It's been a while.
I say that a lot. You know what? From now on, I'm not going to says "it's been a while." We're just all going to accept that it's been a while and we're going to move on from there. Good? Good.
Moving right along then. My snot froze this morning. It was the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of all time. It was like negative ten degrees out and I was literally unable to breathe because of the snot-cicles blocking my nostrils. I didn't even know something like that could happen.
I wore two pairs of pants and I couldn't feel my legs for like half an hour after I came inside. I'm pretty sure if someone stabbed me in the leg, I'd be all "oh, okay" instead screaming like you're supposed to do when you're stabbed. I assume. I wouldn't know. I haven't ever been stabbed.
But yeah. It's cold. Like, obscenely, irrationally, stupidly cold. I even let someone drive me home from work last night. My phone was all "lol, it's negative a billion degrees outside" and I was all like "okay it's roughly between Hoth and the ninth circle of hell out there, pls drive me random work friend."
Great story, I know.
Winter break happened. It was fun. There were holidays. On New Years, I got drunk and played glow stick tag with my family because I'm one of the cool kids. Glow stick tag is the best game out there and I will physically fight anyone who disagrees with me.
I got some sw33t l00t for Christmas. My dad got me a dagger. It's sharp and pointy and awesome and I stabbed by coffee table with it. I also got tickets to bacon fest (because that's a thing, apparently) and a lot of batman stuff. All in all, it was a successful Christmas.
But now it's over. And I am back at school.
Ugh.
School.
I did manage to do some clever scheduling that means I only have classes two days a week. Unfortunately, that also means my classes start at 8 in the morning. As in AM. As in, I have to wake up at 7 to get there on time.
On a related note, I'm pretty sure my neighbors all hate me because I have to set like fifty alarms in order to wake up on time, My walls are soooo thin. I feel like my neighbors can hear me breathing sometimes. And now they all get to wake up at 7 with me. Yaaaaaay.
But, no, I'm really almost done. Weird, right? I am almost a college-degree-having person. It's a stupid degree that's all useless and stuff, but still. Degree. It's progress. Maybe. It may be progress.
I don't know what I'm doing next year. To get a graduate degree or not to get a graduate degree. The eternal question. Also, to pay back my students or to fake my own death. More important questions.
Anyway.
In other news, I shaved part of my head. Or, I paid someone else to do it. Because...me with a razor. Do I really need to elaborate on why that's a bad idea?
But, yeah. That happened. It was a Tuesday...I was bored...it seemed like the thing to do. Shrug. I don't know. I feel like it will help me when I interview for adult-person jobs.
So, if that sweetens the pot for any potential bosses out there. I have most of a sociology degree, a dagger, a half-shaved head and a can-do attitude. Hire me!
Whatever. I'll figure it out. I usually figure this stuff out. Sometimes. I sometimes figure this stuff out.
Yawn.
I should go.
Classes are a thing that are happening here in a minute.
Laterz.
One week left to go of sophomore year, you guys. One more week. And then I am free to be unemployed and poor in the comfort of my own home instead of unemployed and poor at college
Hoo-rah.
So, as of next week, I will personally be halfway done with my college education with a degree in journalism/telecommunication/advertising/graphic design/criminal justice/sociology. (Mostly criminal justice, but hey. I've majored in all of those things, so whatever.) So I think I'm a credible source so far as college and stuff goes. I'm part of that culture, or whatever you want to call it. I'm cool, I'm hip, I'm part of the target audience that the Twilight movies tried (and failed) to market to.
(Mostly, the Twilight movies ended up being marketed to 13 year old girls and middle-aged women unsatisfied with their marriages. I was an advertising major for nine days. I know these things.)
Anyway, I was bored and thinking about college as, you know, a concept. I came up with five things that I really wish someone would have told me before I came here and my life got all screwed up.
Without further ado...
The Five Things No One Tells You About College
1. The Monopoly Money Effect
Unless you are one of the lucky few with rich parents who are also generous, you will be paying for college yourself. Just, an FYI...college is stupid expensive.
I know I'm probably the first person to tell you this awful, awful fact, but it's true. I could sell all of the organs in my body on the Taiwanese black market and still be in debt after college. I know. I checked.
(My debt adds about 75 cents a day in interest to my rather impressive running total. So...there's that.)
I'm paying for my degree with stupent loans (which is a combination of the words "student loans" and "stupid loans" because they are both things. Stupid, I mean. And also for students.) It's pretty cool because I just sign a piece of paper and them I get all of this money. Money for books! Money for food! Money for netflixs!
Money that I, eventually, am supposed to pay back. That part, the whole "this is not my money to have for keeps, this is my money to use right now and then give back later" doesn't really seem all that important right now. It's like monopoly money. It's not like real human money that I need to pay back. It's colorful paper money that charges interest in fun not in dollars.
That's a lie. It does charge interest in dollars. So now I have negative dollars Which is, like, the opposite of fun.
But, right now, it's hard to visualize the pile of money that I owe my school. Instead, I visualize the pile of xbox games I could buy with the money I owe my school. And v-neck tees. I look awesome in v-neck tees.
So, yeah. Monopoly money. Except, in this scenario Free Parking is actually $2,000 per semester parking and the Community Chest gives you free rape whistles instead of cash.
Like I said...college is weird.
2. Motivation is Hard
In high school, there was always someone there to tell you to get your shit done. Be it your parents, your teachers or your guidance counselor, there was always someone there telling you that you had to do your homework before you were allowed to take naps and eat pizza.
I mean, you could ignore them if you tried hard enough, but there were always around. Like gnats. Or very over-involved prison wardens. It was really hard to not do things in high school because there was always someone there to give you shit about not doing it.
But in college, you can do what you want. Want to sleep through your 11:00 class? That's fine! Whatever, bro...we know you have other things going on. No one is going to come remind you that you have a test you didn't study for or an essay exam that you're currently sleeping through. That's your business.
You have to make yourself study and make yourself go to class and make yourself not eat ice cream and pizza rolls for every meal. And it's really hard. Why would I go to class when instead I can stay in my dorm all day, not put on real pants and play xbox for literally fourteen hours without stopping?
That's one of the many reasons why college is awesome. And why so many people flunk out.
3. Graduating is Confusing
Have you filled out forms w, 92, button and a² + b² = c²? Have you taken all your classes in perfectly sequential order? Have you filed out a zoning permit for the ground you are currently standing on? Have you slaughtered a goat to the the old gods?
Oh, you slaughtered it on a Tuesday...yikes. I'm afraid only goats sacrificed during full moons that fall on Wednesday are admissible.
So sorry, but it looks like you aren't going to graduate this year! Try again next time.
This is how it feels. This is exactly how it feels. It is way too complicated to graduate. In high school, people were always hounding you and making sure you had the right credits and all the other stuff you needed to graduate. Here, they just kind of shrug and say "everything will probably be okay, probably."
You know what? They are probably lying to you, probably.
As someone who had majored in a stupid number of different things, I am well acquainted with the guidance office and the people who work there. Their favorite things to do are to put you on hold, transfer your call and "accidentally" loose your paperwork.
Sometimes, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be in college forever. Literally.
4. Be Yourself (Plus a Million)
For many people, college is the first time they've really been without adult supervision. They are free to do whatever they want and nobody can tell them no. Little Jimmy can dance if he wants to, he can leave his friends behind because his Dad isn't there anymore to tell him that he needs to stop dancing and go outside to play with the other kids.
Every little bad or annoying thing about a person is magnified by, like, a thousand in college. In high school, I was sort of antisocial and I was kind of into video games. Now, I very rarely leave my dorm and spend a good three hours a day xboxing (that's the verb form of playing xbox not, you know, boxing with the letter x).
Kids who sort of liked photography? Yeah, say goodbye to their faces because they will be hidden behind a lens for the next four years. Kids who had a lot of boyfriends or girlfriends? They will become straight-up prostitutes. Kids who occasionally partied? They will likely never attend a class. Kids who liked going to the gym? They will never stop exercising!
Girls who were snarky and kind of liked to blog? They turn out awesome. And sexy. And awesome.
Yeah, well...I fully support people taking happiness where they can find it, but it is, just, really annoying sometimes. People become themselves in college. But...like to an extreme degree. A disturbingly extreme degree.
5. The Bubble
College is not like the real world. Not even a little bit. In the real world, you cannot wander around at four in the morning just because you feel like it, order a pizza and them sleep until noon the next day. In college, no one judges you for that behavior. That behavior is expected. If you get up before nine in the real world, you are a normally functioning human being. You get up before nine in college, you either have a class or are still awake from the night before.
College life is a bubble. People can see you on the inside of the bubble and they sort of understand what you're doing, but something about it is off and you can't really see all that well past the soapy exterior.
The bubble is pretty cool when you're inside. Everything is pretty colors and you get free sandwiches sometimes and everyone understands the references on Glee. But when you leave the bubble, like to go home or to leave campus, everything seems sad and depressing and nobody wants to debate philosophy with you, they just want you to order your damn coffee and go. This leads to a bubble-cling effect where the people inside the bubble want nothing to do with the people outside the bubble.
The people outside the bubble are weird. They wake up too early, they don't read the same books or listen to the same music as you and it's scary because they used to be in the bubble too, didn't they? Then you start to panic about the bubble popping and what on earth you'll do when you are forcibly ejected from the bubble and are no longer allowed to ignore the people on the outside.
And that's where graduate students come from.
That's my list. Do with it what you will. I need to go see if I can score a free sandwich from some guy on the corner. Later, all.
Today...
A swarm of vicious wood bees almost killed me. It was thisclose.
For those of you not in the know, wood bees are the huge black ones that are approximately the size and shape of my big toe the time that I dropped my laptop on it.
I don't understand how they fly. I really, really don't.
My problem with wood bees aside, I have had a very odd week. It's just been all-around weird.
We'll start with this weekend, shall we? We shall and you get no say in it. Ha.
Anyway, I went to Cinciatti this weekend (yes, I know I misspelled that. Google Chrome had informed me.). While in Sinsenatty (at this point I'm juts being a smart ass) I visited Ikea.
My mind was blown.
If there's ever an zombie apocolypse, I'm headed straight for Ikea. There's enough food/couches there to feed/sit an army. Despite my Ides of March resolution not to spend any more loan money on stupid stuff, I bought a whole ton of stupid stuff.
Those purchases included but were not limited to a pair of shark-flops (flip-flops with sharks on them), a tiny little wooden man and an aloe vera plant that I named Vladimir Putin.
...I can spell Vladimir Putin right on the first try, but not Cincinattii. Mine is an odd sort of mind.
Anyhow, it turned out that my Ikea escapades were just, like, a set up for the wackiness that would ensue in the rest of my Cincinatty trip.
I would spend paragraphs upon paragraphs describing what led up to this particular incident, but I really don't think I can honestly justify it.
I had a nervous breakdown. In the middle of a Ralph Lauren.
I'm not kidding.
I shouted at my shopping companions that they were "spending too much effing money" and that their Ralph Lauren clothes were "the stupidest things that I had ever seen."
I almost threw a vase out the window.
There was a lot of uncomfortable silence and staring in Ralph Lauren after I was through. Also, apparently, I've been saying Ralph Lauren wrong for my entire life. Lauren is not pronounced "Lauren." It's apparently pronounced Ralph Lau-REN. There's a straight-up nonsensical emphasis on the REN.
Of all the douche-baggery in all the malls of all the worlds...Ralph Lau-REN is the freaking worst.
Hold me back. I may just burn down a country club.
I hear buzzing...
...the end is nigh. The wood bees have found my super-secret hiding place.
Danielle OUT
Today...
I almost bought an ENFORCER on ebay!
Then some jerk outbid me. Jerk.
I have about, eh, $900 in my bank account right now. And while that may sound like a lot for a poor college student to have in her bank account...it's student-loan-money. So someday I'm going to have to pay all that money back. Also, interest. Lots and lots of interest.
I had to take debt counseling classes online this summer. I'm totally serious. It was terrible. I'm already in thousands of dollars of debt...now you're going to make me take classes about being in debt too?
Jerks.
Anyway, if you wanted to see a fully compiled list of the annoying bitc...ahem, girls you meet at college, you can find it here.
Moving on to other things...
Guess who has two oddly short thumbs and no boyfriend?
...don't make me say it.
Oh, fine. THIS GIRL.
This girl is also coming up on the worst month of the year. February.
I hate February for three very justifiable reasons. I also hate it for about three-dozen non-justifiable reasons, but I won't bore you with those.
1. It can't spell February. So far, google chrome had corrected my attempts at spelling February to "fur brewery" and "fib rarely." So there's that reason.
2. My birthday is in February. The 11th, to be exact. I am not someone who enjoys getting older. Not one bit. Because, really, every year I have to say I've spent another year of my life single. And, once you tell people you're 19 years single...they're going to start to ask what's wrong with you. (Beyond the obvious, of course.)
3. Need I even type it? Valenti...ahem, SAD day is in February. (For those of you not in the know or in happy relationships, SAD day is Single's Awareness Day...day.)
On the bright side, that is the one day a year that I can lie in bed like a slug all day, eat an entire quart of cookie dough ice cream, and listen to "I Can't Make You Love Me" on repeat and none of you are allowed to judge me.
People will look at me and say "What the hell are you doing?"
And I say, "I'm single."
And then they flinch sympathetically and skip off to have a day filled with candy hearts and happiness.
I know I'm starting this whole "countdown to Single's Awareness Day day" thing pretty early...but I'm pacing myself. We're gonna build up slowly, don't you worry.
Anyway. There's homework and SAD day prepping to be done.
Danielle OUT.
