First Day of School

... first day of school! Prove to Dad I'm not a fool! :)

So first day of classes is over and done with, and I don't think I've ever been so nervous in my life. Maybe I just forgot that I got nervous the past couple of semesters, but I always have this fright that I'm going to go to the wrong class. Or, like today, that (1) there are so many RMs in my French class that I feel like an idiot, and (2) I don't want people to judge me like I'm a marriage-obsessed freak for taking Marriage & Family when I'm not even seriously dating anyone. There are other reasons to take it! Hmph.

However, I am looking forward to tomorrow and getting introduced to my other classes. I've got two English classes, which are, of course, wonderful. One's going to be kind of small and awkward, but that's okay. (Just to explain, it's so small and awkward that they are advertising it on the English bulletin board in the JFSB. I blame the professor for sending out an email like, before Thanksgiving I swear, explaining that we were going to focus on "poetry, love, and the cosmos." Literally half the class dropped it after he sent that. Including me, but then I had to sign up for it again. Boo.) The other is American literature, and I hope that somehow I will learn to appreciate it, because, as is, I kind of hate it. But I am open to it, so that's a good thing, right? :) Then there's the Kennedy Center Lecture Series, with Heather and Natalie, and finally, Music 202. I am actually weirdly excited for Music 202, except for the fact that it's an evening class. The only other section of it is taught at 8 a.m., and I don't think I can handle that. Haha. But maybe I will switch if I can't take the 2.5 hour insanity that is an evening class? Who knows. Idk if I can make it all the way to the JKB by 8 a.m. ... probably not.

Since writing the above I have had a sad experience. It occurred to me that, although I do not yet have my book (it is still being shipped), the library does have it. So I looked it up, and it showed that there was a copy checked out, but it didn't indicate how many copies of the book they had, and since there are often multiple copies, I thought, "Hey, why not?" So I go up to the library, fully expecting to find this book on the shelf, and therefore expecting to be able to do my homework.

Not the case. The book wasn't there, my feet were aching really badly (I had on my new boots. Squee.), and I couldn't do my homework. Actually, a more accurate statement is that I still can't do my homework, because I still don't have my book. Is it too much to ask for the miracle of it showing up tomorrow? I kind of think so, but we shall see. Perhaps I will just get one from the Bookstore and return it asap? I don't even know if I can do that. I wish I could find someone with a copy of the book, and then I would borrow it from them for like an hour and it would be lovely. Who knows though. Gosh books, just get here.

I'm sick of waiting. Plus, it makes me nervous to not have it. :( Boo.

Passion

When I flew back to Provo, I had (at least) nine books in my carry-on and "personal item." This is not a joke or an exaggeration. I carried Les Miserables, Little Dorrit, Who Stole the Wizard of Oz?, The Book Thief, Made for Heaven, The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions, Le Livre de Mormon ;), Little Bee, and The Day the Falls Stood Still. Let me tell you a little story about that last one...

On my last day in Jeff City, I wanted to go buy a movie. I was going to order it online, but then I saw it on the Barnes & Noble website for the same amount of money that it would cost for me to purchase and ship it from Amazon. Since we have a Barnes & Noble in town, and I kinda had a few books in mind that I thought I'd like to get a peek at, maybe even buy, so I drove over there. Much to my dismay, the movie was $10 more in the store than online, for reasons which still boggle my mind. To add to my misery, the book I most wanted to buy wasn't even in the store. How's that for cruel? But I really like looking at books, so I kinda hung around to see if there was anything else I'd be interested in purchasing.

As I'm browsing (extensively, mind you) this old man who works there comes up to me and asks me if he can help me. Now, I tend to shy away from these types of people (read: employees) because I really don't like being helped. Not while I'm shopping anyways. I'm pretty good at deciding for myself what I want, and plus if I can't find what I want, I figure it's not worth having because I'm pretty good at finding things, if they're put away properly. Anyways, I have digressed from my story. I change my mind about him helping me, and ask if he can help me find the book The Girl in the Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold. It's about the wife of Charles Dickens, and it sounds like it's a really good read. To my surprise, he didn't baby me over to where it was supposed to be on the shelf, which is what I half expected him to do, but immediately went to the computer to see if it was in stock, and where it would be if it was. It didn't happen to be there, but he gave me a print out with the ISBN on it and stuff.

Then he says to me, "You're not from around here, are you?" And I was just kind of shocked, because I don't feel like I frequently give off that vibe, and certainly not in a bookstore, because I'm always comfortable in a bookstore. Surprised, I said no. As my surprise was absolutely evident in my face, he said, "A reader in here that I don't recognize? You have to be from somewhere else." After that, I kept browsing, he suggested The Day the Falls Stood Still to me, and I ended up purchasing it.

Now, the book is not the point of the story. The point is how good it felt to have someone see me, recognize what I'm passionate about, and then verbally acknowledge it. You wouldn't think that would feel good, but having this total stranger nab me as a big reader felt wonderful. It was like, "Yes! This is what I like to do! This is what matters to me! And you can tell just by looking at me that that's what's important to me!"

Of course, there are many other things that are important to me, Church, family, friends, etc. But I feel like those belong in a different sort of category. They're kind of apples-and-oranges with language and literature, you know? It's just been over the past few months that I've come to realize exactly how much I love words and language and the way that they can be used, and it's so gratifying to know that that love is apparent to other people, because I think when you have that kind of love, that kind of passion for something, it radiates. Maybe not to everyone, but there are other people who can see it.

I think back to how I felt my first semester of freshman year. It wasn't exactly a good semester, and I questioned a lot of things about myself and what I wanted to do. As a senior in high school, I had known that I was interested in English, but I also knew that that didn't necessarily translate well into a career. In fact, I still know this. It doesn't exactly scream practicality or promise for the future. But I had this moment, after I had accidentally declared myself a pre-communications major (based on my application to BYU), as I was sitting in my communications class, that I realized I absolutely hated comms. I hated everything about it ... except for the days that we talked about books as a form of media and communication. For some reason, that just warmed my heart and soul to think about how powerful the written word is, and how enduring books are, and how much happiness they've brought to me in my life. I mean, I was always the kid who got the maximum number of library books, who was in the advanced reading class in elementary school, who racked up AR points like nobody's business, and who was always writing stories or composing sentences in her head. That's just who I was. It's always been a part of me.

That doesn't apply to everyone of course. Tons of people don't figure out what their passions are until they're in college. Lots of peoples' passions don't translate well into majors. Many people have multiple passions, and have to decide how their passions are going to be a part of their futures.

But some people don't recognize their passions.

Doesn't that make you sad? It sure does me. I know how it feels to feel like you're working towards something you couldn't care less about, even if it has a more clear path to careerdom than the things you actually do care about. I just happened to be lucky enough, and maybe even crazy enough, to run away from the things I didn't care about, and towards the things that made a difference in my life--books, and French. (Aw. <3.)

I feel like the following quote is outlandishly applicable here:

Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

-- Harold Whitman

Isn't it so true though? I mean, you can tell when people don't like their jobs, or even their majors. It's painfully obvious.

You can also tell when people love what they're doing, when they have a passion for it. Furthermore, it doesn't just make them happier. It makes them better at what they're doing, because they care more about the results, and not for anyone's sake more than their own! When you love what you're doing, you want to increase your knowledge and improve your work. It's a natural consequence.

I can't help but think of Bob from The Incredibles, right at the very beginning. Remember? He looked like this:

Ohhhh. Poor Bob. Look how miserable. But when he decided to do those things that he cared about most, he made himself, and everyone else, happier.

Am I trying to justify the fact that I'm majoring in two things that aren't exactly Career-In-A-Jar Majors? Is it because my dad and grandpa and other people have been asking me a lot lately, "So what are you going to do with that, exactly? What are your plans for the future?" Maybe. Maybe I'm really just that dumb. But I don't think so. I mean, we've all had the teachers who love to teach, and the teachers who hate their lived because they're teaching and they hate teaching. You can tell the difference in everything that they do and say. They're worlds apart. They might get the same (crappy) pay, but what does that matter when there's happiness involved? You know what they all say, "I'd rather be poor and doing something I love, than rich doing something I hate." Okay, yeah, it's cheesy ... but isn't cheesy usually also paired with "true"? I dunno. Just a thought.

I guess what I'm saying is that, even when I don't love my classes, I love English, and I love French, and I love the fact that I get to study more about them and increase my understanding and progress towards my goals in each of these disciplines. I'm so glad that I have the opportunity to follow my passions, and to improve upon the world through something that makes me feel so alive. :)

Oh, and can you tell that I'm so stoked to start a new semester in a couple of days? ;)

This Must End

You may have noticed that I haven't blogged anything in the past month. I owe this to the fact that I was overcome with some sort of self-consciousness since there were people (besides the people who always read it and/or hear about almost everything I write about anyways) who were reading it. I know you aren't judging me, so I don't know why I got so self-conscious about it, but I did and that's the truth. So I have about 50 (no actually it's only like 5) drafts piled up in Windows Live Writer that are just waiting to be finished, because I can't really compile my thoughts suitably. Basically I just didn't like what was coming out. However, I've come to the realization that I really need an outlet. I've been going crazy over the past couple weeks, and I think it's because I haven't taken the time to write my thoughts down and clear out all the excess gunk in my head so that I can actually function like a normal human being, which is what I'd really like to do with myself right about now. I can no longer keep these things to myself. The silence must end. NOW.

So I have a couple of things going through my head right now, the first of which is my sociology class. It's just Soc 111, nothing special. I mean, I really like the class and I think it's totally great, and I found out that Jake Heaps is in my class today, which is kind of interesting I suppose. Anyway, we had these big old papers due a couple of weeks ago and we just got them back today. Which wouldn't have been a big deal, except that I found out that my printer sabotaged me. For those of you who don't comprendo, here's what happened:

The Violent and Tragic Destruction of Page Four

Yeah. I turned that in. (Moment of Irony: "Dancing Through Life" from Wicked just came on my iTunes, and the line that says "mindless and careless" played right as I uploaded these photos. Well said, Fieyro. Thanks for pointing out my own idiocy.) I mean, do you see how heinous that looks?? It's so embarrassing that I let that slip under my radar. I should know better. This happened to me once in my first semester, and it was just as embarrassing, only less because I actually knew the person who was grading it. (Why is it more embarrassing when a stranger grades it??) But yeah. How could I let it happen? I remember being in such a hurry, and that I was a tiny bit late to class that day... Gosh. Lesson learned. I no longer trust my beast of a printer, not a bit.

In other news ... I had a great moment last night after Heather and I went on a walk last night. We ended up getting home at like 1:00, and I stayed up doing who knows what until like 1:30-1:45ish. I go into the dark bedroom and proceed to prepare myself for bed. Being that it was dark, I had to turn my lamp on, which totally woke Natalie up. I really didn't mean to, but I didn't adjust the angle of the lampshade as well as I thought I had, and it was terrible. To my surprise, however, she sits up a little bit and starts talking to me.

"What did you win?" she asks. I, of course, am confused as heck. What did I win? What on earth is she talking about?

"I don't know what you're talking about," I say back, continuing to change into my pj's.

"She had a Wheel of Fortune thing out there. What did you win?"

I still am extremely confused, but also extremely tired, so I kind of ignore the question and keep getting ready for bed.

"By the way," Natalie says to me, "This isn't dream talk. I'm awake."

Oh really?

I give some kind of non-committal response and go brush my teeth. By the time I'm done, she's asleep again and I go to sleep.

This, of course, is not the end of the story. As I'm putting on my makeup this morning, Natalie comes in to do the same and asks me, "When did you go to bed last night?" I tell her that it was 1:30, 1:45ish that I went to bed.

"Did I try to talk to you last night?"

Oh yes. Yes, you did. I told her this, at which point it became very funny. I admit, in the middle of the night, I was more confused than amused, though it was a funny moment. It was one of those moments when exhaustion made everything less funny rather than more funny. Once we were both fully aware that she was totally like, dream-talking to me, we both laughed. Like I said, it was funny.

This brings up something else that I'd like to talk about. Have you ever had a moment when you have been trying to nap, or have accidentally fallen asleep, or you're trying to go to bed, and then someone wakes you up or says, "Oh yeah, she's asleep," but you find yourself either suddenly conscious, or you simply hadn't fully fallen asleep? I know it's a confusing way to put it, but I think you understand. You're all intelligent folks. Have you ever noticed that whenever this happens, you often feel this sudden need to alert everyone around you to the fact that you're awake? It seems so important! They have to know that you weren't asleep. Never mind the fact that you're completely incoherent and the only thought that IS forming in your head is "I'm awake. They have to know I'm awake." All the while, you're just proving that you're totally not awake OR coherent. So silly, and yet it always seems like such an urgent matter... Funny.

In other good news, the BYU Bookstore had a $1 Book Sale! It was great. I didn't even know it was happening, and then this girl who was at a focus group that I went to (which I'll tell you about in two shakes) told us that she went to it. And I was like, "BOOKS FOR A DOLLAR? Sign me UP baby!" So I went with my awesome amiga Katie, during the time that I should have been in class... but the focus group was gonna make me 15 minutes late anyways, and I think it's so rude to interrupt class like that, especially a class with only like 30 people in it, that I just can't do it. So I skeeeeeped. Whatever. No big deal.

Anyways. I'm going around and I find all of these great books. Like FIVE great books that I want super bad. And I think to myself, "It's so great that I have been keeping my wallet in my backpack lately!" (I usually don't, because I usually leave it in my purse, also because I don't want to have money for food when I have food at home that I can eat.) And then I realize that no, I do not have my wallet. I had to lend Natalie some money last night so we could pay our electric bill and my wallet wasn't there. So I think, well if Katie has money with her, I can pay her back pronto once I get my wallet. Alas, Katie's wallet is not in her backpack either. Desperate for these books, I head to the register to beg this girl to hold the books for me. Then I see my friend Glen from Missouri who happens to work at the Bookstore. The girl, of course, tells me that she can't hold the books for me. I try to explain that it'll only be 15 minutes and I'll be back with my wallet. She still can't do it. Glen, naturally, hears my predicament and offers a suggestion: that I hide the books in a box underneath one of the tables and then put another box on top of it. So that's what I did. I then ran home to grab my wallet.

By this time, I've got a time crunch because I wanted to walk home from class with Rachel, so I needed to go and get my wallet, get back to the Bookstore, buy the books, and get back over to the sound circles in front of the JFSB at 12:50. Naturally, when I get home, my wallet is nowhere to be found. I look everywhere I can think of, including my bed and the closet where the washer and dryer are. But all my searching is in vain. I'm starting to get antsy, and my brain is saying, "God doesn't want you to have these books!" and my heart is fighting with my brain saying, "BUT IT'S GOOD TO HAVE BOOKS! AND THEY'RE ONLY A DOLLAR!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!" I start sending out frantic text messages to my roommates, trying to figure out if any of them saw it or know where it went. But it's no good. No one knows where my wallet is, and I'm starting to have horrible visions of people going under the table, pulling out the top box, and finding all five of my darling $1 books in the bottom box, then laughing as they twirl their curlicue mustaches and cradle my books beneath the sheath of their black cloak (total Bowler Hat Guy style). Terror was running through my veins. It was horrendous. Just as I'm about to give up, I see a bump under the rug. Lo, and behold, tis my wallet. So I ran back, retrieved my books from the box (you can't imagine my relief when I saw them there), purchased them, and ran to meet Rachel to walk home. It was great. Here's what I bought:

Snapshots by Michal Govrin

The Work of Print: Authorship and the English Text Trades 1660-1760 by Lisa Maruca

Sky in a Bottle by Peter Pesic

The Beautiful Fall: Fashion, Genius, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris by Alicia Drake

Flaubert: A Biography by Frederick Brown

Quite the mix, wouldn't you say? I'm actually really excited about all of them. The first one, Snapshots, was translated from Hebrew, and it's written by an Israeli woman who has won every single one of Israel's literary awards. The Work of Print is more historical, and talks about the changing concept of authorship and print culture during the Enlightenment period. Then there's Sky in a Bottle, which is also kind of historical, and talks about the changing understanding of the answer to the question, "Why is the sky blue?" through history, art, science, and the works of classical philosophers. Sounds fascinating, no? The fourth one, The Beautiful Fall also sounds interesting. I've never read a book about fashion and stuff before, and it looks super cool. The last one, Flaubert, is probably going to be the hardest read of all, but we just learned about Gustave Flaubert and Madame Bovary in my French class, and it sounds like he had a kind of crazy life, and I'd like to understand more about him. So that'll be cool. But yeah ... pretty fun, huh? I'm stoked to read them. Also to amass a larger collection of books. I love books. Oh so very much.

Anyways, on to the focus group stuff. Today, as I was hanging with Rachel and Katie and we were chilling on some of the couches on the third floor and I'd accepted the fact that I was absolutely not going to get to take a nap when a man walks up to us and asks us if we're doing anything over the next hour and would we like to attend a focus group with some consultants from the East Coast. We said okay and followed him into a classroom where there were a couple people hanging out in front of some blueprints of the Wilk and a computer with a slideshow going on it.

The purpose of the focus group was to discuss how students use the Wilk currently, and what could be changed to make the Wilk more appealing to students, and what might draw them to the Wilk during the evenings, most particularly on the first floor in the Post Office/Bowling Alley/Outdoor Adventures area. It was actually really interesting to think about why I go the places I go in the Wilk, what kinds of changes I'd like to see, what kind of changes they're thinking of making, and what I liked and disliked about the proposed changes.

And let me tell you, those changes look COOL. The study won't be over until January, and then I'm sure it'll be some time before they actually put those changes into action and actual construction, but I really want to be here when they happen so I can actually use them. They really look awesome, and they could make that area down there so hoppin' I would probably never want to leave. Okay, that's a total exaggeration, but it is going to be awesome. Be so excited for the future, guys! It's gonna be FLYYYY :)

The Jane Austen Book Club

I just finished watching the movie The Jane Austen Book Club. And I loved it. I guess I had pretty low expectations, since I'd heard that it wasn't really all that good. But I really loved it. It was amazing how watching it made me fall more in love with Jane Austen's novels, with literature in general, with French, with the world, with the vast variety of people there are, with love, with libraries, with travel, with staying up late to read a good book ... with so many things. After such a sucky day (you remember, the one that started with the super-depressing cyberbullying suicide video?) it's remarkable how much that movie excited me about life, about what I'm doing with life. Granted, it also made me hope for a time when it'll be just me, alone in my house and holed up with a good book, staying up until who knows how late doing something that just makes me happy. But I suppose at the same time that's not really what I'm supposed to want ... aloneness, endless recreation, not ever having to work, etc. It's glamorous, idealized, and for the number of problems those characters have, it's remarkable that I don't really attend to them. It's wonderful to get caught up in a movie like that, to just depart from reality and, for at least a few moments, enjoy another world.

I don't really know how to feel right now. I know what I feel, but I also feel like I shouldn't be feeling what I feel, that I shouldn't be wanting what I want, that I'm some kind of lousy slug for wanting what I want, that what I want isn't really what I want because I've made it into a whole other creature in my head so I'm wanting something that's completely unattainable, that what I perceive as what I want is really just a glamorized illusion of a means to get what I really want, and that, tragically, I can never have what I want because it doesn't exist, and all of these realities are going to come crashing down on me like a cold bucket of water on my head on a frosty February morning.

Is everything I'm feeling an illusion? Am I stuck in a movie? Am I exaggerating how good I feel right now because this has been a Monday that has fully fulfilled its reputation? Am I experiencing a minor chemical imbalance? Am I crazy? Can I have what I want? Do I want what I want because it's the easy way out since the past few days have been a spiraling misery pit wherein I've started to fear that many of the big things I want from life are going to be snatched from out around me without me being able to control any of it? What is my problem? Am I trying to eat away this ebbing tide of unhappiness that is ever so slightly tainting my life? Am I becoming a bitter cynic whose expectations for life have been inflated to the point that they can never be fulfilled? What do I want in the short-run?

Too many questions. I'm losing the glow of my movie delight, and that's annoying. Time for bed.