When I first made myself commit to posting weekly, I was trying to
make myself spend a little time every day of the week thinking and
writing and whittling away at old drafts. Instead I’m here at 10:40 PM
basically starting a brand-new post. Oh well.
I last blogged about music in
2013. I tagged two other posts with “music” since then, but neither
is particularly deep: 8 Songs for 18
Years and Drop-In Filler.
Let’s continue the tradition of self-analysis part IIs from nowhere…
I meditated a little bit in
Conversations about “lacking
experience or interest in a lot of the commonly discussed culture.” I
think this applies to me and music as well, although not as fully. Back
in Taiwan, when mentally bracing myself for coming to the U.S. for
college, I sometimes worried about not knowing enough about pop music
and bands and not listening enough to popular albums, and having trouble
integrating into the culture for this.
Turns out, among the communities I wandered into and friends I made,
it was a more frequent obstacle that I didn’t know enough about
classical music and composers. Whoops. Some of the names rang faint
bells from either music class or conversations with high school friends
who did do classical music, but I could not identify or remember any
styles or eras, and would remember composers only by unreliable first
letters or unusual substrings of their names.
(all the times that you beat me unconscious I forgive)
angst [████████ ] (8/10)
We’re overdue for one of these posts, I guess.
(all the crimes incomplete – listen, honestly I’ll live)
Last-ditch feeble attempts at cleaning and reorganizing my desk and
shelf before I figuratively drowned in academics led to me finding
-
the Google physical linked puzzle, which I placed in the Kitchen Lounge
to nerd-snipe people, successfully
-
a Burger King crown from the previous career fair
-
ID stickers from the Putnam, one of which is now on my keyboard cover
cover (← not a typo), just because
-
assorted edibles, like candies and jellies, which I ate; as well as the
half-finished Ziploc bag of candy from my FPOP, six months ago, which I
just tossed in the trash
-
a box. It’s just, like, a box. I don’t know what goes or went into it
I feel more in control of my living quarters. Marginally. Guess I’ll
be fine.
(mr. cool, mr. right, mr. know-it-all is through)
Pros and cons of having a departmental advisor in your area of
interest:
-
Pro: the advisor knows something about the classes you want to take and
can help you choose classes
-
Con: the advisor knows something about the classes you want to take and
can help you choose classes
So. It looks like I’ve officially graduated.
I have to wonder whether it really means anything. Taiwan’s system
classifies the grades neatly into 6/3/3 sections, but then our bilingual
department also uses the somewhat illogical and faintly sexist
freshman-sophomore-junior-senior naming thing, in which the big jump
happened last year.
Neither of these naming issues, of course, really matter. Shakespeare
says, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Nor, I would
think, do the different color of uniforms we have to wear (pink, if you
didn’t know.) But AP classes probably count for something.
I am going to take AP Biology. Why did I pick AP Biology anyway? It
seemed like a reasonable default choice. I guess I would like to know
something more about the mysteries of life and consciousness to guide my
philosophical side, and many of the other courses looked too murderously
intense. The perfect stepping stones into the giant hamster wheel of
overachievement that everybody is crazy about here. But then I learned I
still received eight chapters to study by myself during summer vacation,
alongside the English reading assignment. Oh well, so much for
relaxation.
You know, I used to think of this issue, about all the academic work
we students pile onto ourselves and all the ensuing stress and chaos,
from a strange detached third-person viewpoint. Not everybody has a mind
that is fit for all that brainwork. Some people have to do the artistic,
imaginative things. Some people cannot function optimally in our intense
learning environment. Somehow, imperceptibly, according to my apparently
not-all-that-bad grades, I put myself in the crazy book-grinding
category, and I am having second thoughts.
I don’t feel the energy for all this intense future yet… The past is
still so close, so vivid, so attractive. Our graduation trip, for
instance.
Yeah, okay, fine, I admit it, what follows is a rough record of our
graduation trip that has been stuck in draft limbo for approximately
forever, and I was trying to segue into it. I’m a perfectionist, what
can I say?