Filed under: Home | Tags: Bancroft, break, bus, bus stop, College, cop, Durant, Easter, forgetfulness, keyboard, laptop, lecture, Lent, Mardi Gras, meat, memory, Piedmont, police, schedule, sleep, TeleBEARS, traffic
You’d think that there couldn’t be anything worse to a bus stop other than the occasional rapid halt causing passenger inertia.
I was on Piedmont and College, heading home. It was only a bus stop away, but I decided to hop on the 52L cause the construction going on at Boalt is kind of icky. I was about to get off on Bancroft and College when this police motorcycle rolls up out of nowhere. He blocks the entry so passengers can’t come in/out and tells the driver that “there is someone on the bus that [he] has to speak to”. There are five people on the bus, including me. I don’t know what the other four could have possibly done to warrant an intervention by the authorities, and I was pretty sure I didn’t do anything.
It didn’t occur to me for the longest time that this was my stop. So one polite inquiry, and I’m off. The weird part was when my mind sort of “panicked” while I was walking home. I mean, what if the guy they’re looking for suddenly shoots up the bus or takes a hostage? Sometimes, when a million thoughts are running through my mind, I lose track of what I should be doing, like paying attention to traffic. I didn’t bother to observe the pedestrian signals and was starting to cross Durant when I saw a dozen oncoming vehicles at full speed. And the closest one just had to be a cop car. It was too obvious. Good thing she only shook her head at me cause she had to deal with the bus issue. I swear, it’s the lack of sleep. I’ve been sleeping around 1 these past couple of days.
I have a portable keyboard I use occasionally since my laptop is small. Last week, I decided to type up essay quotes on the bed (comfort is important!) and left my laptop on the desk. I was about 30 minutes into my essay when I got up to check the laptop screen. Complete rubbish! All nine lines had some variation of “sdflk,gfgkcv…..mcv dfjgdfncvjdfgiodf ;…lkhjdfl sudxkdjfhaesi”. So much for being portable.
I didn’t even realize that today was Mardi Gras. Or the night that Obama gave his speech to the State of the Union. Or that Lent is tomorrow. I wanted to give up meat for Lent, but I don’t think that’s going to work very well. I tried to give up meat this year with my No Meat Mondays project, but it isn’t really working. More like I keep forgetting. It is a bit odd for someone to have a pretty good long term memory and forget so much. I guess possibilities work in many different ways. (:
I think I’ll stick to no sweets/desserts 24/7 and no meat on Fridays until Easter. I did that last year and failed 4-5 times (due to forgetfulness, surprise surprise), so it won’t be that difficult for me.
In other good news, I saw the tentative Fall 2009 schedule of classes! Only LS lectures though. I have half of my schedule planned out already and TeleBEARS isn’t until the middle of April. (:
Back to midterm review. I honestly cannot wait until Spring Break is here. One more month!
“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” -Judy Garland
Filed under: College | Tags: College, finals, hell week, itunes, online, radio
Only three more days of school. And then two days of anxiety before all hell breaks loose. Or is it nine?
I don’t know why my professor chose to put the philosophy final on pretty much the last day of finals. It was my plan to have only one final exam this semester too. So much for getting out early.
The rest of my finals are due before the last day of classes. So yes, December 8th, 9th, and 10th is my hell week. Don’t mess with me. >;)
I’ve been listening to personal radio music online recently. Surprisingly, it’s pretty good at figuring out what you like and dislike. I think I’m going to put iTunes to rest for awhile.
“If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.” – Dean Martin
Filed under: College | Tags: blog, class, College, pacfam, Pacific, parents, resolution, schedule, semester, Theo, Tracy
I’ve been wanting to write in one of these for a while. So much has been floating around in my head, and I think I should put it in writing. First year went by so fast that I didn’t even have the chance to capture it in words or pictures. New year resolution?
It’s been 20 months since I last visited Pacific, so I decided to go up north and visit PACFAM (: I was able to avoid the DC for an entire weekend and eat real food. Haha. Thanks Tracy & Theo! I really needed to get out of Cal for a weekend cause I’ve been staying here for too long. I haven’t been to the city yet, and I’ve only gone home a couple of times this semester. My parents have visited me more than I have gone back, so it’s not too bad.
I just realized that there are less than four weeks left in the semester! And only two of them are normal. Thanksgiving is next week and the last week has only three days of instruction, so technically, there’s what, three weeks? Class has been canceling on me throughout this semester too. It feels weird because the classes I took last year purposely had the exams right before the holidays, so the whole class would be forced to stay till the very end. I think of scheduling classes now as a market. You have to pick and choose the right classes and times in order to have the satisfaction and results you want.
There’s a paper that’s due tomorrow. I haven’t started yet. I think I should get going.
“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.“ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Filed under: College | Tags: College, financial aid, game, santa clara, vanderbilt
I called in yesterday. I waited for ten minutes before I got an answer. “City and state, please?” “San Jose, California.” “Is that in northern California?” “… yes.” “Let me transfer you over the a counselor.” Three rings. She was busy with another person. To leave a message or not to leave a message? I hung up. Forget it. If I didn’t find out tomorrow, I was going to call in on Wednesday.
Today arrived. I opened the mailbox right when I got home. Nothing. The mailman was going to be late again. I decided to let my dad get it when he came home. When the multicolored package of stuff finally made its way to the study room three hours later, I started searching. There was a thin envelope. They say that colleges changed it a few years back so you never knew what was coming at you. I opened it up.
“The result, I regret, is that we will not be able to offer you any need-based financial assistance for the 2007-2008 academic year.”
Uh, okay, so it was a financial statement. Where’s my status? I sorted through the rest of the mail. Nothing. Andrew got a Santa Clara letter of interest — I didn’t even get a confirmation from that college. I ran to the kitchen and told my mom, “It’s just a financial aid letter, they said that I didn’t get any aid, nothing unexpected…”
Why the hell would they give me financial aid results if I didn’t even know a thing about my admission? I read the line over and over again. They wanted to keep my financial options open. Wait. Options? Open?
Last week, it finally hit me that I might be in deep water in this waiting game. I pretty much applied to every school with a competitive major. I was so scared that I wasn’t going to end up anywhere. Everything about me was so out of balance. Nothing seemed to be fit. I was so lopsided in my academics and extracurriculars. I didn’t know what the colleges were going to make out of it.
I realized that I didn’t even get to read the other 80% of the letter. My eyes quickly scrolled down: PLUS Loan, FAFSA, payment options…
“We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your acceptance—”
It took me ten minutes to figure this out.
I didn’t read anything after that line. Honestly, it didn’t matter anymore. I was going to college. One step towards finishing the application process. It’s such a good feeling when you know that there’s a place out there that’s willing to take you in for the next four years of your life.
I guess I was worth something after all.
