4 posts tagged “bored”

I hate being away from close friends for long periods of time.  Vox, however, is not a close friend.  It's a website and I'm okay with not visiting a website for a long time.

I sit here in my apartment at about 3 in the morning chipping away at a paper that I honestly doubt is enough to resurrect my grade in this stupid, dry, Sociology class.  Ok so, grades.  Let's talk about those.  My grades are definitely not where I'd like them to be and if they are any indication of the lifestyle I'll have when I'm out of school, I'll be very disappointed with my life.  I don't think grades will play that big of a role in MOST cases, except obviously they have a lot to do with grad school so if that's what your future holds well I guess grades should probably be pretty important to you.  I don't think grad school is for me.  I have a fatty student loan to pay off, though, so I need to figure out some way to achieve my ideal lifestyle without relying on my stellar student success.  Pierre Bordieu, who I am reading in one of my classes right now, identifies some different kinds of capital that can lead to success like cultural capital, social capital, economic capital, blah blah blah.  So I'll have to find some way to utilize other forms of capital available to me to reach my goal... my goal which right now is just paying off my student loan.  This blog is getting boring quickly.  Moving on.

SO.  When I was a little kid, there were foods that I decided I didn't like for whatever reason that made sense to me at the time.  They included but were not limited to: breakfast burritos, bell peppers, Italian dressing, the crusts of bread, bananas, and any form of sushi.  I still don't like bell peppers, mainly I don't like the smell, but I also don't like the taste.  I still find Italian dressing unappetizing, but I could probably eat it, but everything else I've learned that I actually like.  For example, breakfast burritos.  I think this stemmed from my "I hate scrambled eggs" phase which I went through because once I threw up after eating scrambled eggs (thanks for the salmonella, Mom).  In any case, I'm over it now.  I'm eating crusts of bread now just for the sake of convenience.  I now know they will not give me the curly hair I've always wanted and that my parents told me that only to mock me later, but now it's just a hassle to take the crust off.   Bananas I can't remember why I didn't like them, but one day I ate one and realized it was delicious.  End of story.  My family probably remembers one infamous visit to a Japanese restaurant when my grandma kept ordering more and more food for me because I didn't like a single thing they gave me except for miso soup, at last.  I think my taste buds just changed or something because I suddenly don't find it disgusting anymore.

My downward spiral into introspection continues.  I still really love ketchup, that will never change.

There are more interesting things I could write about.  I have a real live boyfriend now, for one.  It's been official since Valentine's Day (because we're cute like that), so it's new and I don't know how many people have heard by now.  Probably all of my Vox friends by now, but whatever, I'm telling you now.  His name is Shaun, and we both work at the gym so that's where we met.  He's half Arab, half white, about 6 feet tall, 150lbs and has fantastic cheekbones.  I have to interrupt the pointlessness of this blog to say that I think he's incredible.

Spring break is coming up in about three weeks and I don't have any idea what I'll be doing.  Last spring break I went to Sevilla and I really wish I could do that again, but I'd be by myself and broke.  So, that's a no.  I think I might actually stay at UCLA at least a few days and work my crappy job at the gym because I'll get paid time and a half for it.

It's been half a hour and I think it's time for me to get back to my paper.  Maybe I'll write a better post later.  Maybe I won't.

Yeah, I always checked my vox neighborhood but then I read Shannon's post and realized it had been a long long time since I've written in here.  And my last post was a clip from Extras.  I hope you all watched it, too.

Anyway.

It's finals week here at UCLA and I have a Sociology final on Tuesday and a portfolio of revised essays due on Wednesday, then I'm done!  I should probably be studying or writing but since I finished my Psych final I've just checked out for the quarter.  It's a little sad because my psych class was my absolute favorite class of all time and I didn't want it to end, but it happened to be the one that ended first, and my lowest grade will probably be in that class.

I was distracting myself from studying last night and looking at grad schools for psych.  Well, mainly I just compared UCLA and CSUN's psych programs just to see what difference there was between a CSU and UC.  I think I'd rather go into research but I'm really doubting myself academically.  I know this is my first quarter at UCLA and it'll take me time to get used to something that's not ridiculously easy, so I'm trying to be reasonable here, but I can't help but wonder if I'm capable of doing something really interesting.  First and foremost, I need to see if psychology is even something I would like to practice for a career.  I talked to my psych professor about working with him in various research opportunities to just do anything to familiarize myself with the field.  He told me to send him my resume, so I'm excited to see if that will work out!  I think I want to go into research rather than counseling... but I know that requires more math and science skills that I may or may not have.  I'm more worried about whether I'd actually be able to focus and buckle down and do all the work.  But that's normal isn't it?  I'm just at that stage in my life where I question myself and push myself and find myself and blah blah blah.

Why is my roommate's alarm going off?  It's 1am, silly.

So, other things going on.  I saw Andrew Bird at the Orpheum on Friday.  I was the most incredible experience I've ever had, I think.  Whenever I talk about it I inevitably end up babbling on like a teenybopper fangirl, so I'm going to hold off on that for now.  It was probably one of my favorite nights of my life, though.  Oh, aside from having that bum follow us into McDonald's screaming "come here girl!"  Scary.

I'm also learning to swing dance!  I'm only a beginner but it's something I really want to continue and get better at.  It's a great hobby, plus I've met some really awesome new people.  Last Monday I went out with a few of them and even though my feet were covered in blisters after about 4 or 5 hours of dancing, I had a great time.  My favorite dance partner, Kevin, and I have such a wonderful charleston.  It's not that wildly hopping and flailing thing... yet, but it is beautiful.  We also do this one really awesome move called "the pretzel" and on Monday night couples kept coming up and asking us how to do it.  I guess we just looked that good =)  I'm really bummed that UCLA isn't offering a more advanced swing class next quarter.  They are offering salsa, which I'm considering, but I wonder if it'll be as fun as swing.

Well it's time for me to go back to my essays.  I hope you have a good night, friends.  Hopefully I'll see you all over the holidays!

Here's a video of Andrew Bird performing Imitosis, just cause:

I guess it actually hasn't been a slow day, but I'm still really bored.  There was that sign from God that Kevin should dress up as Old Gregg for Halloween (although the tutu would need to be dyed pink), maybe the rest of my day just pales in comparison to the magnitude of that coincidence. 

Oh, and I actually got some good news via the phone, it just happened right as I found the tutu so it totally slipped my mind.  I don't know who all I told about this, but there's this organization call International Student Volunteers and their name is pretty self explanatory.  Students travel to different countries to perform volunteer work.  Except there is more to it.  Basically, it's a four-week program that's available in Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Thailand and Croatia.  The first two weeks are made up of volunteer work which can be either community development (building houses, working with kids) or conservation projects (working with animals, the environment, etc) and the last two weeks are an "adventure" program where you do really epic stuff that varies depending on which country you choose.  You can also customize your program by adding on a second or third country. 

So anyway, I applied because that sounds like the most amazing summer vacation ever and I got in!  That's not really a big surprise or relief, though, because the people I talked to said that anybody will get in unless they put something down like "I'd rather eat sea turtles than save them."  So assuming I accept this I am most DEFINITELY going to Costa Rica to do the conservation project and adventure program and possibly adding on the Australian adventure program, if I get the money.  For the volunteer work I can choose from any number of non profit organizations to work for but in Costa Rica, of course, they have... sea turtles!  And these sea turtles need help (not in the same way TL does)!  For the adventure portion I guess I get to "choose my own adventure," but here's what I can choose from:

• Snorkeling in the Pacific Ocean
• White water rafting on the Pacuare River
• Treks through several ecological reserves, including the cloud forests of Monteverde
• Jungle kayaking in the canals of Tortuguero National Park
• Horseback riding through an organic coffee farm
• Zip-lining in cloud forests
• Observing one of Costa Rica's many volcanoes
• Rappelling in La Fortuna
• Exploring the local nightlife in Heredia

The Australia program has tons of awesome stuff, too, including scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. 

So, yeah, just thought I'd fill you all in on what I might be doing this summer.

Aside from that, I've just got a ton of school work to do.  I'm reading a lot of Marx for my sociology class, which is really dry but my roommate bought me ice cream when I finished my reading last week so maybe that will continue.  This week I get to read what he thinks about capitalism.  My psych class is called Conflict and Communication in Couples and Families and is by far the most interesting class.  I need to write a paper about a common problem in intimate relationships (romantic ones) and common ways it's solved now, then come up with a different way to solve it.  Anybody have any suggestions for some good topics?

Well, dear readers, I also have a lot of laundry to fold so I'm going to take care of that right now and then go to bed.  Until next time.

 

So I took pictures of the clouds instead.  They're looking quite surreal today, don't you think?