Today's rambling: One day I'll fly away
Written on Monday, Nov. 11, 2002 at 10:39 a.m.
while feeling a bit

Sigh.

I wouldn't mind just curling up in bed right now and taking a short nap until I have to go to French class. But I can't. I still need to finish my French homework, technically (since I listened to the required bit but didn't understand most of it)...and then of course there's still that lovely Writing assignment looming over my head.

Yes, I still have yet to work on that. I got a brief surge of inspiration this morning after my alarm rang, and I hastily scribbled that down. But then I talked to Kevin at breakfast, and I realized that I still have NO idea what to write about. It would help if I was interested enough in this topic that I could think up my own thesis, but I'm not. It just figures that the professor would decide to be 'nice' by giving us the freedom to choose our own topic. I'd probably be finished with the rough draft by now if she'd just given us prompts to choose from. As it is, the only thing I've got my topic narrowed down to is 'environment', but that's too broad and so I have to narrow it even further by choosing either 'family environment' or 'social environment'...and I really don't understand the difference between the two! Family environment (in regard to causes of obesity) has something to do with how much the family eats and what you let your children eat, blah blah. And social environment deals with things like having 5 fast food restaurants on your street. But that bleeds in with family environment because if your family is busy all the time and you can't have sit-down dinners, then much of the time you probably end up getting fast food. So how can I only talk about ONE of them when they're interdependent? I'm about ready to just give up and cry.

It's somewhat heartening to know that no one else I've talked to has done anything. Kevin is burned out too, and even plans to skip Biology just so he can work on this damnable paper. Josh hasn't worked on his paper yet either (and usually he has his at least mostly done by now), and Lauren is going to Dr. Rosati today after Math class to tell her that she can't get her rough draft done by today. Her reason is that a friend of a friend committed suicide this weekend, and while that could be enough to make anyone too upset to work, I really think she's just using it as an excuse to get out of doing her work. It remains to be seen whether the professor will accept this excuse...though apparently Lauren intends to say that it was actually her friend who killed himself, rather than just a friend of a friend, so I guess that'll factor into things.

Miranda will probably have her rough draft all written up, even though she was as confused as me on Wednesday as to what her thesis would be. But I'm sure she's got it all figured out by now. I wish she was as bad off as I am right now, that way there'll be a bunch of us in class who just don't have anything. I'm just burned out. I can't write this many pointless, boring essays at one time! It's not as if I thought I wouldn't have to write anything in college; I was aware that there'd be a lot of paper-writing involved. However, most papers allow you to put at least a small amount of creativity into them, and this class forbids it. I can't write like this, and I wish she'd just tell us to forget the third paper we have to do. All the third one has to deal with is using direct quotes, and that's something we can practice just by doing little examples and things. I don't think anyone in the class is clueless when it comes to direct quoting, but if she wants us to be able to seamlessly insert them, she can give us little tiny writing exercises. That would be a lot better than making us do these stupid essays. I wonder how much it would hurt my grade if I just didn't do the last one. I'm not lying when I say I'm tempted. As it is, I might not even get THIS one done...or if I do, it'll be such a worthless piece of crap that I'll be lucky to get a passing grade on it.

I will be so SUBLIMELY happy when this semester is over and I never have to go to Writing II again...assuming I pass, that is.

Oh yeah, I found out that I got a 90% on the exam I took in CIS on Friday. That's just barely an A, and I thought I'd done so much better on it! I mean, I figured that at most, I'd only have one or two wrong, that's how confident I was. I know I should be happy anyway that I still got an A, but it really really irritates me that I got such a low A! What am I turning into, complaining about low A's when in high school I'd have been overjoyed to get such a grade? It's rather disturbing.

I'm still thinking about the transferring option. Kristen, when I informed her about my thoughts last night, was rather upset about the idea. "But we're getting a room together downstairs next year!" she said. "You can't go!" It made me feel bad for all the complaining I've been doing about her. She really is a good girl, I guess it's just that I need more solitary time than I get with a roommate. As I thought about the transferring idea today, I discovered that I'd kinda lost interest in it. If I was somehow able to transfer to Millersville or some other place closer to home, it would be nice in that I'd get to see my friends all the time, and I could possibly even just commute. But then I realized that if I was still living at home, that would kind of detract from the whole experience. I'd like to be close enough that I could go home on the weekends, but I don't think I'd like to commute. I can't even explain why; it would probably end up being like high school again, where I didn't do homework and didn't really care about anything except sitting in front of the TV or talking to friends. Of course, seeing Geoff more often wouldn't hurt... ;)

It sounds dumb, but I really miss him. I heard from Mom that things have gotten rather bad at work for him (EJ's really getting on his case), so I'm halfway afraid to try calling him. Tim was online last night, and I IMed him but didn't get a response for a couple minutes...so I stuck up an away message saying I was going to get my laundry out of the dryer. When I came back, Tim had IMed me and said that "Santa" had a surprise for me and that I shouldn't go too far. When he says that, it means I'm either going to get a call from Geoff or he's going to sign on after Tim signs off. But I didn't get anything, so I don't know what that was all about (and Tim had signed off before I came back). That had me really down, because I'd been hoping to talk to at least ONE of them! Oh well.

I guess I should go listen to this French tape again. We're learning about the weather now, and our assignment was to listen to a mock weather report and answer some questions from the book. I can barely understand this woman, she's talking so fast. However, I ought to at least listen to it enough times that I can answer questions in class!

Heh...Kristen came home a few minutes ago in an uproar because she got a 16/25 on the Math project she did with Lauren. Lauren screwed up the pretty little chart she'd offered to make, writing down 12, 6, and 6 instead of 12, 16, and 6. Yeah, that would definitely get me irritated, but at the same time I know that Kristen looked over that chart and so considering how leery she was of working with Lauren, maybe she should have looked more closely at the numbers to make sure they were right. So it's not TOTALLY Lauren's fault..just mostly. :P Still, Kristen is so fired up about it that she's planning on going down to talk to the professor to see if she can do it over and get partial credit. She brought out her calculator, terrified that this had taken her grade down drastically, but then she was like, "Thank god I still have an A!" As if she would ever NOT have an A, considering she gets A's on everything she does...*rolls eyes* You see, THAT is what I'm starting to turn into. Do you think I want to be like that? No.