Feeling Down (Unsure about things)

It all started yesterday, when I went with my mom to put some money in my savings account/ money that my mom was gifting to me start an investing account (complicated). We were talking to the financial advisor, who goes to our church and is a really good family friend. My mom mentioned that my sister was getting a car and that my parents were going to get me one as well. This is the confirmation that I have been waiting for the past two years. I have not asked for anything really for Christmas and Birthdays for the last two years. I have asked for little things like a new alarm clock to replace the one that was not working or a new book. I did get a new phone in October which was my birthday gift from my parents. Naturally, I had been waiting for this confirmation that something was going to happen.

Last night, I started to plan out things to do when I got back to school. For example, I am arriving a week earlier in order to help out with Welcome Week and meet my kids which I am excited for. I am though moving in two days before this happens and was thinking I could spend sometime exploring Private University town. Get some Frozen Yogurt, go see a movie, or pick up dinner. Also if I needed to pick up something from Target or HEB, I could. I could also start a week early on church hunting and get settled before Welcome Week begins.

I was also planning what kind of car, I would like. One can dream, but it is going to be what my parents pick out in the end.

Ford Fiesta Hatchback

I love the hatchback but would settle for the normal car version.

Just forward to a little bit over 24 hours later. We were at dinner tonight and my mom brought up that my sister was looking at a Toyota Yaris. She mentioned that they had not been getting good reviews. I asked, well I have been looking at a Fiesta. No response. The conversation went back to my sister and something about the Yaris. The thing that bothered me the most was I was looking right at my dad when I said it and my sister immediately after I had finished speaking jumped into the conversation bring it back to herself. I repeated myself and the conversation turned again back to my sister. I was reminded on the quote from a song, “Flowers in Your Hair”, by The Lunineers.

Cause it’s a long road to wisdom
But it’s a short one
To being ignored

I have felt this ignored feeling all summer at least since the third week of being home. Mostly, I have just been hanging in my room working on homework, reading, and messing around on my computer. I feel it at work, when I am working the night shift by myself. I got yelled at for staying too late at work, only ten minutes after 11 pm on Monday because something went wrong with the cash. The incident left me embarrassed and unsure if I can do anything right. I was also yelled at in front of costumers and another employee. I also was feeling bummed because I left my sister my ticket to see Khalad Hosseni (author of The Kite Runner) speak and I got my book signed but was really looking forward to hearing him speak about his work.

I know that I should not having gotten my hopes up about the car but I am not just sure how to act anymore should I be surprised or feel down about the situation.

The only thing that seems to be going good is summer school. I have 2 1/2 weeks left.

Summer Stress

Right now, I am taking Chesterton advice, “When you feel overwhelmed, write it out. For writing is always the best reliever of stress.” combined with my best friends advice, “stress eating helps too”.

I really did not think that French would be this difficult, I understand what we are doing in class but I struggle with spelling, pronunciation (vowel and nasal sounds), and new vocabulary. After receiving a low quiz grade and then not doing well on the quiz for Friday (misspelled words that I know how to spell and simple vocab. words that I know). The class is 2 hrs. long which does not bother but I spent so much time on the quiz that I did not get a break which left me very discouraged and beating myself for the rest of the class. Pronunciation is getting worse/ better, it is difficult to decide which. I can tell time really well, the days of the week, numbers, and I am currently working on the alphabet . I don’t really like to talk because I feel embarrassed when I get things wrong. It did not really help that my professor was telling us stories on Friday about past students, who were blind, that took French and got an A.  I just feel that I could do more, more preparation then from what I am already doing. On days that I work, I come how about 2:30 and rest till 3. I start homework around 3 and work till about 6. I have dinner at 6ish with my family and then study after dinner for 30 mins. and then I go to work at 8-11. On days that I don’t work, I have the whole evening to work on French. That has only happened once this week since we started on Tuesday.

I haven’t bothered to start on history in till today, I took yesterday off to relax and read my book. I have a test next week, go figure on the same day as my French exam. I am in-between dropping the French course and taking a new language at Private University in the fall. I am talking to my professor on Monday and going to try and go to tutoring on Monday (depends on how the conversation goes).

I have been trying to ask my sister for help but I not sure if it is me or her but every time I ask for help she gets in this mood. She told me yesterday, that I lack self-confidence which made everything worse. I also made myself sick today from the amount of crying that I have been doing. I have had to be more vocal to my parents about how I feel. When my dad was driving me home on Friday from class because my sister needed the car, I was sitting in the backseat crying and my dad turned around when he was trying to move over lanes, and asked what was wrong.

I feel like if I drop the class, that says something about that give up when things get tough or don’t ask for help. I am not sure if all the stress, stomach pain (making myself ill from being stressed out), breathing problems, back pain (holding tension in my upper back, my mom was giving me a hug today and she could feel the tension running all along my back), tension headaches or crying is all worth it.

Just some thoughts, on the flip side I feel guilty because my course was close to $1,000 and the text book was $300 plus the audio. I also registered for a Greek class at Private University, just well because I have no idea what to do. Somehow, I could stay in my French 1 class that I am also registered which was all in case the credit did not transfer.

I also don’t know if I am being selfish because I want to time to read books and write blog post. Beside this post, I have been working on a post but I have no time to write.

Exciting News

After not getting my internship, the interview was a complete disaster. I did not get the paid internship but I just got back from an interview at the local yogurt shop and I am officially got offered the job. So, this summer will be an adventure in working in the yogurt shop. The other awkward thing was that the girl who was interviewing me was an old friend from high school that I was in two of class with and ate lunch with on “A” days.

This blog over the course of the summer besides talking about literature might turn into the adventures of an English major at yogurt shop. There might be less blogging time and reading time but all in the name of having a job. Here’s to life.

“I Went To The Woods”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” – Henry David Thoreau

“Our bodies are not distinct from Earth, sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies.”- Wendell Berry

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my sense put in order.”- John Burroughs

“Nature often holds up a mirror so we can see more clearly the ongoing processes of growth, renewal, and transformation in our own lives.”- Mary Ann Brussat

Comparison

I feel like that is an odd title to call this blog post but that is what it’s about. I am in the middle of working on two papers, the other night as I was working through some ideas and doing some free writing. I started to become frustrated because I was so close to having evidence to the point I was making but I felt like I was going in circles.

Yesterday, when I went to see my English professor over the frustrations that I was having over the my paper. I ended up talking to my old professor, the one that I had for three semesters, since my professor was out of the office. I was wondering where he was so that he could look at my paper. I was secretly glad that he was not there because I still want work out a few other thoughts before I gave him, my paper to look at. Last night, I was looking through the travel awards because the professor that I am the lab assistant for had posted which Graduate Assistants had been given awards to go to conferences. I naturally was looking through the English department and saw my old professor’s name and that he was going to a conference sometime in May. Then I started poke around in previous years and saw his name again. The title of the presentation that he was given was listed and the names of his papers just sound so profession and put together. Sure, that is his job.

I was starting to beat myself up a little because I was questioning someday would I ever be like that. Since I have ambitions to be a professor ( I don’t think I could trade reading books, listening to lectures, learning, and writing papers for an office job), would I ever write papers and share with the world my life’s passion for Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O’Connor, Wendell Berry, or some other author that I yet to discover.

I found this quote on Pinterest:

This quote is telling me that even though I still have a long road ahead of me that it is all going to be worth it in the end, that I should not compare my professor work with my work because I am only beginning on this long journey called life.

Telling Stories with: Wendell Berry

The other week in class when my professor was handing out our final paper prompts, he included a reading list. As most of my friends know, I am a sucker for a good reading list. I collect them like some people collected baseball cards, rocks, or rare books. I collect reading list, I have a whole collection of about four and this one makes five. It is about five or six books long. I decided to try one out and bought The Art of Commonplace, by Wendell Berry.

The Art of Commonplace is a collection of agrarian essays about the environment and presents the arguement on how argiculture society would cure with stress, anxiety, ill-health, and destructiveness of contemporary American culture.

Writing it, we shape it with our hands. Reading aloud what we have written- as we must do, if we are writing carefully- our language passes in at the eyes, out at the mouth, in at the ears, the words are immersed and steeped in the sense of the body before they make sense in the mind. They cannot make sense in the mind until they have made sense in the body. Does shaping one’s words with one’s own hand impart character and quality to them, as does speaking them with one’s own tongue to the satisfaction of one’s own ear? There is no way to prove that it does. On the other hand, there is no way to prove that it does not, I believe that it does (76).

The difference between a path and a road is not only the obvious one. A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual of familiarity (12).

We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsibly within the human estate. It defines us as we are; not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poor or joylessly or selfishly or along (134).

Our bodies are involved in the world. Their needs and desires and pleasures are physical. Our bodies hunger and thirst, yearn toward other bodies, grow tired and seek rest, rise up rested, eager to exert themselves. All these desires may be satisfied with honor to the body and its maker, but only if much else besides the individual body is brought into consideration (147).

I have not finished reading yet but Berry wants us to turn back to the land because we are losing ourself in a society where we can isolate ourself and rely heavily on technology in order for our needs to be met.

General Life Update

I was trying to think of a good title for this post but this is all that I could came up with. I am done with work early, like a whole good three hours early. I have no idea what to do with my time. Usually, I make plates (NGM and RNAi), apparently we are completely overstocked on plates so there was no need for me to make any. I ended up gathering the trash, washing dishes, and cleaning the chemical room. Life of a lab assistant.

I also had my first advising as an English major. I am in love with my schedule for next semester already. Three English courses (two Lit. and one writing), life could not be any better. There is still a ton of work that needs to be done with terms of grammar and fragments (making complete sentences), I was doing so well in till this semester. Usually, I had gotten done to almost none in my final American LIt. paper and had about 4 in my first British Lit. paper. Umm…. where did all my hard work go? I am taking Modern English Grammar, English Literature of the Seventh and Eighteenth Century ( going to be a difficult class, the professor demands a lot out of his students) , and American Lit. from Whitman. I am also taking French, Yoga, and Student/ Peer Leadership.

The reason that I am taking Student/ Peer Leadership is because I got into a peer/ mentor leadership program along with teaching a U1000 class (which is a transition class for freshmen). I am hoping to have a FAS (Freshmen Academic Seminar)  class, so I am with a group for the whole semester and not just six weeks.

Also, in about 17 days, I am going to be running with a friend in my first 5 K. I am completely not ready for it. It’s a Color Run, so I am not really sure if I should be training for it or just go the day of and have a good time.

My sister is about to graduate with her associate degree in about a week and a half. I am super proud of her and all that she has accomplished at the CIA (not the real CIA). She is then getting ready to move back to Virginia for 15 weeks and then back to New York to finish her Bachelor  degree. Over break, I had to explain to her how advising worked and how to prepare for one when she returns to school.

That’s life in a nutshell.