My dreams are becoming more vivid and realistic lately. I don't know the reasons, and regardless that's not what this post is about. I just wanted to touch on one in particular.
I had this vision of a high school party. Not like I ever went to parties in high school, but regardless. I went to a fairly large high school - graduating class of ~550 - but for the most part, it seemed like everyone knew everyone. Even if you weren't friends, you had at least heard of everyone else. So parties were just everyone coming together, in a different social setting, with people they already knew. You didn't meet a lot of new people, you just hung out with others in a new context.
Then you get to college - at least my school, Clemson, there's no possible way you know everybody here. When you go to a party, you know your friends, you might know that random kid from your freshmen math class or the person from Harcombe you've made up a nickname for, but with all the different friend circles, there's bound to be new people to meet regardless of your social network. You hang with your friends, but you also spend a good amount of time and energy meeting new people - because they expand your network, give you something interesting to do, and grab your attention.
Now we get to my dream. It was odd, completely devoid of context to awake me, and a strange scenario. But it's stuck with me a couple days, and I've enjoyed the thought process it has drawn out of me. In this dream, I was at a college party, full of the plentiful mix of friends and strangers, but there was also a girl from my high school there. In my dream, I was fixated on her. She seemed radiant, interesting; I spent the whole dream-party just talking to her and ignoring everyone else. Not too exciting of a dream, and normally one that I would brush aside right away, or even completely forget in the morning. But for some reason, this dream has stuck with me the past few days.
It's an interesting dichotomy for me. If it were a typical high school party (which I acknowledge my lack of experience with), she would have just been another classmate. Someone I knew, but wasn't too close with. I would have known most everybody, so she wouldn't have stuck out to me. At a typical college party, I would mingle with a lot of people, and not spend too much time on one person. But something about the combination of the two - someone I knew from high school, being in an element where I would completely not expect her to be. So surprising, so unexpected, it just drew me in, and I couldn't tear myself away - all while within a dream.
Perhaps this only has merit with someone who goes to college so far away, that only one girl here actually attended my high school. If you go to Penn State or Temple, or some other state school, I imagine it's a typical sight to see high school friends at a party and think nothing of it. Maybe it's just my own particular scenario, and my delving into it is completely unique. It's just a dream, after all. And all things considered, a rather silly one at that. In my dream, I went to a party, saw a girl I knew, and talked to her the whole night. Not too groundbreaking, there. It's more so the fact that this dream has lingered in my psyche the past few days, I suppose, than anything else.
Regardless, I haven't posted a blog in a long time. Maybe this is just my quick way of trying to get back into it a bit, at 2:00 AM on a Saturday, one month before I graduate. Maybe I'm just crazy. Maybe it's Maybelline.
Goodnight, y'all.
Showing posts with label Rambling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rambling. Show all posts
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Train Derailing
Perhaps it is a result of never having an actual direction or purpose for this blog, but it seems I have let it slip to the wayside again - certainly not for a lack of time, but definitely a lack of motivation. I have a list of topics that once inspired me to blog about, but even when starting on some of those, I never completely finished it and just abandoned the post altogether. Keeping in mind that my last post was the first few days of October and this is coming at the tail end of December, I have managed to post about one blog a month and completely skipped November. I just do not want to write about the mundane, and I have not had any overarching concepts or issues that I was struggling with that I felt compelled to hammer out in writing.
By the end of last semester, a complete sense of apathy and lack of motivation had set over me. I slept a lot more, spent a hell of a lot less time in the library, slacked on my reading, and put some things to the wayside. And the backlash for it? I had already exempted my Management Final, and I knew I had a final paper due in the last week of class for Macromarketing. I crammed for one exam by reading all of the chapters the day before and staying up late studying with friends, and I ended up getting a 100% but had to take the final despite having 151/150 points because I had a missed an A by one question on my first exam. In my Promotional Strategy, I abandoned half the reading and got an even higher A than I had on the previous exams, exempting that final. Sports Law was never graded very harshly, although I enjoyed it greatly and always kept up with the case study readings. I kept my motivation up for that class regardless, and shined through class discussion. The take home final was relatively simple, and I just took it to campus on a Sunday and worked through the afternoon on Cooper's back porch on a lovely day and finished it up over Buffalo Chicken Wraps in Hendy. At the end of the semester, I had my second straight 4.0 on much less effort. Is this real life?
I have probably watched more Netflix and played more Playstation through the end of the semester than I had in my previous three years at college combined. Now at home, I am keeping up that mindset without the school work - sleeping in, dusting off the old Age of Empires II and III, getting my ESPN kick with cable, watching Bowl Games, family time, a solid Christmas. The attitude remains more or less the same. I know the run will come to an end: the train is derailing. I am only taking 12 credits in my last semester and have a very simple schedule, but my German Lit class is sure to take up a ton of time through reading, re-reading, paper writing, and all auf Deutsch. It's been a solid year since I have had an academic German class, and two years since that has involved heavy doses of literature. I am sure to be rusty.
Even if my last semester proves to be a similar workload as this previous semester, the change is going to come regardless. I will graduate in May, and the ride will be over. I have hashed out previously my future plans, and the only real update to that is that I had a moment of clarity to actually grind through the application process and try to meet that for this coming Summer, even though the Michigan State program would not be until January 2014. I feel like this will push me through the decision making process, because I am definitely terrible at making decisions. I have not worked out how I would make the transition from graduating from Clemson in May to moving stuff back to Michigan to turning around and starting up grad school in June in Georgia or Texas logistically or financially yet, but that would be worked out if it needed to be. Issues out of my hands and the possibility of having an extra nine months to work them out is crippling to my decisive actions, and I do not want to decide where I go to grad school because one school started later than the others. At this point I think it makes more sense to apply to all of them and not go into the process having a set 1-2-3 ranking. That way I can factor in things like turnaround time, finances, prestige, program specifics and faculty and just worry about the pros/cons of each instead of trying to pick out a top program.
So that is where I stand. Not going to attempt to sum up the months I have not been blogging, but I think this is an accurate portrayal of where I am in life right now. I am not sure where this coasting attitude has come from or what specifically has set it off, but I just get the feeling that if this train is not derailing now, it certainly will soon. Whether that apathy continues to spread to my blogging, well, I guess the future posts or lack thereof above this one will tell.
By the end of last semester, a complete sense of apathy and lack of motivation had set over me. I slept a lot more, spent a hell of a lot less time in the library, slacked on my reading, and put some things to the wayside. And the backlash for it? I had already exempted my Management Final, and I knew I had a final paper due in the last week of class for Macromarketing. I crammed for one exam by reading all of the chapters the day before and staying up late studying with friends, and I ended up getting a 100% but had to take the final despite having 151/150 points because I had a missed an A by one question on my first exam. In my Promotional Strategy, I abandoned half the reading and got an even higher A than I had on the previous exams, exempting that final. Sports Law was never graded very harshly, although I enjoyed it greatly and always kept up with the case study readings. I kept my motivation up for that class regardless, and shined through class discussion. The take home final was relatively simple, and I just took it to campus on a Sunday and worked through the afternoon on Cooper's back porch on a lovely day and finished it up over Buffalo Chicken Wraps in Hendy. At the end of the semester, I had my second straight 4.0 on much less effort. Is this real life?
I have probably watched more Netflix and played more Playstation through the end of the semester than I had in my previous three years at college combined. Now at home, I am keeping up that mindset without the school work - sleeping in, dusting off the old Age of Empires II and III, getting my ESPN kick with cable, watching Bowl Games, family time, a solid Christmas. The attitude remains more or less the same. I know the run will come to an end: the train is derailing. I am only taking 12 credits in my last semester and have a very simple schedule, but my German Lit class is sure to take up a ton of time through reading, re-reading, paper writing, and all auf Deutsch. It's been a solid year since I have had an academic German class, and two years since that has involved heavy doses of literature. I am sure to be rusty.
Even if my last semester proves to be a similar workload as this previous semester, the change is going to come regardless. I will graduate in May, and the ride will be over. I have hashed out previously my future plans, and the only real update to that is that I had a moment of clarity to actually grind through the application process and try to meet that for this coming Summer, even though the Michigan State program would not be until January 2014. I feel like this will push me through the decision making process, because I am definitely terrible at making decisions. I have not worked out how I would make the transition from graduating from Clemson in May to moving stuff back to Michigan to turning around and starting up grad school in June in Georgia or Texas logistically or financially yet, but that would be worked out if it needed to be. Issues out of my hands and the possibility of having an extra nine months to work them out is crippling to my decisive actions, and I do not want to decide where I go to grad school because one school started later than the others. At this point I think it makes more sense to apply to all of them and not go into the process having a set 1-2-3 ranking. That way I can factor in things like turnaround time, finances, prestige, program specifics and faculty and just worry about the pros/cons of each instead of trying to pick out a top program.
So that is where I stand. Not going to attempt to sum up the months I have not been blogging, but I think this is an accurate portrayal of where I am in life right now. I am not sure where this coasting attitude has come from or what specifically has set it off, but I just get the feeling that if this train is not derailing now, it certainly will soon. Whether that apathy continues to spread to my blogging, well, I guess the future posts or lack thereof above this one will tell.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Initiation
Hello, friends! My hiatus from blogging is potentially over. It was something I really enjoyed doing in Italy, but I never really transferred it over to everyday life. Be forewarned: this blog will feature me ramble often, so be prepared. Here is rambling number one, which leads to why I ultimately decided to start a blog.
I've discovered my immense need to documents things - seemingly electronically only. I've never been one to keep a journal or scrapbook, but essentially I've found ways to do that over the internet that I utilize incessantly. Way back in the day, I had a Xanga that documented my tedious day to day activities. When I first got to Clemson, I was that freshmen that always had a camera, and I became notorious for uploading my pictures right away. I've fallen in love with FourSquare and obsess over keeping track of the different places I've been. Recently I lost all the documents on my hard drive after having to get it replaced, and I should be much more worried about losing all my school documents for my Eportfolio than I am. In the face of losing these important documents, I still was bummed about my music mostly. Even though I was relieved to discover all of my iTunes were backed up thanks to Google Play, I lost all my ratings and play counts. It is unbelievably trivial, but I liked having ratings that allowed me to stream only my favorite songs onto my iPhone and always tried to keep track of how much I listened to different songs/artists and how long it had been since I listened to something.
Along those same lines, I routinely go back and look at my old Facebook albums. Even if nobody does much more than flip through them as they are uploaded solely to procrastinate/creep, I like having it there for me - I like going back and seeing what I was like, how I've changed, what's still the same. With the conversion to timeline, Facebook has a map feature. I've dabbled with similar applications - from an old white board map of the US that I colored in all the states I'd visited as a kid, to the Where I've Been interactive map and profile. But this seemed so much more - every picture or significant event could be tagged and traced back to a location, streamlining two of my hobbies on a platform where I kept everything. I'm still in the process, but I've spent countless hours already going back through my pictures to create a more complete map, tagging things one by one back to fan pages that are scarcely visited. As a result, I've put a fairly complete map together from recent travels, clumping all my pictures up into geographic region, then destination, and even down to the attraction. Bringing this all back to a logical point, as I was putting this together, it gave me an excuse to go through all of my Italy pics and revisit my blog from the summer (perusingperugia.blogspot.com for those of you who never checked it out!) I loved jumping back into it, reading what I had wrote, reliving all of my travels, looking back on my first posts and comparing that to how I had felt leaving. It made me miss blogging, and occasionally when I've been overly sentimental or nostalgic, I found myself wishing I still had a blog for the seemingly mundane. Who knows, maybe one day I'll want to look back at my college years, or (as long as I make time to write this summer) my experience as an Orientation Ambassador.
I reasoned with myself that when I had a name I was satisfied with, I would start up a blog. I would try to make time to write, I would spill out my true thoughts, I wouldn't worry about what other people think. I would just document everything in the moment, knowing that I could always look back on it and cheer up, relish in a past chapter of my life, or just waste some time on a slow evening. Well, I recently came up with a name that just "worked" for me. I don't pride myself as an especially creative person, but I do put a lot of thought into things and hold myself to a high standard with things like these - screen names, my twitter handle, so on. As a sophomore, sitting in class last April out of nowhere the word "perusing" came into my head and I liked how it flowed off of Perugia, the city I would be studying in. It was perfect - "to examine or consider with attention and in detail" seemed fitting for how I would spend my time traveling and studying, and the alliteration was in effect. I wouldn't have been satisfied with a generic or uninspiring name, but it was really just for me than for anyone else. And so, as I brainstormed for a title for this blog, I didn't really know where to begin. I wanted something simple yet meaningful - it didn't have to define me, but I wanted an element of my personality in there. Nothing was stopping me from just writing and changing the name, but I stuck to my personal agreement and decided when I had a name I was satisfied with, I would be ready to get rolling with the blog.
The tangent comes full circle, and we'll re-visit my data loss. In an attempt to get a start on my beloved play counts, I vowed to start from the A's and listen to every song once though my iTunes - a feat that will take me over 15 days if I listened straight through for 24 hours. I reached Anberlin - not my favorite band by far, but I do enjoy their stuff on occasion - and caught a lyric from The Resistance which I've always liked. It's directly the title I found fitting enough to go with, so it should sound familiar. Speak for yourself, you paper tigers. Obviously the tiger bit resonated with me - in fact, inspired my Greg, I've started my own little sticky note on my desktop of blogging ideas. One of them is what being a Tiger means to me, which I hope to write about soon once I formulate the whole concept. In addition, a paper tiger is a cool little saying coming from the Chinese - it's something that seems vicious at first glance, but upon further inspection is actually harmless. And finally the speaking for yourself bit, it fits so perfectly. It's exactly what I hope to achieve. I want to write for myself, and I know that nobody will ever find as much meaning or enjoyment from this blog as I will looking back over it.
So the logical question remains: if I'm always documenting for my own benefit, why broadcast it? The internet is seemingly the worst place for a private place to reflect. The logical answer would be in the fact that it's much easier to type up and edit online than it would be to write everything by hand. Maybe throw in the fact that I can access it from anywhere, not have to worry about losing old posts like I have my other documents, or any sort of generic reason why the internet is the best place for information sharing. But if I'm being truthful, there is additional aspect to it. I don't want to hide, I don't want there to be separate pieces of me - a different face for each situation or interaction. I'm writing for me, so I can be 100% truthfully myself - and the fact that there may be an audience shouldn't change that fact. I'm working to be more open, take more risks, not worry so much about perceptions, and my Orientation class is helping me a lot with that. Perhaps that's a topic for another day. For now, I can rest assured that I'm going into this project with great intentions and hopefully great results - and that's good enough for me. After all, I've spent enough time considering it that it's about time I just go ahead and jump in. I over analyze way too much as it is, the fact that I've internally debated for so long whether to start on a medium that will allow me to review and analyze everything speaks volumes! I hope everyone finds this blog enjoyable as you learn more about me and the way I think - and future me, I know you're reading this as well! :)
I've discovered my immense need to documents things - seemingly electronically only. I've never been one to keep a journal or scrapbook, but essentially I've found ways to do that over the internet that I utilize incessantly. Way back in the day, I had a Xanga that documented my tedious day to day activities. When I first got to Clemson, I was that freshmen that always had a camera, and I became notorious for uploading my pictures right away. I've fallen in love with FourSquare and obsess over keeping track of the different places I've been. Recently I lost all the documents on my hard drive after having to get it replaced, and I should be much more worried about losing all my school documents for my Eportfolio than I am. In the face of losing these important documents, I still was bummed about my music mostly. Even though I was relieved to discover all of my iTunes were backed up thanks to Google Play, I lost all my ratings and play counts. It is unbelievably trivial, but I liked having ratings that allowed me to stream only my favorite songs onto my iPhone and always tried to keep track of how much I listened to different songs/artists and how long it had been since I listened to something.
Along those same lines, I routinely go back and look at my old Facebook albums. Even if nobody does much more than flip through them as they are uploaded solely to procrastinate/creep, I like having it there for me - I like going back and seeing what I was like, how I've changed, what's still the same. With the conversion to timeline, Facebook has a map feature. I've dabbled with similar applications - from an old white board map of the US that I colored in all the states I'd visited as a kid, to the Where I've Been interactive map and profile. But this seemed so much more - every picture or significant event could be tagged and traced back to a location, streamlining two of my hobbies on a platform where I kept everything. I'm still in the process, but I've spent countless hours already going back through my pictures to create a more complete map, tagging things one by one back to fan pages that are scarcely visited. As a result, I've put a fairly complete map together from recent travels, clumping all my pictures up into geographic region, then destination, and even down to the attraction. Bringing this all back to a logical point, as I was putting this together, it gave me an excuse to go through all of my Italy pics and revisit my blog from the summer (perusingperugia.blogspot.com for those of you who never checked it out!) I loved jumping back into it, reading what I had wrote, reliving all of my travels, looking back on my first posts and comparing that to how I had felt leaving. It made me miss blogging, and occasionally when I've been overly sentimental or nostalgic, I found myself wishing I still had a blog for the seemingly mundane. Who knows, maybe one day I'll want to look back at my college years, or (as long as I make time to write this summer) my experience as an Orientation Ambassador.
I reasoned with myself that when I had a name I was satisfied with, I would start up a blog. I would try to make time to write, I would spill out my true thoughts, I wouldn't worry about what other people think. I would just document everything in the moment, knowing that I could always look back on it and cheer up, relish in a past chapter of my life, or just waste some time on a slow evening. Well, I recently came up with a name that just "worked" for me. I don't pride myself as an especially creative person, but I do put a lot of thought into things and hold myself to a high standard with things like these - screen names, my twitter handle, so on. As a sophomore, sitting in class last April out of nowhere the word "perusing" came into my head and I liked how it flowed off of Perugia, the city I would be studying in. It was perfect - "to examine or consider with attention and in detail" seemed fitting for how I would spend my time traveling and studying, and the alliteration was in effect. I wouldn't have been satisfied with a generic or uninspiring name, but it was really just for me than for anyone else. And so, as I brainstormed for a title for this blog, I didn't really know where to begin. I wanted something simple yet meaningful - it didn't have to define me, but I wanted an element of my personality in there. Nothing was stopping me from just writing and changing the name, but I stuck to my personal agreement and decided when I had a name I was satisfied with, I would be ready to get rolling with the blog.
The tangent comes full circle, and we'll re-visit my data loss. In an attempt to get a start on my beloved play counts, I vowed to start from the A's and listen to every song once though my iTunes - a feat that will take me over 15 days if I listened straight through for 24 hours. I reached Anberlin - not my favorite band by far, but I do enjoy their stuff on occasion - and caught a lyric from The Resistance which I've always liked. It's directly the title I found fitting enough to go with, so it should sound familiar. Speak for yourself, you paper tigers. Obviously the tiger bit resonated with me - in fact, inspired my Greg, I've started my own little sticky note on my desktop of blogging ideas. One of them is what being a Tiger means to me, which I hope to write about soon once I formulate the whole concept. In addition, a paper tiger is a cool little saying coming from the Chinese - it's something that seems vicious at first glance, but upon further inspection is actually harmless. And finally the speaking for yourself bit, it fits so perfectly. It's exactly what I hope to achieve. I want to write for myself, and I know that nobody will ever find as much meaning or enjoyment from this blog as I will looking back over it.
So the logical question remains: if I'm always documenting for my own benefit, why broadcast it? The internet is seemingly the worst place for a private place to reflect. The logical answer would be in the fact that it's much easier to type up and edit online than it would be to write everything by hand. Maybe throw in the fact that I can access it from anywhere, not have to worry about losing old posts like I have my other documents, or any sort of generic reason why the internet is the best place for information sharing. But if I'm being truthful, there is additional aspect to it. I don't want to hide, I don't want there to be separate pieces of me - a different face for each situation or interaction. I'm writing for me, so I can be 100% truthfully myself - and the fact that there may be an audience shouldn't change that fact. I'm working to be more open, take more risks, not worry so much about perceptions, and my Orientation class is helping me a lot with that. Perhaps that's a topic for another day. For now, I can rest assured that I'm going into this project with great intentions and hopefully great results - and that's good enough for me. After all, I've spent enough time considering it that it's about time I just go ahead and jump in. I over analyze way too much as it is, the fact that I've internally debated for so long whether to start on a medium that will allow me to review and analyze everything speaks volumes! I hope everyone finds this blog enjoyable as you learn more about me and the way I think - and future me, I know you're reading this as well! :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)