Monday, January 3, 2011

Okay you guys...

Shit's getting real. Bar loans (and the deferment requests necessary to keep, ya know, EATING) are due at the same time that bar study starts again. It's a giant WHHHEEEEE! around here. For the record: that's the sound I make as I rapidly lose my mind. It's creepy, psychotic break noise. It's euphoria brought about by not knowing how the fuck to handle the pressure of all of this and so reverting to a child like state. It's Ophelia losing her mind. Or Lear. Either one. (I took up watching Slings and Arrows on Netflix while ill [I heart Paul Gross]. You're welcome for the overabundance of Shakespeare references you're about to get.) You're all SUPER jelz, aren't you? I know it.


I spent the last four days super sick which also meant super cranky which also meant my mother, if I am forced to be at home much, will not survive bar study period. I finally realized most of the time I can hold my tongue and roll my eyes at their entirely pedestrian, completely boring, totally bourgie comments. But being around...not enamored with intellect? people during a period of intense study and being forced to hear them say things like, "College is an overrated waste of money" (a little brother special), makes me incredibly stabby**. Most of the time I think they mean well. I mean, they're not bad people, they are my family. Right now? I think they're mission is to see me fail.

This is a conversation I overheard from the kitchen yesterday when stepdad's BFF was here.
BFF: I brought you a copy of Secretariat and Black Swan. [Daughter] said Black Swan was REALLY good.
Stepdad: Yeah, but she likes that weird shit.

Me from other room, silently: headsplode. YES! WEIRD SHIT! STUFF WITH PLOT! AND MEANINGS THAT NEED TO BE PARSED OUT! AND THEME! AND SUBTEXT! A MOVIE WHERE STUFF DOESN'T BLOW UP AND THERE IS NO FART JOKE! WWWWEEEIIIRRDD!

These are the days that I want to know when my real family is coming to get me. Because the me that has an English degree? Her soul dies a little bit each day that she lives in this house. And it's not even like I'm a Rhodes Scholar or anything. I'm just...ya know...but...fuck, man...(I'm also slowly becoming convinced that the me that has an attention span of a gnat and yet the ambition of someone more grandiose and yet can only, with the best effort, manage to be a lifetime 2.7 gpa, might be compensating for some processing issues. Give me a pill for this! That or I really am just lazy which is probably a worse fate. Anyway, that was a digression.)


My mother got annoyed with me when I was in high school, and still uses this to judge my taste in movies, when I told her I liked The Thin Red Line because I thought it had interesting prose. Apparently the use of the word prose set her off. 

And yes, I KNOW I sound like a totally annoying, completely pretentious little shit right now. They are the ones that do love me through these endeavors and such. But let's be honest: most of you out there? You live far far away from your families. FOR A REASON. 

I also got in trouble the other day when my mother who said, "Well you HAVE to eat dinner when you study. You have to let your mind relllaaxxx. It might as well be with us." and I retorted, "Yes. But. Listening to the ENTIRE plot of the Family Guy during dinner IS NOT RELAXING TO ME!" (Sorry for the excessive all caps, but it's the only way I got to explain my frustration.) 

Anyway, the point of all this is: study period begins now. And by now I mean it should have started two hours ago but I'm a slow mover. Despite my burning desire to kill these people, or my more fervent wish that I had a cute, quiet little cabin with which to lock myself away in for the next two months, this is my reality. And instead of getting angry about it and mad and defeated by this all consuming complete beast of a test, I want to try and keep a positive outlook. I want to take deep breaths and do the best I can to prepare for this. One step at a time, one foot in front of another, all that jazz. Coming up with a game plan and sticking to it. It is completely do-able. I will find and rely on those that I know support me and wish me well. I will try not to be home as much as possible. There's a library a few blocks away. It's San Francisco, I may not drink coffee but there are plenty of coffee shops. I am going to stay as far away from the annoyances of the internet as possible, which means I will not be logging into Facebook. (I didn't deactivate it because what if someone needs me!?! but I definitely logged out. I logged back in at one point today, realized I hated everything about it and then logged out again. I'm pondering the deactivation option...) 

So yeah. That's what's going on up in hurrrr. Being all grown up and stuff. I apologize now for the cranky posts that will inevitably follow. I also apologize for maybe live blogging study at some point so I can parse it all out. Just, ya know, general apologies. 

Let's go get this done...


**I am notoriously not quick witted when it comes to my brother and the stuff he says to me. He gets away with being far harsher and far meaner than anyone else and I just don't bring my A game. He throws me off. So in the imaginary world where I do get my thoughts together I would say this about his college is an overrated waste of money (which he said the other day, btw), "Yes, college is an overrated waste of money. It was sooo silly of me to go better my mind and figure out who I was instead of getting some mid-level job working for the government and never knowing anything outside of the circle of which I was safe. How stupid I was to sit through classes on Greek mythology and Eastern European history. Sorry I wasted my time writing a paper on symbolism in Pynchon and studying the great poets of America and beyond. History of the U.S. in Wars and Pop Culture in America to give me a better understanding of this country was ridiculous! As was short story writing and public speaking classes, allowing me to present a better version of myself. The lessons imbued in a classroom, and those even more valuable ones outside, were just STUPID! So very stupid! Who needs to understand the inner workings of the human mind when we can never question anything, like you? Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology...took 'em all. God forbid I want to, ya know, BE a better person and question the world around me, as well as get a better understanding of it. Sorry I want to appreciate different cultures instead of just tripping blissfully ignorant through life like you do. I SO wasted money reading about and understanding European history before ever getting to visit there and thus have a better appreciation of my time there, the events that led up to the world as it is today. And yes, you like to point out my failures in college. My complete lack of ability with foreign languages led to a change in major and you see as an abject character flaw. But ya know what? I overcame it, graduated anyway. Also, you know why I spent 6 years in undergrad? BECAUSE IT WAS FUCKING FUN! Penny pitcher night, making out with boys under stadium lights, 90k person football games, tailgating, LSU baseball, Mardi Gras break...you tell me you had more fun than me, discovered more about who you are than I did about myself in that time, I will HAPPILY concede that college is an overrated waste of money. But considering fun is a relative term, you won't be able to convince me of that. Therefore: STFU. Oh, and I have more intelligence in my pinky finger because of that overrated waste of money than you do in your whole body. That's why I can play Trivial Pursuit without relying on my daddy to help me." 

This will never happen. But if it did, it'd be GLORIOUS.

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