for ink, as much bullshit as I wrote on that test. From there it was over to the library for 2 hours studying for my second final of the day, and then another Pepsi with a bag of sour cream and onion baked potato chips, before the World Religions final.
I usually am very careful on exams. I always force myself to read all the multiple choices to be sure there aren't any tricks, on the test or in my mind, and I check over my answers, etc. Not this time. I'd done all the readings and paid attention in lectures and gone over the material so much that I knew the answers at once when I read the question, and my unblinking eyes were soon scanning the ABCDE options not to read them all and evaluate, but to find the one correct one as quickly as possible. Sometimes before I even finished reading the question. I'm sure I missed a few Qs because of that, but it won't matter, since I didn't miss much, and I knew all the 6 extra credit map questions. Besides, I'd gotten an A on the first paper in that class, and the midterm, and I never got less than an A on any full-length paper I did in my 3 semesters, and I knew my research paper was good too. I could have gotten a B on the final and still had an A in the class, what with the various extra credit options I'd fulfilled.
It's funny; I had a horrible GPA in high school, since I didn't care at all. I had several Fs in classes I just chose not to participate in or attend at all, and ended up with the minimum units required to graduate. No idea what my GPA was. Literally, no idea. I couldn't name 2 classes I had my senior year, and don't know my grade in any of them. Probably 2.2 or something like that, since I did get As in classes that were hard/interested me, and those averaged out the Fs and Ds in boring classes I did nothing in for 8 months.
In my first swing through college back when I was 19, 20, etc, I got something like a 3.6 GPA, without really trying. I didn't not try, but I didn't really care about my grades. I did the work in college since it was interesting and sometimes challenging, but mostly since I had about 12 hours of class a week, each class only met once or twice for a total of 3 hours, and I could take classes at times I wanted to take them at, instead of being trapped in the busywork hell of high school from 7-2:30 M-F.
This time I've not really worried about grades either, but the classes have been largely interesting to me, and since the work is all reading and writing and thinking, and I do that for fun, my GPA is enviable. I think I had a 3.96 over my first 2 semesters, (There are no A+s, honors classes are still just worth 4.0, which you get for an A, 3.7 for an A-, and so on down.) and I'll be surprised if I don't do a 4.0 this time, for my 20 units. I don't really feel any pride in this, since I just expect to get an A. I feel bad when I get less. And I should feel bad, since it's not a stretch to say that I'm smarter than most of fellow students, especially when I consider that few of them can write, plus they're like 20 and are still pretty much 13th-grading their way along on mommy and daddy's $32k a year.
Well that's invidious of me to mention, since the other students don't matter, since almost nothing is graded on a curve. So forget that. I should get As since the work I'm doing is all squarely in my skill set. I'm gifted/skilled at reading comprehension and especially at writing. Earning less than A means I didn't apply myself. I'm sure it would (will?) be different in a grad school level class, with higher standards and other students who are also very skilled at this pursuit, but at the undergrad level I've been able to breeze to an A in almost every class I've taken. Not that I'm uniquely talented; I'd have to work much harder for a C in biology or comp sci or calculus than I do to get As in English or History or Humanities. I'm not unable to do hard science or math; I actually scored higher on the Math than the English of my SAT lo those many years ago, but since I haven't spent most of my semi-adult life working with numbers or in the sciences, I'd have to do a lot of relearning and thinking in areas that are not second nature to me.
While I'm on the topic, I had an email asking me why I did Humanities rather than English or Writing. Logistics, mostly. I chose to major in Humanities rather than English since my transferred units went further towards the Humanities degree. Well, that's not entirely true; they were so old that they only counted as lower division/electives, so I had all my electives finished when I enrolled, but had to take all my core major courses, and needed to finish other GE reqs and needed everything upper division. An English degree required something like 42 units, while Humanities was a bit less at about 36, and there was a much wider array of possible classes in Humanities. Stuff like world religions, art history, musical theory, ethics, Anthropology, sexual morality, great books seminar, Asian culture, Italian Renaissance art/history, and so forth. I've taken all of those, and more.
I do not think I could have done the 64 units I needed to graduate in 3 semesters of English, and not just because of boredom and being forced to take all the elementary writing classes I knew enough not to need, but would have had to take anyway since you can only test out of so much stuff, when you need X number of UD units to graduate. Worse yet, as English majors frequently told me, the University had real problems offering enough English programs for the major, especially for those taking "English with an emphasis in writing," which is what I'd have wanted to take. Required classes were only being offered every other semester, or every third, and they were always filled up instantly, with others who had to take that class for their degree not able to enroll.
Naturally, the guidance/placement counselor didn't mention that, but fortunately I was steered to Humanities anyway, and now I'm done. It's kind of sad; as I look at how well I've done in the intellectually-challenging, non-time-wasting college classes, I can't help but remember the utter waste of 4 years that was my high school experience. I've blogged on it before, but how I wish I could somehow tell my 15 y/o self that if I really wanted to I could apply myself and take equivalence exams and graduate at 16, and move onto college with classes in subjects I was actually interested in, and not full of other disruptive idiot 16 y/o's forcing the teachers to spend more time controlling them than instructing us in the 6 weeks of material and 6 months of busy work that was stretched to fill an entire school year.
Anyway, lengthy, "I'm a good writer" disproving digression aside, let's return to Monday evening. I had my soda and chips and got ready for the World Religions final, and knew I was going to do well. I had it all in my head, I'd done the readings and read over the lecture notes, and as other students around me were spending time on their last minute cramming and asking each other about reading questions they hadn't gotten around to answering (since they hadn't done the reading in the first place) I knew them all. Five Pillars of Islam. Giblah is the direction one must face towards Mecca during the five daily prayers, dhikr is the endless "Allah" chanting the Islamic sufi mystics engage in, shirk is idolatry, the worst sin for a Muslim, etc.
And then test time came... and I went through it like Michael Vick's pet shop through a kindergarten class on rub-yourself-in-ham-day. Six pages of T/F and multiple choice with a few fill in the blanks, and I was done in about 12 minutes. Finished it just about as fast as I could turn the pages and write in the correct letters. I was the first one done, and as I got up I saw that the woman next to me was on page two. But almost halfway through page two! I laughed, more in glee at myself than at her, but a little of both, since I was giddy with relief and caffeine, and because I'm kind of an asshole who thinks he's better than other people, all real life evidence to the contrary.
The prof looked kind of shocked that anyone was done yet, but he took my exam and when I went back to my seat to get my jacket and bag, he got up and met me at the door, opening it and proceeding me outside. Where he stopped me in the hallway and said how much he'd enjoyed my final paper and how it was a really interesting topic and very well researched and presented. I enjoyed hearing it, since, unlike most of my research papers, I'd actually put in a fair amount of thought and analysis into that one. I thanked him and we talked for a moment and than we shook hands and I was off -- thinking once again that he'll be one of the profs I ask for a recommendation letter if I do continue to grad school, since he's a nice guy, speaks well, and is actually quite well known in the field, with several books that are often used to teach various comparative religion courses.
After that I began laughing. Walking to my car I was like Dr. Fucking Evil. Just manic cackling, mostly at how completely I'd been on top of that final, and how the senior project thing had turned from "ohshitI'mfucked" to "no problem," and how I was all done but for an Art History final on Wednesday that I knew I'd blow through since I knew the material very well. The whole drive home, mad cackling laughter, clapping hands, shouting like a football fan watching the home team rock one home, and shedding actual tears of joy; something I don't think I'd ever done since (or before) the time several years ago when I realized that I was actually in love with Malaya. That was a bigger deal than being all-but-done with my BA, but this was pretty good too, and I wasn't nearly done laughing by the time I finished the short drive to my apartment, so I rolled around the block a few times, with the windows rolled up so I could scream in relief and happiness without causing anyone to call the cops or throw a rotting pumpkin at me.
Compared to that, Wednesday night was nothing. I finished the art history final, which was about as easy as I'd expected it would be, walked to my car, drove home, threw off my jeans and jacket, and hopped into bed beside Jinxie where I could warm up under the covers and pet kitty and enjoy the 70 points of blue light coming from the two $2.25 strings of Xmas lights I'd bought the day before. Before I got lost in, "What now?" thoughts I traded texts with a few friends, read sixty pages of a book on male/female sexual psychology I checked out for a final paper but kept to read for personal interest (after it was useless for said paper), and eventually got up and made food, ate while surfing, and then wrote this.
One thought I had Monday, when I was bubbling with relief and happiness, was how this was but a dim reflection of what Malaya must have felt when she got her PhD last summer. I just finished 3 semesters of fairly easy university work, more than a decade after my first 3 years of desultory undergrad work. To get her PhD she did what most people do. Four years of undergrad, several more years of grad school, 2 years of research and field work to prep for her thesis, and then more years to write a nonfiction book on her research, while working full time. So yeah, as happy as I was on Monday, after 3 semesters of work, I can imagine why she was grinning like a well-battered pinata, about to disgorge its load of cheap candy, after a decade of far more intensive labor.
Wow, bad metaphor simile.
Speaking of (Malaya, not bad similies) it seems just months ago that I was scoffing at her suggestion that I return to college to finish my degree. She mentioned that several times to me during our first couple of years together, but I never gave it any serious thought until early 2006, when she was finishing her thesis and approaching her PhD graduation. Watching Malaya receive her PhD in the summer of 2006, seeing how happy she was, and seeing all of the others there to receive their masters and doctorates, and how many of them were in their sixties or seventies, I got motivated. I kept thinking how long they must have worked at it; how many late nights and long hours they'd put in after working and raising families, and it seemed an interesting pursuit. I was also interested in learning more; I felt my mind fully engaged sometimes during conversation, and also when writing fiction, but like most people, I was pretty much coasting through the rest of life, in terms of how often I had to work my hardest and think my best.
I have indeed gotten to read and think and work, though I have to admit that very little during the past 3 semesters has actually been a challenge. This semester was insane, but only because I was taking 20 units (usual full time student is 12), and thanks to procrastination during October and early November, I rolled into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend with 5 research papers to finish, plus my senior thesis. From Wednesday the 21st through the day my last paper was due, Thursday the 29th, I worked at least 10 hours every day researching and writing papers. Then put in another 20 hours Thursday night and over the weekend to finish up my senior project/thesis.
The craziest one was a psych paper on hypersexuality that was due Thursday night. I'd done nothing on it as of Wednesday at midnight. I started then, after my Wednesday night class, and did nothing but search out and read psych journal articles for about 8 hours straight. Cutting and pasting the good bits and bibliography info into one word document, adding in notes from other online sources, general info from wikipedia, etc. I went to bed at 7, with no idea how I was going to get a 12 page, 10 source paper out of that, since I had shit for info. The 7 books I'd checked out were useless, and the vast majority of online papers were crap too. Lots of mentions of hypersexuality occurring after brain surgery to correct severe epileptic seizures, historical info about the old days of nymphomania diagnoses, etc, but almost nothing about the actual condition itself, why it isn't listed in the current DSM, treatment options other than drugs, etc. Worse, the paper was supposed to be about treatment, not just info. How I'd handle a patient with that if I were a shrink, insurance coverage for the disorder, etc. Not to worry though, it was only 40% of my class grade.
I woke up at 10 for a morning class, talked to a female friend for a while after class to chill out, drove home for lunch, and then set to work furiously condensing my endless quotes and notes into a paper. The psych class was at 6, and I was willing to get there at 7:55 and meet the prof in the hallway after class if I had to, to finish the paper. I purposely didn't look at the clock all afternoon, just worked as fast as I could, and when I finished quoting and writing bullshit to fill the gaps and boiled the whole thing down to 11.5 pages, with a bloated 27 cited sources in hate-you-so-much, no-one-fucking-cares-about-page-numbers APA style, I was astonished to see that the time was 5:40, and that I might only be a few minutes late if I hurried. So I did, since after all, proofreading is for the weak. I changed clothing while the document printed, grabbed it and an apple, and was out the door.
I laughed Thursday night while driving to class, even though I knew I had 8 hours of senior thesis ahead of me that night, just out of exhilaration at having finished that paper in 18 hours, including sleeping (about 4 hours) and attending a day class. It was inarguably the worst paper I'd done during my 3 semesters back to college, but it covered the topic, more of less, and it was probably deserving of an A just for the abundant, steaming masses of research I'd done for it, and made very evident by almost entirely constructing it from generous quotes from said research.
And no, that's not what I mean about paying attention in class and making the work easy. I'm sure everyone else in the class, even the 19 y/o's, did a far better job at managing their time and putting in coherent hours on their psych papers. It is what I mean about reading and analyzing and writing being my skill set, though. If I tried that on an assignment in a fact-based class, one in which I had to work out problems or memorize things, or conduct experiments, I'd have failed miserably. But since it's in a writing/reading type class, I can pull it off even when I'm writing on a topic I didn't (and still don't) know that much about. It's actually something I've been trying to get over, since I last minute flashed through a number of papers that way in my first two semesters, when I was procrastinating really badly. The fact that I can do it that way and get away with it doesn't mean that I want to keep doing it that way. Though, obviously, it's a nice luxury to have.
Not that I need to worry about that problem for a while, with no more papers, or classes, or finals in my immediate future. There might be come the fall, since I'm seriously thinking about grad school. No idea where yet, since from what I've been told, graduate school is mostly where they do your field of study, and to find that out you've got to conduct some research. I want to study literature and creative writing, but also analysis and criticism and research in nonfiction too. Not really journalism; I don't want to be a reporter or work in a newsroom, but I do want to write articles and maybe even books on subject that interest me enough to research them. And no, I don't really *need* graduate school to do that. I could do it now, but I've gotten a lot better at writing nonfiction and analyzing material and making coherent arguments (not that this blog post is evidence of that) during my 3 semesters at college, even though none of my classes have explicitly taught those skills, other than by forcing me to practice them to do term papers.
I would like a class that really drilled down into the science of organizing long works of fiction; with techniques to keep things organized and keep the plot moving while working in character info and interesting scenes and such. I don't know if anyone really teaches that, most lit programs I've read about are very artsy-fartsy and non-commercial, and while I'd like to write better fantasy and horror than most of what's on the market (which isn't saying much) I do want to produce work that's commercially successful and accessible to the masses. Ignorant and lacking in elite academic credentials though they are. *cough*
So maybe grad school come the fall, but lots of work on my novel(s) in the meantime, and if I have success pursuing publication... I'd probably still want grad school, for self improvement and knowledge. It would just be more fun if I weren't starving and living on loans and grants while attending. Plus it's fun to imagine the bitterness and jealousy the serious, emo, artsy college "literature" writer types would manifest towards me if I were a successful, published author of something so plebeian and common as horror or fantasy, while studying in the same classes as they were in their pursuit of higher values of literature, none of which would ever hope to sell more than 500 copies through some pseudo-vanity press.
What's that you say? Have I given this particular fantasy any thought? No, not so much.
Another thing about grad school; connections. Most of life, especially in regards to a career, if who you know. What you can do helps, but if you know someone to give you a chance to do it for $, or in a good place, that's a huge leg up, and that's why people major in fields related to their career. Or post-grad in those fields. In my case I'd meet agents and editors, my profs would know people in the industry to recommend me to, there are internships and other ways to get into the industry, etc. I hope I don't require that, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.
As to where... no idea. As I said, it's all about the university and the program they offer for grad schools, and while there are any number of fine institutions in the Bay Area, including USF, Berkeley, and Stanford, I don't know if any of them have the sorts of profs/programs I'd be interested in. And even if they did, there's no guarantee I'd be accepted. I assume I'd be applying to a lot of programs all through the US and maybe even internationally (Oxford and Cambridge keep popping up in my life lately; meeting people who attended or meant to, who lived nearby, etc...) and seeing who was interested in me.
I like this part of the country, but if I have to move (for a few years, at least) to pursue higher life goals, I would be willing to do so. If I don't do it now, while I'm still relatively young and unhindered by a job I can't give up or a house I have to pay for, when will I? And if you're wondering about another long term attachment I've not mentioned... there isn't one. As I've hinted at and alluded to (on this blog), but never actually stated thus far, Malaya and I are no more. We broke up last December, and in January 2007 I moved to North Bay to be nearer my university.
I've lived alone in a small apartment a very short commute to school for the past 11 months, and while I was planning on moving down to East Bay or somewhere else in the Bay Area once I graduated and my 12 month lease ran out in December, it doesn't look like that's going to happen. I'm paying a bit over $1000 now, but there's nothing too much cheaper in the Bay Area other than tiny studios, and I can't tolerate that. You can get down to $800 or so if you're willing to live in the projects in Oakland or parts of Emeryville, but in either case you'll probably spend more repairing your broken car windows and replacing your stolen property than you're saving by living there. Although, learning to sleep through the sounds of sirens and gunshots and drunken brawls at 3am might be a handy talent later in life. Anywhere else is as or more remote than the North Bay where I live now, and it's not worth the trouble to pack and move and unpack, along with all the associated fees, just to save $150 a month, when I'm probably going to move in 6 months for grad school.
I sort of skimmed over the real news there to get to pointless apartment rental talk, so let me double back. I am single now. Malaya and I split up last December, and I didn't post it on this blog since she didn't want all of our mutual acquaintances (in real life) to know and ask questions. I told various people I knew online, and our relatives found out, and our real life friends have long since been told, so I really have no idea why I didn't mention here. I guess I was just waiting to talk about that and college at the same time; when I graduated. And since that time is now (well, I'm done, but I won't actually graduate until paperwork and more is completed) I'm talking about it.
I do not want to get into why we split up, but it was a painful experience for us both, though we were committed to remaining friends. I've never lied about it on this blog, though I obviously didn't tell the whole truth. Malaya and I have been hanging out at times; we've gone to dinner semi-regularly, seen some movies together, and she drove up here several times to play HGL on my computer during the alpha and beta test. I mentioned many of those events, I just didn't say that was the first time I'd seen her in 2 weeks, or whatever. Not that anyone really cares anyway.
I'm not going to speak about Malaya's personal life, but I can say that I've not found anyone else, nor have a I really looked. I have made a few friends at college but even if I were actively looking for a GF, the age range isn't good for me there. I'm too old (or they're too young) for the 20 y/o undergrads who make up most of the students. In addition to those kids there are a fair number of adult students, who are almost all 45+. Which makes them too old for me. I'm the oldest student in most of my day classes, and the youngest in most of my night classes, and no, I can't really say why I'm not pursuing some cute little 20 y/o coeds for sex. I guess after 4 years in a LTR with love and cohabitation and all of that, casual sex doesn't really hold any appeal to me, and the 20 y/o who was mature and interesting enough to be worth considering something more LTR with would be quite a rare and lovely creature. And even more so if she were interested in that with me.
I have gotten to know a few girls in that age range, and the results were not real pleasing. They were flaky and superficial and flighty, and not worth the trouble to try and get to know or spend time with. I could probably have gotten one or two to hang out, or taken them out to drink beers or something, but I don't enjoy that sort of time-wasting bullshit with a person who isn't interesting to me. I love spending time talking with and hanging out with an interesting person, but for that TV and alcohol aren't required or desired. Dumb, boring people hang out endlessly with time killing crap, since they can't find anything better to do with their time, but I don't want to be one of those people, or be with them. I don't think anyone really does, but most guys are horny enough that they'll sit through hours of bullshit and cheap beer if it means they might get some pussy. I won't, so I don't, and I haven't.
I guess that's another potential benefit of grad school. Intelligent women older than 20?
So, that's a rambling catch up on what's been up. I'll probably blog on the issue some more in the days/weeks to come, especially as I spend December decompressing and figuring out what I want to do with the next six-eight months of my life, while preparing for what I do with the decades after that.
there are 33 courses at Colorado with 400 students or more. Three have more than 1,200. Most are broken into sections, but even those may have hundreds of students. One chemistry course is so big that the only place on campus where everyone can take the final exam at once is the Coors Event Center, Colorado's basketball arena.
Such arrangements are here to stay on U.S. campuses.
There already are 18 million American college students, and that number is expected to increase by 2 million over the next eight years, as the value of a college degree continues to climb.
To get everyone through their coursework, monstrous class sizes are unavoidable. That does not have to be a bad thing. At their best, giant classes can be effective and inspiring -- a way to get the best teachers in front of the most students. But according to Carl Wieman, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize as a physicist at Colorado, such successes are rare.
Students often tune out and are turned off. Charismatic lecturers get good reviews but, the data show, are no more effective than others at making the most important concepts stick.
Most remarkably, when it comes to teaching not just "facts" but conveying to students the scientific approach to problem-solving, research shows that students end up thinking less like professionals after completing these classes than when they started.
The article is surprisingly comprehensive, and talks about new teaching techniques and programs that do more to involve students, etc. One thing it doesn't do is mention the responsibility of the students to their own education. I wouldn't quibble about that in an article on high school; 15 and 16 y/os are stupid and bored and clueless about school (I certainly was) and want nothing but to get out of that high school hellhole. High school can serve an educational process, but the traditional 10th, 11th, and 12th grades are basically a place to warehouse kids during their most destructive teenage years, while imparting some civilizing socialization and beating a few basic skills into their maturing brains. Anything that gets some learning into the little animal's heads is a bonus, hence the media attention to any teacher with an approach novel enough to get the kids to stop text messaging and daydreaming about sex for 45 minutes.
College though, should be different. It's optional, for one thing. Students don't have to attend college, and it's quite expensive, in the US at least. (This is not a legislative accident. Thanks to a steady dwindling of government aid over the past few decades, students without rich parents are forced to take on huge loans and/or work part time while attending college, which keeps them from having free time to foment revolution and protest, and twines them inextricably into the American economic system.) If you want to spend $32k a year to not pay attention and screw around like it's the 13th grade, you're free to do so. In my view, colleges need merely provide the material and competent instructors who aren't afraid to give students the grads they deserve -- if the kids want to not pay attention and drink a lot of beer and flunk out, that's their prerogative.
Unfortunately, it doesn't often happen like that. Coddling parents support kids who flunk out rather than forcing them to support themselves, lazy kids who make no effort slide through with Bs and Cs, and a lot of colleges are just glorified degree mills, happy to pass anyone who pays the tuition for four, or five, or six years. These factors result in a steady flow of "adults" into the US work force who are unprepared for real life responsibilities and who remember little from their college years other than how best to tap a keg.
So yeah, I guess the current state of affairs isn't that great, but I'm still a bit annoyed that this whole article never puts the blame for not learning where it belongs; on the students who don't try to learn.
As I've mentioned a few times on this blog, I am just finishing up my degree. I'm in my third and final semester at an unspecified Bay Area university, and I've basically done 2.5 years worth of classes in that time, and while none of my courses have been held in amphitheaters (my transferred units covered all the basic courses, so I had just upper division classes and a bunch of major requirements to satisfy), I've had plenty of opportunities to pay much less attention and to slide by. I've chosen not to do so since I'm paying a lot for this educational opportunity and I want to get something out of it. Which is, of course, the difference between attending college in your thirties (late 29s?) and paying your own way, vs. attending in your early 20s with your parents paying your bills, when you're still bored from four wasted years in high school.
I expect the new year will see me filling countless blog posts with complaints about my fellow students and college life in general. I'm not going to get into that yet, especially not with more papers to write this weekend and a couple of weeks of classes remaining, but I will say that underlying this blog entry is a year and a half of watching the vast majority of the 19-23 y/o underclassmen make virtually no effort to learn anything, or involve themselves in any way, in every single class I've taken. I've not had many tests these past three semesters, since most of the grading comes from research papers and other class projects, but when there have been tests, they've been very easy. Almost ridiculously easy, since they are mostly fact based, and the only things on the tests are the things the teachers have discussed at great length in class. I've hardly studied for any of my exams, since I haven't needed to. I've known all the material on the study guide since I did the readings in advance, attended every class, took notes, and paid attention. (I was 0/4 on that checklist in high school.)
My bipedal colleagues though, have tended to react to the tests like Gremlins to a bath. I understand their hysterics, but I don't really sympathize. If I didn't do the readings, cut most of the classes, and didn't pay attention or take notes, I'm sure I'd be spending the night before trying to do a semester's worth of reading in 3 hours, and then praying the prof gradeed leniently enough to let me scratch through with a C-. And that's in small classes where you have to try to not be engaged. I can easily imagine how lost in the masses most students are in huge lecture halls. It's their choice, though. Taking responsibility for your own actions; it's part of growing up, and if that's the only lesson you learn in college, then at least mommy and daddy's $32k wasn't completely wasted.
Okay, now that I've ranted and angrily shaken my cane at those damn kids, what's a more reasoned, mature response? Wanting to wave a magic wand and instantly transform every 20 y/o in the US into a mature, sensible adult is not a policy position. And as much as it's fun (and largely accurate) to blame the kids for not paying attention, it doesn't change the fact that in our society, this is how the majority of young adults are. So we need to find ways to change college to work better for them, find ways to change them before college, or both. Or most likely, do nothing and continue our inexorable slide into bankruptcy and non-superpower status, as the USSR did before us.
The ways to change college are covered in the article I quoted from, and some of them sound promising. How would one change the kids, though? Most obviously, it would be up to parents. Some kids are prepared for college, primarily ones from "traditional," education-valuing families (primarily Asians and children of recent immigrants), since they've been conditioned since birth to buckle down and work and not dare think about blowing the opportunity. That approach works very well on the educational level, but some of the kids naturally rebel and blow up in spectacular fashion, and the ones who don't often fly through college, but enter their adult lives with semi-crippling shame-based psychological afflictions largely manifesting themselves in guilt-wracked demonstrations of excessive filial duty. That may be a fair trade off for a good education and a work ethic that will lead to a comfortable life, but it's open to debate, and it's not a policy solution anyway.
What do we do with the white kids, though? Or the non-white kids from minority families who have been in the US long enough that the "must get a good education and job" drive hasn't been flogged into their brains since birth? These types of kids make up the majority of college students in the US, and they've grown up in a permissive, celebrity-obsessed, frivolous, non-reading, ignorance-embracing, reality-TV culture. How do you make them learn? It's a tough question.
One pretty much universal truism is that education is wasted on the young. The 20 y/os have no idea what an incredible opportunity they're squandering while they 13th-grade their way through a university, and they don't know that because they have no idea what real life is like.
A digression: I hated high school and had no desire to attend college since I could imagine learning anything of value, and I desperately wanted to not be around the frivolous idiots who made up 98% of my peer group. So I didn't, and my parents let that be my decision, but they worked wisely to lead this horse to water. I was allowed to live at home, but I had to start paying fair market rent as though I were a roommate in my mom's house. I also had to pay a share of the utilities and phone, I bought almost all of my own food, and other expenses, like car insurance and clothing, were mine as well. After a year of that I found myself several thousand dollars in debt and quite unhappy working at shitty part time jobs, and at that point my dad's standing offer to pay my room and board if I were a full time college student looked pretty damn inviting. I didn't finish my degree (hence my recent return) and I didn't get a real job or become a real person after college, but that was my own stupidity choice. I did pay far more attention to, and get much more out of, my college experience than most of my peer group at that time, though. (Just not a degree, since I wanted to be a writer and took classes for my own edification, rather than as part of a degree path.)
As is the case with most people, I look back on my own experience, see what worked for me, and want to apply it universally. I had a year of reality and that slapped most some of the smirking adolescent immaturity off of my face. Ergo, all teens should have that. Ergo... national service! They have those programs in a lot of European countries, but they're generally tied to the military. As far as I know, just about every 18 y/o in Spain, Israel, Norway, Sweden, and others has to join the army for two years. After high school, and before college. I'm sure there are deferments and all sorts of exceptions for people who have rich/powerful parents, but those aren't the people we're trying to reach with this plan anyway. Since those countries are not prone to invading third world nations with lots of oil, the goal isn't so much to boost their fighting forces as it is to get the kids out of their homes and put them out in the real world. Being in the army isn't quite reality, since it's such a regimented, ordered, and structured existence, but it's a good transition from childhood to adult life. And perhaps more importantly for our purposes, it's a fairly miserable existence composed primarily of physically demanding, unpleasant, unpaid menial labor, after which anything, even college, must seem like heaven. (Careers in the military aren't that bad, of course, but for raw recruits in their first year or two, it's pretty much hell. Intentionally.)
I don't suggest we duplicate that system in the US, if only because I fear to imagine what globally destabilizing mischief our government would get into with a few million extra soldiers at their disposal. The whole point in this national service concept is to get the kids doing something useful for a couple of years, so they can return to college slightly older and much wiser and ready to get educated. And given the way the poor soldiers and national guardsmen have been stuck in Iraq for 4 and 5 years now, their initial limited tours mandatorily extended several times, our future hypothetical national service kids would be stuck in Iraq, or Iran, or Afghanistan, or Venezuela, or Cuba, until they were 27.
So, maybe have "armed forces" as one of the choices for the national service, but there would need to be other options too. Working on our sadly underfunded and neglected National Parks, joining the Peace Corps to help out in famine-wracked foreign countries, working for charities and school mentoring programs for younger kids, interning in manual labor jobs that don't require an advanced degree, etc. I'm sure policy wonk types could think of countless useful tasks to keep the kids busy for a couple of years. And while this would be compulsory, it wouldn't be mandatory, Kids who really were ready for college could start at 18, or earlier if they zoomed through high school. They'd have no margin for error, though. They'd be forfeiting the scholarships and other financial aid they would have earned during their two years of service, and they'd know they were on a very short leash, and that if their grades dipped, or they got into trouble, they'd be shipped off to shovel snow in Alaska faster than they could say, "But mommy never made me..."
Furthermore, quite a few kids don't want or need a four-year, liberal arts education. Plenty of people would be better served by two years of vocational training, which would teach them the skills they needed to change oil, or stock shelves, or run a cash register, or sell carpet, or install stereos in cars, etc. If that sort of practical training could be partially incorporated into the national service, then all the better. If not, the tuition and scholarships young adults would earn for their service would completely pay for that sort of training upon their return.
Now, all of you readers from foreign countries can use the comments to tell me how this sort of thing has been going on in your homeland forever and how you can't believe we don't already do something so obvious and common sense in the US.
Much like the temporal conundrum created by those old, "I haven't got time for the pain" headache pill commercials, I don't know if there is a best time to wrench your back so you can not comfortably sit or stand upright for more than 10 minutes at a time. However, I can say that one of the worst times is when the past few weeks of inconsistent work have created a situation when you need to sit upright at your desk, working on research papers, for at least 8 hours a day.
I'm not sure from whence came the burst of blog posts last weekend, but I hope it didn't lead you guys to expect that sort of thing to continue. Not for a while yet, anyway. It usually feels, in my mind, like I last blogged two of three days ago, so when it's the 10th and I check my blog and notice the last post was made the 1st, it's kind of a shock. Lately I've been so busy with college and other things that the weeks are a blur. My routine is to water my indoor jungle on weekends, and every time I find myself with the watering can in my hands I think, "Has it really been a week? Did I forget and water them on Wednesday? Since it can't have been six days since last time..."
Anyway, to post something while I'm thinking about it, I saw this link on a few blogs recently, and was amused by it. It's apparently a TV commercial by the Australian Secular Party, though I do not know if it's actually appeared on TV in Oz, or if it's just something they put together for online/viral promotion. Needless to say (to anyone who lives in the US), there is no amount of money that would get this commercial on any major US network, and I doubt you'd have much luck on cable either. For all the sex and violence their enemies allege they show, the US broadcast media is profoundly conservative in their social leanings. Things that insult any particular religion (other than cheesy terrorist shows like 24 with evil Islamic bad guys) or especially all religions, are not kosher. So to speak. Thankfully, we've got the internet to amuse us with "What if..." videos.
I'm not even taking an opinion on whether this is a good video, or truthful, or well-produced. I just think how interesting it would be if this kind of discourse were permitted in the major media in the US, aside from very occasional Christopher Hitchens' interviews. All of the major networks in the US shows religious programming every Sunday morning, there are constant late night infomercials from various fringe churches, and public access channels are infested with wacky spokesmen from cults of every flavor. Yet I don't believe I've ever seen any atheist, or anti-theist, programming. Someday, perhaps.
While I'm on the subject of YouTube, did you know they have a listing of their most viewed videos ever? Last week I found myself wondering if there was such a thing, and a few clicks took me there. It's not a real proud list. It's rather infested with tween/teen skewing music videos, for bands like Avril Lavigne and My Chemical Romance, and even one by Linkin Park. Who knew they were still around?
The number one video of all time on You Tube, with over 64m views, is not a teenie-bopper music video, though. At least not explicitly. It's got a bunch of hit pop songs, and it's got dancing, but it's also quite clever and funny.
I have no idea how this one got 64m views. It's a good movie, and I enjoyed watching it, but there's obviously some pretty intensive viral promotion required to get even 1m views, much less 64x that many. Perhaps it was heavily-plugged in the mainstream?
It's odd, since I'm "plugged into" various demographics and fringe interests popular on the internet; politics, gaming, sports, atheism, technology, and a few others, but I tend to be largely oblivious to mainstream fads and cults. So I never get jokes or references to new TV shows, or anything to do with Mtv or pop music, and something like this video, which might have been a huge hit on "mainstream" websites, is entirely off my radar.
Lastly, here's a pic I shot of my desk a couple of days ago. Work is going on with all of those books, and there are six or eight more stacked up in the bedroom, where I often retreat to sit propped up on pillows and read/take notes. And I've got 3 other research projects I'm not going to start until I finish my ongoing papers on Rousseau's educational theories, French Revolution politics, Italian Renaissance armor/weapons, Burma's culture, my gigantic senior project on storytelling in computer games, and studying for the College Math CLEP exam. Better yet, I had far higher stacks of books the last two semesters; just not all at once.
I've not felt challenged by any individual class during this return to college, but 20 units this term, and 8 research papers due in a 2 week period, is becoming a challenge just by sheer weight. And with that, I must get dressed and run some errands in the rainy Saturday afternoon, before returning to try and finish up a couple of these projects, so I can start others not yet begun. Whee!
I wasn't planning on saying anything about this until December or January, but I don't see any reason not to mention it now. I've been attending a university full time for the past year and a half, and am set to finish my long-abandoned degree when I graduate after this semester. In like, 6 weeks. This is the primary reason I've been too busy to blog since the summer ended.
I've not mentioned my college return until now since I don't want to start talking about it until I can... talk about it. I've got a lot of amusing and absurd stories to tell about the experience, most of them written down when the events were fresh in my mind, but I can't start on that until I'm free and clear, since I don't want to Dooce myself. I'm not saying now, and I probably won't then, which school I'm attending, but as there aren't that many universities in the Bay Area, and as other details to be revealed later this year will narrow the geographic region, those of you with curiosity and any ability to use google will probably be able to find out. Not that that information will be of any value to you whatsoever.
I bring this up now as an extended apologetic, for my recent (months) of non-blogging. I'm zooming through 2.5 years of college in 1.5 years, and this, my last semester, is kind of insane. I'm taking 20 units, comprised of 5 3-unit classes, a 2-unit senior project, and 3 1-unit filler classes which were necessitated by an anticipated 3-unit summer class being canceled at the last minute. Of my 9 classes this semester, 7 have final papers of some sort, and the 8th class is senior project workshop, the entire purpose of which is constructing a research paper of approximately the size of any 4 others combined. All but one of these papers is due around the last week of November, immediately before or during finals. I've not done the tally lately, but I've got something like 7 research papers due, plus 5 final exams, in the 10 days immediately following the Thanksgiving holiday.
Needless to say, I'm kind of busy preparing for that, and am diligently trying to get papers done now, since it's not humanly possible to wrap up half a dozen research papers, all on different subjects, in a week, while attending a normal, rather busy class schedule, and preparing for final exams a few days later. Also needless to say, if you think the blogging here has been light for the past month, you're not going to see much improvement on that score until mid-December. Or possibly later, since I'm hoping to travel a bit and hopefully not spend any time thinking or reading anything that requires note-taking until after Xmas.
My main priority once the semester ends is going to be work on getting my fantasy novel(s) finished/edite
