27 March 2009

Process Stories

I'm procrastinating. I gave up procrastination for Lent, but luckily I'm "Jewish."

I'm supposed to be writing a 3-4 page book report on Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. The professor (of Latin American History through Art and Literature) is this sweet little olderish lady, though she dresses young and pulls it off so well! and she is from NoCal, and her last two teaching gigs were at Oregon and Oregon State. It's not her fault that the class is totally silly, it was constructed by this dude, Jack Child, and she has to teach to his structure. Unfortunately he sucked at structuring this class.

So Jack Child, are we in 5th grade? Really? A book report? A 3 page book report? Am I really getting 3 college credits for this class? Really? I'm supposed to take this masterful piece of literature and talk about a theme for three pages. Is that really it? Do we have to do a diorama with the main characters and use real sand in the sideways shoe box? Because giving me an assignment like a three page book report when I'm a junior in college makes me feel like I'm eleven years old. Really. are you really sure I'm getting college credit for this? Really??

(this has been "Really?!?" with Seth erm... me.)

On the other hand, I haven't written a lit paper about a book since I was a senior in high school, so I don't even remember how to do this.


I have a 20 page paper due in ten days. What.

Like the rest of the world, I have so much to do and if I would just get started (and subsequently continue, until completion), my life would be so much easier. Also, I can't afford anything. I owe 5 Benjamins to the IRS and I haven't even done my state taxes yet. I have to come up with 1500 bucks to take this summer class with my new fave professor (it's only 1.5k because I magically overpaid my account by $900 for the spring term! go me) and I kind of need the credits to graduate. I also have to do things like pay rent, it would be nice to pay more than the minimum on my credit cards (yes, plural cards, I'm sorry), and it would be nice to eat food, and I could REALLY use a new pair of jeans, because I have three and none of them fit me, and the ones that are closest to fitting literally disintegrate on my body as I wear them.

I know plenty of people whose parents pay their rent, pay their credit card bills, have a joint account that they put money into, buy them new iPhones, buy their clothes, pay for their plane tickets home. I'm lucky to get what I get. My phone bill is always paid, but I paid for my $200 phone. of course it went on sale for $70 six weeks later. My mom puts money towards one of my credit cards when she can, and I get child support and extra money from my dad when he can. Both of these things ROCK. but I have always paid my own taxes since I was 16, I have bought every single plane ticket home in three years, and I pay the vast majority of my own rent.

Also I kind of want to be in school forever. Getting down to the last year is scary, because I am fulfilling all my last requirements and I get to take classes that I'm interested in but they still have to go towards some purpose. I took a bunch of easy interesting classes this term, but I'm past the point where I can just take an interesting class for the sake of furthering the expansion of my knowledge. Ah!!!

The girl next to me is fighting with her mom on the phone about how she is ineligible for medical school or anything in the medical field, because her undergrad degree is not in a science. Story of my life, random girl, story of my life. I guess my major is kind of for fun, because I'm not particularly good at it and there's not much I can do with it. My friend Morgan last night told me that her mom missed the entirety of the 80s because she was in med school; she would eat beans out of the can because she didn't have time to heat them up. There's a difference between being too lazy to cook things properly and not having time to cook things properly. I prefer to be in the former category, thank you very much.

I am obviously just so ridiculously bored. I promise someday my blog will have a purpose.

I have been at AU long enough, or in the alternate, AU is so small, that I can recognize people I have never met by the back of their head, or the sound of their voice.


I should delete this post.

1 comment:

Garth said...

Spend some time in the professional journals and you'll find it's a fuck-ton harder to write a three-page paper with something to say than a twenty-page paper. Density is hard and conveying a thesis in a couple hundred words is vastly more challenging that when you've got enough space to baffle with bullshit.

Unless, of course, your prof is a total pushover, which is certainly a possibility.