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My best friend from elementary school just called me. It's so funny to talk to her. She just got accepted to her first choice college. It's the same college my mom went to for her first few years. (I don't know the whole story... she dropped out, got married, got divorced, got married again, and went back to school in another state, in some order... but I'll probably never know any more than that. My mom doesn't talk about the past. Ever.)
I'm kinda looking into (eventually) getting a masters in information systems. I looked at the admission requirements for Syracuse University's program and it's so funny. There's an enormous list of computer stuff you have to know how to do, and I know all of it. Most of it is pretty basic... install and uninstall programs, cut and paste between different program, use windows and a word processor, know how to search the internet... and then there's this hilarious requirement about "familiarity with electronic communication" which says you should be familiar with e-mail, listservs, chat rooms, message boards, and RealAudio. and I was laughing out loud thinking that that could actually be useful. Especially the RealAudio part. I got that so I could listen to Ani DiFranco bootlegs and they're telling me it's useful for college stuff? Anyway, that's all stuff you're required to know- I know the stuff it's recommended you know, too- basic html (umm... yeah.), Excel or something like it, desktop publishing. Anyway, then there's a section about what your computer should have and it actually says your computer should have ICQ! Isn't that hilarious? And it says you should have unrestricted internet access, and that you should have (this is straight out of their web page) "Daily access to the Internet for an average of 20 hours per week" Can you believe it? Internet addiction actually being useful for something. The idea is amazing to me. It's even more amazing that these people claim Information Systems is the highest paid degree. (I saw someplace that right after you get the masters the average starting salary is $63,000) Here's the link if you're interested... that funny stuff is under Academic Information/ Admissions/ Graduate Student Admission Requirements. I know, half of you out there are probably thinking, "Wasn't she talking about med school last week?" and that is essentially my problem. There is a list a mile long in my head of jobs that I would like, and a list even longer of stuff I'm interested in studying. I don’t see how I could ever possibly pick one thing to do my entire life. At least with the internet and such it’s stuff I do anyway and will do anyway whether I’m getting paid for it or not. Of course, I’m not even sure if that’s a good thing. Basically, I have no idea what I want to do with my life, except that I’m in no hurry to get out of college. I like college a lot. I may not always act like it, especially here, because I generally only write in here when I’m really stressed out…. But I love it. I was made for this whole learning thing. And I love living on campus. I think that when I graduate (with my Bachelor’s) I’m going to go to Europe and stay in youth hostels. I can’t do it before then, because I think 18 might be the magic age for my mom…. She’s panicky about me going anywhere. And I’ll be 18 the summer after I get my Bachelor’s. That was kinda off topic, wasn’t it? Anyway. I’m working on this enormous group project for my political research methods class. Basically, I’m going to have to do the whole thing myself. We had to survey people, which everyone did… but the next step is to put all the information into a computer and analyze it and see what happens… and basically I’m the only one who has an idea of where to start doing that and who cares enough about it to figure it out. So I’ll probably work on that most of tomorrow. Sunday my dad is coming up and we’re going to brunch and going shopping and stuff. And then Sunday night our group is meeting again and I think they’re planning on staying up all night doing it. I’m not… I’m planning on leaving by midnight… but we’ll see. I should get the enormous 14 page research term paper thingy I just handed in back a week from Monday. I’m really nervous about it, because I’m going to be upset with anything below a B+ or A-. And I’d be slightly upset with a B+. That’s the dangerous part about putting so much effort into one thing… it’s really frustrating when it doesn’t pay off. I’m really hoping it will. If I can get an A- in that class I’ll be doing pretty good… I figure I can’t get more than a B+ in Gender Politics, even if I ace the final… and I know I’ll get an A in calculus because it this point I really can’t not… and then there’s Spanish, which I’ll probably get a B+ in, if I’m lucky… and political research methods, that if we do a good job on this group project and I ace the final (probable) I could get an A in. Either that or an A-. And then Foreign Governments (the one with the term paper). If I get an A- in that class and I get all the other grades I think I’m going to get, I’ll have an A- average. Or at least a B+/A-. That’s not bad. Okay, I realize that in reality it’s really good… but I have impossible standards. I really do. Other people tell me “You’re going to do fine” and that is just never good enough. I am definitely a perfectionist in grades. I’d love to get a 3.8, but it never seems to happen. I graduated JCC with a final GPA of 3.66 (that’s high honors) but it still seems kinda low to me. It was 3.79 when I was applying to transfer schools… that’s how I got this scholarship… but my last semester where I took 20 credit hours brought it down. But the funny thing about it is that taking a lot of hard classes that are good and kinda challenging and all that stuff is a lot more important to me than getting a high GPA, which you probably wouldn’t guess from that spiel I just did. But really, if GPA were that important to me would I be taking chemistry next semester? Chemistry is scary to me, though. I’ve never taken a lab science in my life. Which is of course really rare… it’s practically impossible to get to be a junior in college without taking one. So I think I need to take one, just because I think everybody should probably take one. To be well-rounded and all that. Just like a literature class. I’m going to take a literature class before I graduate from here, because I think I should. A novel one, though. I have problems analyzing short stories and poems because they don’t seem worthwhile to me. Novels on the other hand are real art. I live off of novels and I always have for about as long as I can remember. I have a very distinct memory of the first time I got a “big” book. We were in Toledo visiting my Gramma and I was lying on the big guest bed reading a Sesame Street picture book (just the way my mom would lie on the bed reading a book) while my mom was getting ready for bed… and she looked over at me and asked if I wanted to try getting some bigger books, and I got so excited. That thought had never occurred to me. Bigger books were for bigger people. The idea that I could read a big book was amazing. The very next day we went out and bought two. They were Patricia Reilly Giff books… I still have them. The Powder Puff Mystery and something about a missing ring. My guess is that I was in between kindergarten and first grade. I know it couldn’t have been much earlier than that, because I didn’t learn to read until kindergarten, and it couldn’t have been much later because by the beginning (or maybe a little after) of second grade I was reading Nancy Drew books, and there’s quite a ways to go between the two. I guess it could have been as late as Easter of first grade… we probably would have been in Toledo for that. But there has been no turning me back since then. I’ve read basically every children’s classic there is. I’m not even sure how that happened, because I didn’t care whether the books were classics or not. I also read every baby-sitter’s club book they ever made up until number 76 or so when I outgrew them. I think maybe it was the librarians… I think they put classics in strategic places in the kids’ section. But I basically did all of them. And not just the classics- all the other books by the authors of the classics. All of Laura Ingalls Wilder, almost all of L.M. Montgomery (she lost my interest once the characters started having kids. They were too old for me then… so I’d go on to new characters until they had kids… that lady wrote more books than probably any other kid’s type author.)… all of C.S. Lewis… and so many others that it’s impossible to even start telling you them all and you’d be asleep by the time I did anyway. I liked Laura Ingalls Wilder the best… the prarie stories were definitely my thing. But my favorite book for years was Someday Angeline by Louis Sachar. It’s no where near a famous book… I just loved it. I still do. y’know, I just noticed that this entry is turning into a novel itself, so I’ll stop now. For those of you who made it this far, a couple of mini announcements: this page is written in garamond font… if you don’t have it you might want to try and download a copy somewhere if you want to see it the way it’s supposed to be seen. And two, I thought y’all should know I don’t run this through a spell check or grammar check or anything like that. I don’t think that’s terribly honest… besides, if I started doing that, I’d start editing and taking out sentences and sticking in new ones and generally revising my thoughts, which is no good. The idea is that this journal is a snapshot into how I was thinking when I wrote it… not how I was thinking when I revised it a half hour later. 14 days and counting (till vacation) |