A Spare Moment in the Madness

There are exactly nine days until I sit in a stadium with 40 or 50,000 of my fellow degree candidates and their families and friends and listen to the standing Secretary of Defense hopefully say something interesting about American foreign policy. Until then, my life is preoccupied by the breakneck pace of this last week of instruction and finals.

I have the oral portion of my Chinese final on Friday morning and the written portion on–get this–Saturday morning. For the oral portion, we are to write a 200 word essay, which we are then to memorize and recite. Why couldn’t this portion of the final be worth 85% instead of the 15% it counts for? I am struggling with writing my draft.

Then tonight I have my first final in a media effects class–where while the class has been interesting–the midterm did not, and by extension the final, will not at all correlate well to the lectures in class or meager material found in the book. In a word: anxiety.

Next Monday is my mass media law final and I don’t expect too much deviation from the quarter-long game plan there. Way out in the back, and incidentally only a day before my Communication departmental graduation ceremony, is my European media systems final. (fragment)  Given that the lowest grade I’ve made in that class is a 3.8, I don’t expect any trouble with the final exam.

Family flies in next Thursday and I’m thinking about coming home in the next few weekends–or for job interviews–whichever comes first. In the meantime, I’ll bask in the splendor of a precious few, quiet, morning sun moments–though the stock ticker blares in the background.

Making May

What a strange month May was. I started to write, but then I realized this was poignant and enough.

At it again.

So it is 4a.m. and can you guess what I am doing? Chinese homework. I just thought I’d let you know.

Can I talk for a minute about how mad I am?

Frustration.

It’s 3:30 in the morning and I am at school. I am desperately, frantically, hopelessly, despairingly–scribbling Chinese characters into my iPhone’s 词典 (that’s dictionary if you don’t read Chinese) so that it can tell me what the character is and what it means and how to pronounce it, so that I can then understand the problem on my homework worksheet, so that I can then painstakingly try and figure out the answer in a similar one-character-at-a-time fashion.

For those of you who didn’t know: being that it was my last quarter at UW, and being that I had always wanted to make the time to take Chinese; I convinced the Chinese professor to give me an add code to take Chinese 103, even though I had not taken Chinese 101 or Chinese 102. No sweat, I thought. I got this. I’m smart enough to push my way through it and catch up.

Fuck was I wrong. Yes, that is how strongly I feel about this. Enough to swear. I am so mad. I’ve always believed that if I just worked hard enough, or if I just put enough effort into something, that I could do anything I want to and do it well. I am not doing well in this Chinese class and I am on the verge of dropping it. I tried and tried and tried to do my homework tonight to the best of my ability and I simply couldn’t. I know it will be all wrong and that’s honestly the best I can do. If I were to stay here until 7:30 in the morning and get no sleep and then drive home and change for work and eat no breakfast and then drive straight back to class–maybe; just maybe I might get my homework right.

But I did that all last week and I still flunked my last test. Because guess what?! For all of my memorization of the patterns and words that we learn in class, the test features words that the students learned last year that I still don’t know. So I’m on the cusp of saying something I think I’ve probably never said in my life, “I give up.”

Better to withdraw and cut my losses than tank my GPA further goes the reasoning. I’ll talk to 老师 tomorrow and see what she thinks I should do. I suck and I hate it. Fuck my life.

Der Schweiz Ist Sehr Gut.

Taking a moment out of my whirlwind morning to pen a quick post, you might have noticed my Rome post disappeared. Tricked you, didn’t I? It was unintentional of course, but I nevertheless had an amazing time in Switzerland last week AND as a bonus, got to go home on the way back. When I have more time, I will–of course–post some pictures and talk about my trip at some length.

In the meantime, the Schweinegrippe has taken the U.S. by storm (that’s Swine Flu in German, in case you couldn’t parse it), and the Notre Dame plot scandal has thickened. The ever fearful mess of our would-be-Socialist-except-it’s-not-even-that government only seems to be growing and to top it off, I have a midterm on Wednesday and a test tomorrow–neither of which I feel the slightest bit ready for.

Welcome back to the United States of America. I’d like to explicate on some or all of those themes, but as the rat race of my American life would have it; I hardly have the time to think for pleasure, much less to set those thoughts down on the Internet for public scrutiny. So my takeaway for you (to borrow from American businessspeak), or my point with this trifle of a post? Reflect on the fact that in Switzerland everything closes on Sunday. Everything. And any other day of the week, everything still shuts down no later than eight p.m. (And starts no earlier than ten a.m.)

Political Humor

People put these sorts of videos up all the time, though it was especially easy to do so with President Bush since he was such an awful public speaker–the reason I posted this video is for 0:40 through 1:42. Watch that segment where Obama is addressing what appears to be a Southern, black church community. His voice goes completely ‘ghetto.’ I had never seen Obama speak like that before, nor have I ever seen him speak like that since. This really affirms for me on a fundamental level the man’s lack of personal integrity, and his willingness to sell himself for political ambition. Wow.

Ugly Truth: If Obama spoke like that all the time, I guarantee you he would not be President of the United States today.

Whew

Another quarter bites the dust. And rather than be cliché and say, “Oh my god; it feels so surreal! I can’t believe time has gone by so fast and I am graduating in three months!” instead it feels more like, “Thank God. It is about time.” Grades have still not come out and as always, I am nervous, though I don’t know what for–since provided that I pass all my classes, at this point it really doesn’t matter what I make. I kind of feel like though, that grades should all be posted by now but I am not exactly sure when they’re supposed to be posted by.

This week I am studying my ass off to get ready for my Chinese class that starts on Monday. I am thrilled that before I graduate I get to take at least one Chinese class. I am so interested in Chinese and have been unable to take the class for some time now.

Other than that, I might be going on vacation to Australia next month, which would be pretty exciting if it works out. I’ll say more once I know for sure!

Midweek Rumble

So it’s been business as usual this week, with school and work humming along. I did really well on another midterm and without revealing which one it was, will admit that I did absolutely no studying or preparation of any sort for it and still only missed 6 points.

That being said, it was a wake-up call for me to realize how much better I could have done had I actually made some effort at studying. It’s always a struggle balancing the various tasks I have in my life; so sacrifices have to be made here and there.

I did get a lot of studying done while I was home last week so that was a huge help. Next quarter I’ve decided that I will finally make the time to take Chinese so I may be looking at a 20 credit quarter in addition to work. Better to be too busy than to sit around with nothing to do.

Threat Level Orange

When do you think we will ever stop being at threat level orange? This is a question I asked myself as I headed towards the Delta departures passenger drop-off this morning.

Even though the so-called Department of Homeland Security was not created until sometime later, it has felt like America has been under the ominous threat level Orange since September 11, 2001.

Like the “Holiday Season” or Lent or any other specially designated period of time, the heightened security level implied by threat level Orange loses its meaning if it becomes everyday, all the time. And indeed it has. Apocalypse fatigue is what I think most Americans feel. Especially regular air travelers like me.

You almost sort of wish that it would just shoot up to threat level BLACK Boom! Death! Destruction! Imminent Catastrophic Loss of Life Expected! The event of apocalypse nearly seems preferable to living in the constant threat of unrealized fears.

I might hold out hope that the new administration will take action to reverse course down the path of militant statism we’ve been unwittingly led by former president George W. Bush, if only because Obama owes the ACLU-loving nut jobs who helped push his candidacy over the top a token of appreciation. However, like even his supporters are starting to realize, such hope would be too generous of an appraisal.

An Unexpected Homecoming

Hi folks, I’m home for the week. Thanks everyone who has kept my grandmother in your prayers; they paid off because her surgery went well and she is back at home recovering today. For those of you who didn’t know, my grandmother very recently had two strokes and in the whirlwind of a weekend was required to have immediate surgery to prevent future strokes.

As soon as I found out, I got on the next flight home–my complaints about Delta can be saved for another day–and I will be here through Saturday. I’ll be back home Sunday afternoon with no shortage of things to catch up on I’m sure.

In the meantime, if you’d like to see me or hang out, I’ll be pretty busy with my grandma, but I might have some downtime for coffee or a meal, so feel free to give me a call.

I had been working on some posts about recent news events, local and national, but given my recent personal situation and the myriad of other things I am responsible for between school and work, it just hasn’t penned out.