Today's rambling: Freedoms
Written on Monday, Sept. 30, 2002 at 11:06 a.m.
while feeling a bit

Jam brought up a good point, that colleges let you study the degree you want, but not necessarily the subjects you want. I'm majoring in Communication, but I'd love to take a variety of different classes, some which might end up being completely unrelated to one another. I realize that the purpose behind attending a college/university is so that you can get a specific degree and get better jobs, blah blah, but there are so many different things I want to learn about! In that respect, the General Education requirement at Clarion is nice. I have to take all sorts of different subjects, but at the same time, I don't like being forced to take certain subjects. Take math and science, for example. I have NO interest in taking a math course, and I'm not really all that interested in taking science courses, either. I like learning about different science-related subjects, but not in the strict classroom form. I'd much rather watch the Discovery Channel or TLC, one of those channels that teaches things but not in a rigid way.

Anyway...I had my first exam in CIS this morning. Got back to my room by 9:30...I definitely think I aced that thing. It was all true-false and multiple choice, which automatically makes things easier. I didn't even study for it. :P I'll probably find out today how I did on my French exam (for some reason, every time I talk about French, I want to start using the French words for things, like examen, hehe). And I need to finish up the last of my Writing assignment. I really did start it last night, but the whole freewriting thing was harder than I thought. I couldn't seem to bring up any new ideas in either of the freewrites I did. We're supposed to do three of them, and I guess I'll just write out the third one. But what I think I might do is try freewriting on one of the other possible topics we could have chosen.

It was so nice to actually eat breakfast this morning. I never eat at the dining hall on weekends, because the hours are so wacky, and so I'm left eating junk food. I love breakfast. When I walked over to the table where Kevin, Lauren, and Amanda usually sit, I found that Kevin was eating by himself. Apparently, Lauren and Amanda have decided to stop eating breakfast because they're 'fat'. *rolls eyes* Give me a break. First off, neither one of them is even remotely fat...and if they were going to skip ANY meal, it ought to be lunch. Skipping breakfast isn't going to make them any less 'fat', since their metabolism has slowed down. I'm going to have to kick both of them.

I wore my cute toe socks for the first time today, lol! Toe socks are such geeky-looking things, but these are so cute! They've got monkeys and bananas on the top, hehe...I wore them with my imitation birkenstocks, deciding that for once I'd allow myself to look at least a little quirky. It actually felt kind of liberating, knowing that if anyone looked down at my feet they'd see bright blue stripes and green and yellow toes. :P I'm going to have my own Bohemian Wevowution (to quote some Moulin Rouge, hehe)! ;)

I've also decided that I'm going to quit trying to get in touch with Geoff, because he's never home. I've been talking more with his roommate in the time since I came here! Tim already wants the three of us to go out to dinner when I get back...who knows what Geoff is thinking. :P So I'm going to stop calling their house and just see how long it takes before one of them actually takes the initiative and calls me. Well, I don't care so much about Tim calling me, lol, since I'm not romantically interested in him. ;) While talking to him yesterday, he told me that Geoff really likes driving (which I could've deducted just by the length of the drives he and I have taken)...There was this one time when out of the blue, Geoff was just like, "Let's go to Pittsburgh!" And so they did. :P Now, if only he'd get that same traveling itch and say, "Let's go to Clarion!" Hehe...

That dinky little romance novel I bought at Walmart hasn't turned out to be so bad. Certainly, the writing quality could be a little better; and like all romance stories, the plot was rather predictable; but overall, I'm really enjoying it. I was so into the storyline last night that I finally had to force myself to stop reading when I saw that it was almost 3 am! As a result, I'm feeling rather tired right now. I think I'll go back to reading it now, even though I should be fixing up those freewrites for Writing...Oh well, I have about 45 minutes after French to do it, hehe...

2 pm...Just trudged back from French (these cheap knockoff birkenstocks are just NOT doing anything for my feet, and so I must kill them). I got a 96 on my examen, wahoo!!! I didn't get a single one wrong in the listening section, which definitely pleased me. Listening comprehension is half the trouble in this language. Well, so is trying to write it, lol! But I'm very happy to have gotten the listening part perfect. My exact pointage was 68.5 out of 71, but I'm surprised it wasn't a lot lower. There was this one part where we had to write at least six sentences pretending we'd been asked to write a little ditty about a day-in-the-life of an American university student. There was so much stuff that was crossed out and corrected by Mme Behrend, but yet...she only took one point away, and she actually wrote "tr�s bien!" in the margin! Mlle Columbus, back in high school, always complimented me on my writing, saying that I had very good grammar and such. But I'm not quite sure how this can be said, when I have so much stuff wrong! :P Maybe it's just that I try to be as creative in my French writing as I am when I'm writing in English. Instead of just being like, "He goes to lunch. Then he talks to his friends", I try to say things like, "After classes, he usually hangs out with his friends. Sometimes, they play sports, or just talk....He usually doesn't get to sleep until midnight because he has so much homework! It's hard to be a student, from time to time!" Stuff like that. So maybe that's what merited the "tr�s bien", hehe...

Miranda only got a B, which surprised me because that's the first time she's gotten less than an A. The ironic thing is, she studied for hours the day before, and I reviewed a few different expressions right before the exam was handed out. That's just how I am. I know it sounds like bragging, and I'm not TRYING to brag, but at the same time I'm glad that I have that ability!

If only I could have similar luck in Writing. I do NOT look forward to going to this class. Actually, I never really mind things while I'm IN class, but as soon as I leave, all I can think about is all this horrible stuff I've been stuck with. If I can scrape by with even a C, I'll be pleased.

I found this absolutely adorable vintage coat on vintagevixen.com. It's from the 60's, with a soft floral print...It's only $26, but since I'm a poor college student, I'm wondering if I should go for it. Most of me is screaming, "Do it! It's authentic 60's, and it's pretty!" but then I'm like, "What will I wear it with? I'd have to get a special set of clothes just to match it!" I've already got a general idea of the perfect skirt to go with it (something flowing, like what Lauren wears all the time but in softer colors)...but I don't quite know what kind of shirt would look cute with it. For that matter, I don't even know if this item would fit me! I don't have measuring tape with me...There IS a return policy, though...

Bleh. I'll worry about that later. Right now, I have to get this last freewrite cranked out. Screw the whole "I'll write 3 more for that other prompt" stuff. I'll do that tonight if I feel that the one I'm currently using is completely hopeless.

Oh! By the by, I just finished that book before I left for French, and it was great. I loved the character Nat, and wish I could find someone just like him. This is why I should never read romances, because it always makes me wistful for A Guy Who Would Never Actually Exist In This World. Anyway, the author of this book is Meg Cabot, who I just found out wrote The Princess Diaries. Thought that was sort of interesting.

Alright, Amber, goooo! Go finish your freewrite before it's too late!