^_^

Me: ...I dunno, I just get really happy when people who make each other happy are happy together.

!!!!

Head, meet desk. Desk, meet head. You're gonna get to know each other pretty well over the next year.

what I can't have

And what I wouldn't give to find a soulmate
Someone else to catch this drift
And what I wouldn't give to meet a kindred
Enough about me, let's talk about you for a minute
Enough about you, let's talk about life for a while
The conflicts, the craziness and the sound of pretenses
Falling all around...all around

Why are you so petrified of silence
Here, can you handle this?
Did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines
Or when you think you're gonna die
Or did you long for the next distraction
And all I need now is intellectual intercourse
A soul to dig the hole much deeper
And I have no concept of time other than it is flying
If only I could kill the killer

And all I really want is some peace man
a place to find a common ground
And all I really want is a wavelength

All I really want is some comfort
A way to get my hands untied
And all I really want is some justice...

- alanis morissette
"all I really want"

scattered

-- I came across a marvelous little comic book shop yesterday up past Leicester Square, but didn't get to go in. I really want to find it again.

-- The pound is killing me, and my wallet, already.

-- Compared to New York: Fewer people here walk around with headphones on. More people on the Tube read.

-- Fashion Week just ended. Yesterday, outside the menswear exhibition by Somerset House, I saw a woman with a headpiece modeled to look like a Campbell's soup can. lol couture.

-- I got hopelessly lost on my way to my department induction. I ended up in the engineering wing which, incidentally, is under construction. The one man I saw had no idea where the film studies' rooms were and told me to go to reception. I couldn't find reception.
---- Fun fact: apparently the film studies' rooms are in a building located over the old Roman baths.

-- I tend to pick up words from other people pretty easily, and I can already feel myself borrowing the local language. I say "pardon," "mum," and "quite" all the time as it is, and I can't decide if using these words make me sound like more or less of an asshole here.
---- Either way, I don't think I care.

-- South Bank is probably my favorite area so far, minus the touristy factors, and I really wanna shoot at the skate park down there on the next nice day. It's 5 minutes from my apartment, right by the BFI, and I feel like I'm gonna be there a lot.
---- Found a decent Italian place that’s not ludicrously expensive, hooray. It’s down at Gabriel’s Wharf at South Bank, so it’s really close and super cute and I like it a whole lot.

-- Camden Town tomorrow? Whee!

-- I feel rather like the little guy glued to the bottom of a snow globe, if that little guy broke off when someone shook the globe, went all topsy turvy, and didn't land on his feet.

Sometimes I think about the people that I've gone to school with who are doing productive and interesting things with their lives and wonder if they're flukes, and if they feel like they are frauds the way I do.

Seven friends/people I know from home:

- One went to UPenn and double majored in biochem and English. She quit her position as first chair in Penn's orchestra to direct plays for an underground Shakespeare company and sing in a Catholic church choir. She declined positions at UChicago, UCLA, Columbia, and other med schools in order to stay in Philly at UPenn Med and hopes to complete their joint MD/MBA program in the next four years. One day she wants to be a fashion designer or fashion magazine editor.

- One went to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, overcoming a heart problem and various injuries to get in. By the time he graduated this year, he was second in command of his platoon and had completed an internship with the NSA. He got drafted for submarines and now is in nuclear power school in Charleston.

- One went to Lehigh and graduated a semester early with his degree in computer science. He did artificial intelligent work for the government in Virginia this summer, and now he's finishing up his masters at Lehigh. For free.

- One went to St. Peter's with a full ride - and hated it. He got an internship with a law firm in Newark, and got a job there after graduating in three years with a degree in philosophy. He hated the job and quit, spent some time in Tunisia, and now is starting law school at Washington & Lee.

- One went to Villanova and is finishing up his degree with honors in philosophy. He's applying to a number of philosophy graduate programs, including ones at Oxford, Cambridge, and Australia National. In his spare time he plays classical and jazz piano and works on learning various metal pieces on the guitar.

- Two went to Stanford. One just finished an internship in Germany and is finishing up his degrees in biomechanical engineering and music performance - piano. The other is finishing up his two degrees in physics and music performance - classical saxophone - and both are applying to music graduate programs at Manhattan School of Music, Peabody Conservatory, and Florida State, among others.

I'm still in touch with all of them but one, I've known most of them since I was at least 14, and I therefore know that most of them are as great as the look on paper. I don't think I am. I don't feel like I am.

I don't know. I know plenty of post-grad successes, of my college friends. People working at Radio City, Lincoln Center, Nickelodeon, ACS. People helping to run towns. People in grad programs at UPenn, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Columbia. I know that you make your own success; it doesn't just come easily. Mostly I'm satisfied with my undergrad career, both socially and academically, but sometimes I wonder if I should have gone somewhere else. Not even Colgate or Vassar, but Fordham or Loyola or St. Joseph's or Fairfield. I don't feel like I've earned what "success" I've had. I don't feel like I worked very hard or very long for it. I don't feel like I deserve it. I know I can't change that now. I just wonder if I am where I'm supposed to be.

This post probably makes me sound like an ungrateful bitch. I'm not ungrateful. I just don't feel like I deserve what I have. Like everything else does, lately, it makes me wonder, who decides who deserves what?

I just had an awful dream.

First of all, I was student teaching. That in itself is a nightmare. The teacher was a skinny, freckly woman named Mrs. Gray, and the class was a bunch of little kids mixed with a bunch of older people - my sister, Alyssa, Stephen, and two dudes I went to high school with. It was Valentine's Day, apparently, because everyone was giving out Valentines and assorted sugary treats. My sister was giving out Reese's peanut butter granola bars, and I remember vaguely thinking that it was a bad idea - what if someone had a peanut allergy?

At the end of the day, Mrs. Gray told me I had done a nice job and she would give me a good report. The only problem is that I had forgotten to ask about the kid's homework and review it, but she could tell I was nervous because after she prompted me, I had been fine, so she was just going to overlook it. My friends were waiting for me to be finished speaking with her so we could hang out. We talked about 'Love is a Mix-Tape' and how I had lent it to Stephen, who loved it, and how the author had another book out that mentioned Duran Duran in the title.

The classroom was in a castle of sorts - a damp, medieval-y place made of mossy stones and whatnot - and I was excited to wander around it. Except as soon as Mrs. Gray finished talking to me, one of the boys I went to high school with, a dark haired guy whom I had been close friends with when we were 19 but don't really talk to any more - he came up to me. I hugged him, exhilarated that I had had a successful day, and he held me really close and tightly, which surprised me, and told me he was scared for me. I asked why, and he said that he can just remember this time we were going to the movies a few years ago, and he had this vision in which we were in a castle and a mirror appeared, and we stood looking in it, and my reflection disappeared, and when he turned to look at me, I was gone. He said I should leave the castle because he was afraid this was going to happen to me. He wouldn't stop holding me.

When he finally did, the other dude I went to high school with, a blond guy who I haven't talked to since we were 14, I don't think, he started doing the same thing: holding me as though he was afraid I would disintegrate. He was being super poetic and Romantic and dramatic, and I have a feeling that he was supposed to be someone else, because in real life this guy had been all about math and science, not English. He held me and kept telling me I couldn't leave, I couldn't go away because he had this vision that I would never come back. I kept saying that it was for only a year, and I would of course come back, but as I said it, I had an uneasy feeling that it might not be true. He kept saying that he had this feeling that something was going to happen to me there, that it wasn't safe for me to go. He wouldn't let me go.

Finally I said I had to go outside and was going to get something that would reassure them that I would be safe and come back. I went outside and over to this big chest in the courtyard gardens that had all these locks, but there was a key in it. I opened it and there were seven different compartments. Each one was filled with Swarovski crystal charms and jewelry. This wasn't what I was looking for. I was about to go through the last compartment.

Then I woke up. And I almost immediately burst into tears.

And then my mom came in and told me I was supposed to wake up 3 hours ago, I have to pack, that it was just a dream and I wouldn't have had it if I had gotten out of bed 3 hours ago like I was supposed to, and if I didn't stop crying she was gonna turn on all my lights and open the blinds, and to get up because my aunt is on her way.

Awesome.

Tracy: It's the only stand a woman could take and keep her self-respect!

Sometimes I wish I didn't care about keeping mine.