College is not actually about school.

(Note: this is a somewhat satirical/critical/glib/sarcastic/cynical post.)

I've decided that college has absolutely nothing to do with school.

It's actually about addicting you to the internet. And gaming. And finding new fandoms. And continuing to be obsessed with old ones.

And ugh, I just want to go home and sleep and then play skyrim all day and then sleep and then have enough creativity left to write.

(Where did all my creativity go?)

College

Yes, I am that old. And if you want to know how much of a nerd I am, I'm majoring in Computer Science with double minors in Mathematics and Writing.

Although honestly if my school offered a writing/creative wring major, I probably would have double majored in that.

Anyway, back to the "daily grind" of school means that I am doing a lot (and I mean a lot) of reading. Seriously. When you go to college, everyone will be like "yeah, join a lot of clubs!" or "take classes you think you even might be interested in!" or "make friends with everyone!" or something like that. My advice: don't spend the summer forgetting how to read academically. Seriously. I did that, and I keep hitting walls in this first week of class because I forget how to read critically/mark up text/etc.

Oh, more advice: write all over everything, as much as you possibly can. And remember, you own your books (if you're like me and went to a public school, this is new and different). That means you won't get in trouble for writing on your books. (I mean, don't do it on the ones you take out of the library.) Seriously. I've never been a huge history person and even though I've only so far done one reading for history, I wrote all over my book (which I got for six dollars*) and it's already helped me remember stuff from it.

*More advice: I'm going to guess that when you find the books you need for a class, you'll be provided with an ISBN. (If not, google should give you one.) I would definitely search by ISBN when looking for your book online, because the ISBN of different editions of the same book is different. And if you're lucky like me, you'll find somewhere that is selling a lightly used textbook for $6 including shipping. Of course, you need luck. But hey, I don't think I normally have any :)

So that was just a bunch of random side notes. Basically I just wanted to say I'm reading interesting stuff. (But you know me, I ramble.) So, you might see some interesting new ideas floating around, say, my figment account.

I found my college!

So, here's to hoping that in five years, I can look back at this post and say I knew where I was going all along. Of course, I'd actually need to get in for that to happen, but I can certainly assure you I know where I want to go as of right now.

The school I'm looking at is Carleton College. It's out in Minnesota, and I just visited it. It was the most beautiful campus I have ever seen, and it had such a wonderful vibe. As I described to my interviewer, I felt like I already fit in because the mannerisms of the people coming up and teasing our tour guide while she was leading us around were just like the ones my friends used. It has a trimester system rather than a semester system, which is good for me because it would allow me to focus on my classes so much more. Right now, for example, I'm taking so many, different classes that I get confused sometimes as to different things which are all going on in my brain at once. It's confusing to try to do so much at once. Trimesters would let me focus on a few things, and also possibly take more because on average students take 9 courses a year.

Plus, the weather was absolutely perfect when we visited. What better sign could there be? (And they certainly get snow!)

The perfect sentence

Well, perhaps not the perfect sentence, but I certainly wrote a perfect sentence the other day. And, since here I am unable to go to sleep before I'm exhausted (ahh, the perils of being a writer), I decided that I would share it with you all.

In the hour before dawn, the luminescent sky tickles colour into the field of flowers.

 In my humble opinion, this is perhaps one of the better sentences I've ever written. I can use it as a prime example of the maxim "show, don't tell" that my English teachers, at least, have shoved down our throats for as long as I can remember. And, grudgingly, I would hap-hazarded my way with words into something more showy than literal, but never before have I been quite so proud of a single sentence.


Oh, you want to know why I suddenly decided to write this perfect sentence? Well, truth to be told, I stole it. But then, does anyone come up with a truly original idea? We'd spent the three days of class before I wrote that sentence discussing a few hundred words in English class, written as an intro to an astronomy book, as a way to show us the proper way to write our college application essays. (Yes, I know. My English teacher IS bloody awesome. Although it's my Euro teacher who's English.) So, yes, blame any future philosophical questions on that mindset, combined with the fact that I'm tired but not enough so to go to sleep, which usually just results in me not caring whether the random string of words I throw together and out at the world actually make any sense.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Anyone who knows their literature should recognise the title as being on of Shakespeare's most confusing plays. Seriously, the more of it you leave out of an explanation, the more sense it makes. Simple version: Girl likes guy who is in a relationship with someone else. Lovers run away and things go a bit pear-shaped when a fairy trickster intervenes.

And even extremely dumbed down, it's not straightforward. Gotta love Shakespeare's comedies.

Anyway, the reason I'm making a post about it is because my school is performing it in November, and I'm... well, I suppose you could call my title "Assistant Director" or "Student Director" or something like that. So it's been eating up a whole bunch of my time, but in a way that's totally rewardingly worth it. So yes, it is an excuse. But with a plot as confusing as its is, comprehending it is a perfectly valid excuse.