This week has been really good and really bad in about twenty different ways. It occurs to me who I do and don't care about, and just how much I do and don't care. I've been thinking too much about college and not enough about why I'm going to it. Which is to write, by the way. I've gotten into eight schools, and I'm waiting to hear back from a ninth. I think I finally decided where I want to go, and I think I'm going to double major in journalism and comparative literature, and maybe minor in music or history. Hopefully, assuming money allows it, I'll be a few states away from Texas in the fall. Also, I work at a summer camp every summer, but it's starting to look like this year I'll be staying home.That is a picture of my violin, Rondo from K159 by Mozart, a Motorola razor that I've had since the tenth grade, and a scenic view of beautiful suburbia. I was in a middle school auditorium yesterday for solo and ensemble competition, which, indeed, is the location of this photo. I promise I wasn't just there by myself, I just got the picture at an angle that happens to exclude everyone else in the room. Go figure. In case you're curious, I think my ensemble did well. I'll let you know when I figure out how we scored.
Have you ever wished you could google pictures? The worst is when you look at a picture you see somewhere and think to yourself, gee, I wonder what that is, maybe I'll google it, only to realize that there's no way you could transpose that photograph into something that a google search bar would deem intelligible. Oh, the many hardships of life and research.
Today, my coworker, who's in graduate school for speech therapy, gave me this therapy test session thing for practice, and I don't think I've ever felt smarter, or stupider. Just saying. I hate those things where you have to read of the color of a word that says a different color.
The Superbowl is on this weekend and I could honestly care less. I think it's on TV right now? I'm going to a skit rehearsal for church in a few hours and I don't plan on watching anything football related tonight, except maybe some commercials. Those are fun. I bought some books this week that I plan on delving into tonight, along with finishing my psychology homework, which I have a lot for, and maybe reading for English. maybe.
Speaking of books I bought this week, Voltaire is currently warping my brain. You see, I have a hard time making myself read books that are required. Don't get me wrong, I read a lot- just not when I'm forced. There are, however, rare occasions in which I will begin reading a book for English and will be absolutely unable to put it down because it's so perfect. This is how I developed my affections for John Steinbeck and Ray Bradbury. Last year, I read most of all of the books in class, because they were mostly from more recent literary movement, and the vast majority of them were written in prose, which I definitely have a preference for. This year we've been reading a lot of epic poetry from more ancient time periods, which I have a harder time concentrating on. I haven't finished a single book we've been assigned this year, and I've only ever gotten around to starting a few. Recently though, we've been moving forward along the linguistic/artistic timeline, and after we're through reading Paradise Lost, which has an amazing plot line, by the way, but way to much verse for me to stomach, we're reading Candide by Voltaire. It came out in the 1750's, and at first Voltaire refused to admit he wrote it because, at the time, it was probably both the funniest and most offensive novel ever written. It's absolutely hysterical, I can't stop reading it and we don't even have to start for another like, two or three weeks.
It basically about this idiot named Candide who gets kicked out of his castle, and convinces himself that everything is happening for the greater good despite how undeniably awful his life keeps on getting. It's interesting, because I believe absolutely and completely that everything happens for a reason, so I'm exactly the kind of person who this book pokes fun at, but it's still so hard to put it down.
I've gotten all my stuff together for my internship application, in case you were wondering. All of my writing examples are set up in a cute little binder with my resume and cover letter, and I'm ready to be impressive.
Writing has been slow but steady. I'm still functioning off of the older files I've come across, and nothing too terribly exciting is going on except a few gears turning in my head. It's all necessary, though. I'll keep updating.
I'm trying to blog every two days or so, which hasn't been happening lately, but I promise I'll try harder. I really feel like it helps me get some of the words out of my head. I feel like these are getting longer and longer every time I update.
I hope this week goes well for everyone. Expect to hear back from me tomorrow or Tuesday. If you don't, I give you permission to write me an angry letter.
love,
Loch.
I wish a journalism major didn't require me to learn so many things that aren't journalism. Will it really effect my reporting skills if I don't know anything about the evolution of vertebrates? I'm not really sure how the stuff I'm cramming into my head right now applies to anything in later life, and honestly, studying for it feels a lot more like wasting my time than working on my second chapter, or blogging, or digging out my violin and figuring out if I can still play after a month. I can understand where my sociology class would apply because of the medias effect on the public and things like that, but if I don't take an anthropology class before I graduate, will it really kill me? I guess I'm just confused, because I was pretty sure college was supposed to prepare me for later life, but a lot of times I feel like a required fine arts class, while interesting enough, is taking away from time and money I could be spending on becoming a world renowned journalist/novelist. I'm not asking a lot. Maybe just a current events class instead of a history class would be nice. I get it, history repeats itself, I've heard it before, but I'd just like something I can, you know, actually apply to my profession. And it's even more frustrating since I already have a job as a reporter, and granted it's at UT's newspaper (we're not technically affiliated with the university, but we still have to avoid pissing them off and stuff), but still. I would rather just go to work at DT, go home and work on my novel and be done with it. I just get this weird feeling sometimes that I'm taking actual classes solely for the purpose of being able to work for the paper and get some good writing material/some decent language classes. That's just not how I thought college would make me feel.
