Letter to Myself

I just got back from Proclamation night, a tradition here at UR for freshmen and senior women. The freshmen wear white dresses and senior their black graduation robes. We take class pictures, hear a couple speaches and the freshment girls sign the honor code. Freshmen also get to write a letter to themselves and seniors get back the letters they wrote freshmen year. The following is the letter I got back tonight:


Dear Self 2004,
Where do I begin? I feel so overwhelmed. It's only been two weeks but it feels as though high school was a million years ago. I miss it so much. I miss Alexis and Chelsea. I miss my teachers, classes and the feeling of accomplishment I had my senior year. I hope that I will have the same feeling my senior year at UR. I hope that I will have friends that I can't imagine life without, but I also hope that my high school friendships will still be a part of my life. I hope that I have professors that I love and activities that I have become involved in and taken leadership positions in.
Already my first two weeks here I am begining to imagin the next four years. I think that Jackie and I will grow closer as friends. I hope that I am also still close with the "B-Basement-Babes". I've had fun at a couple apartment parties, but I realize taht "girls night" in the dorm or going to a movie with a few friends is often mor memorable than parties. I've enjoyed talking to Grant since I've been here. I'm sure that if nothing else [ :) ] we will still be friends in three years.
I'm begining to not feel so lonely, but I still miss the people who know me inside and out.
My classes have been ok so far, but I think they will become more stimulating as the years go on.

A few memories I've made:
-Talking with Jackie on the Westhampton lawn
-Talking with Grant on the Bridge
-Going to Legally Blond and Wallmart with Grant and Jackie
-Kereoke, sining American Pie with Jackie and Kelly
- IMing accross the desk with Margret

Goals:
-Make the dean's list
-take a leadership posistion
-Be in a play
-Kiss a boy!!!
-Start something/ organize something
-Be dedicated in Synchro and go to Nationals
-Spend a Semester in Germany
-Keep in touch with high school friends and teachers
-Have an LLC reunion
-Stay close to my parents

Predictions:
-Bob will be going to school in California
-Scott will be nearly as tall as I am
-Aaron and Chelsea will be engaged
-Jessica will be married

I see ahead of me a blank canvas and it scared me and excites me. I only hope that I can look back and smile at funny memories and feel that sense of accomplishment. Enjoy your senior year!

Best of Luck. I love you no matter what you have and haven't done!

Anne, 2001

I wrote a blog post Monday night but Blogger decided it wasn't good enough and erased it all instead. Oh well, it probably wasn't very entertaining, you'll just have to ask me if you want to hear about last weekend... I'm pretty sure there are some parts that I don't really want to be remembered forever in cyberspace history anyway.

Let me tell you how much I detest application essays. they are such a load of BS and everyone who's ever written one knows it. So why do organizations continue to require them? I'm currently struggling to write an application essay for the fullbright teaching assistant program in Germany. I really just want to live in Europe again for a year before deciding on any more serious plans for my life. Is that such a bad thing? Why do I have to come up with sappy crap about cultural understanding for this essay? Of course I would be excited abut getting to teach high school english. I love english! I would also be more than happy to keep taking universtiy courses at a Cerman school and researching in my spare time. I'm a dork, I love researching stuff... especailly when I'm not required to actually have anything to show for it at the end. and and and... I just want to go to Germany! is that enough? can I just write that? No... of course not, I need and eleoquently worded essays that will bring tears to the eyes of the fulbright commity and convince them that sending me to Germany for a year will without a doubt to to world peace. Gag me.

oh well. here goes.

Today I went grocery shopping because... it was a crappy day and looking at food makes me happy... and they had my favorite cereal on sale! yay! It's Kashi Go Lean! cereal and I'm convinced that it was my key to weight loss success last year and will therefore be key in my re-weightloss success this fall. right. so we'll see how that goes.

So about the crappyness... what's left of Francis is currently chilling out over UR. actually it feels more like it's sweating it out over UR. It's HOT and HUMID and it keeps raining and raining and I feel like everything is damp and it's gross.

And that's why God made air conditioning. Thanks God for making my apartment cool and comfortable!

My day perked up after the grocery shopping. and a long nap on the couch.
I went to a little coffe thing for people returning from abroad that was fun. It was kind nice to be in a group with a bunch of other people just getting back and to talk about culture shock and hear stories and stuff. There are things that are frustrating about coming back. And it's hard when talking about it makes you sound stuck up about it, like , oh, I was ABROAD, you weren't... you wouldn't get it... It was neat to hear some stories too, there were people all over, tialand, Korea, Africa, Ecuador, Mexico, Spain, Denmark, Austrailia, Italy... so there were lots of different experiences. I want to meet more of the international students here. Especially now that I've been one and I know how excited I was every time a German student even aknowledged my exsistance. But it's not like they walk around wearing big signs... so I guess I should go out of my way to find them and meet people. I can do that.

I also went to the weekly APO meeting. I volunteered our apartment to be part of a progressive dinner for Rushees next week. I asked my apartment mates and they said, OK, as long as we have the dessert part and we get to eat too :) I love my apartment!!!!

Hmm, ingenious title on that last blog, huh? right. Lets see, the rest of my weekend was... uneventful. Yestuday was way too full of stuff. I started working again as a tutor for student athletes. Yesturday I helped a soccer player write an outline for her first Core paper.... oh the memories. Today I had my fun classes and we did a critique of our first Photoshop project. The prof was really harsh! I gotta say, i wasn't expecting this to be a serious art class, but he was really grilling a few people on how what they did was personal expression and so on, it was a little nerve wracking. he didn't have to much to say about mine, but I was at the end. I hope he isn't a harsh grader!

I went to open swim today and I'm wiped out, I have a lot of work to do on my synchro skills... a year away from it really makes a difference even though I was working out, it's a whole different set of skills you need for synchro. But I'm excited. I like having a physical challenge. It's good for releasing stress and having something to focus on other than school. When I get in the pool I tend to lose track of time and I could swim laps or work on synchro figures until my muscles gave out. Except that open swim is only an hour long... probably for the best.

ok, that's all. Nothing exciting, I'm just putting off going to work on my german paper again. yes, I'm still not done, shhh. I like using the language lab because it has german settings for the keyboard and spell check, but it flooded last week and it's still a little musty smelling. ick.

What's left of Francis should be getting here soon which means more rain. fun fun. You all probably have seen satalite pictures of the storm and seen footage of the winds and all the damage. It's absolutely unbelievable. Apparently there's another headed toward the carribean.

I'm moving back to the midwest, nestled safely in the middle of the continent....

Stuff I'm thinking right now

It's 12:30am or so, I just got back to my room and my roomate is already asleep. I'm about to go to sleep myself so that I can wake up and head back to the library to waste another day of my life staring at my german paper.... arg. I actually got some done today at least, I just need to finish it. I have too much other stuff I should be working on. I don't even really mind that I'm going to bed before 1am on a saturday or that I'll be working tomorrow. What else would I be doing? I guess I'm old, or have just come to peace with my inner dorkyness, but I don't care. I don't want to go to loud crowded apartment parties and drink gross beer or dance with cheesey frat boys. gross. I'm so over it, the whole thing. I like living in an apartment. I like being an adult. I eat broccoli and spinach even though no one tells me to! I haven't even turned 21 yet and I already don't think drinking is exciting anymore. Maybe being going to bars or clubs would be a little more fun. I enjoyed bars in Germany. Going "out" is just so silly on campus. there's always somehow pressure when you're out to do something cool... something you can tell people about the next day. How was your night, did you go out? What apartments did you go to? Was so and so. there? Was it a good party? blah. sick of it.

Eric came up last night. I made Fajitas and we saw the Borne Supremacy, and lots of it takes place in Berlin. I think Eric got a little sick of me wispering, "We were there!" during the movie :-P Anyway, it was a really nice night, I miss having him around. And he gave me pretty earings :)

I talked to one of my german professors about my senior thesis paper. I don't have to write it until next semester, but since the topic will probably require reading a few novels I want to get started. I'm writing about a literary theory proposed by Delueze and Guittari in thier book, "Kafka, toward a minor literature". I'm writing about how they drew it from Kafka's experience as a Jew in Prague writing in german and then I'm going to see what happens when i apply it to Native american writers in the US. It's kinda heavy on the theory, and my German prof wants me to do more with german literature, like write about other minority writers in Germany or something, but I don't want to. I'm interested in the theory and working it out with Native writers. I like literary theory. Because I am cool.

Anyway, I need to get started on that soon... as soon as I finish the paper for germany. And then write my Fulbright application essays. I'm applying for a Fulbright teaching grant by the way. It's for a position as an assistant high school english teacher in germany. It's not as competetive as a research grant, there are 80 spots and last year 160 people applied. So, I need to write a compelling essay and hopefully I'll get it. I would love love to go back to Europe for a year. i would also love to have the oportunity to teach high school for a year before I decide if I want to get a teaching lisence and masters degree in education back here in the states.

See, so many things to think about, how can people be out getting drunk? So that they don't have to think about it I suppose...

My answer to that is... go to bed! I find sleep to be more effective than drinking.

goodnight!

I am woman hear me ROAR

I'm feeling a little fiesty today. Like I just really want to yell at everone about everything. Not sure why. Today in my psych class we were talking about a text we read about the narrative self and there was a part that addressed women and minorities and how some psychologists feel that we don't know how to asses their narritives because they have been largely ignored by western psychology. And this guy in my class was like, when was this written? isn't this kind of outdated? and I really wanted to jump up and yell at him. No it's NOT outdated!!! So maybe psychologists and intelectuals in lots of other fields have begun to pay more attention to women and minorities in the last twenty years or so, but we're talking about twenty years out of the last couple thousand years here. All of the narrative theories we read about were based on western models and created by men. It kills me when people think that racisim and sexism don't exist anymore and that anyone who says it does is just being whiny or something. As though we live in a perfect world. right. You chovenist PIG!!! ok, so I didn't say that last part, and was generally passive about it, and I don't think that he's a pig, just misguided. And I'm not usually a big defender of womens rights or anything, I feel like I'm lucky to be living now and not 50 years ago and I think that at some point it does become just whining, but I also wouldn't sit and let someone say that we live in a society of perfect eaquality. That class is so boring, no one argues anything! I know they are psych majors and used to being lectured to or something, but come on people, think a little, question, argue! So yeah. I'm not usually quite that ardent about things, but if you get me going....

I just got back from the library where I picked out a monolog to read in my acting class tomorrow and I'm kind of pumped because I found one from the play I saw in London, Oleana, the one I saw with Julia Styles. In the monologues she's completely bashing the professor for being an elitest, for conforming to the sexist and classist norms of society. I went through lots of other ones before I stumbled on this one and all of them I was like, oh, I can't do that, you have to cry, or you have to yell, or you have to be sad, or happy, or angry. Because I'm not really the acting type... so I was trying to avoid over the top emotions that I don't even often show in real life. BUT I'm doing this one even though it involves passionate yelling and anger and stuff because, a) I really like it, and b) I want to be able to yell at people like that. I want to be able to raise my voice and speak up strongly and passionately for what I believe to be right or wrong. I'm generally laid back and open minded, and I think those are good qualities, but sometimes I'm just wishy washy, and that is not a good quality at all. So my goal for acting class is to learn how to yell at people. :-P