12 posts tagged “college”

It did not occur to me until just now that I just spent more than half of Easter Sunday writing my paper on Paradise Lost, in which I denounce God as an imperialistic, tyrannical, self-appointed ruler whose actions and behavior cannot be justified.

Wow.

(Oh, I feel I should note, I was arguing this position not because I hate God, but because that's just what the paper was about.)

Anyway, just wanted to share that amusing little bit of information. The paper itself went well, though, in case you were wondering. I made sure to edit it thoroughly this time around, since my Comus paper ended up dropping an entire letter grade because my professor decided that my lack of proofreading indicated academic arrogance on my part. Interestingly, I do not think that he was wrong.

I would put these nice armchairs from the student lounges in all of the lecture halls. Or I would have lecture halls take place in lounges. Something. All I know is that this chair is extremely comfortable, and it makes the thought of abandoning it for a hard auditorium seat entirely less than appealing.

Just a thought.

Also, I love the random people who are following me on twitter. I'm sure it's some sort of automatic thing, where people add me based on who I'm already following, or something, but it still makes me happy, as if my minutia is important to somebody I haven't met. Maybe it is, who knows?

Still waiting to hear about the TusCon story. I really hope it goes through, because I need something to put on a cover letter when I try to sell my book. Which I totally intend to do, at some point. I also plan to finish the second one. No, for real.

Normally I can ignore banner adds and recognize them as a necessary aspect of free services such as this blog. Every so often, though, I see one that irritates me just enough to question how much "free blog space" is worth to me. Way to go, Vox.

Anyway, here's another post, to prove that I'm committed to writing in more than just random bursts. Oh, and yes, if you're wondering, I do have another essay that I'm working on. So far, I've got about a page written, with three more to go. I'm taking a break at the moment.

I have a strange white line running down my right arm as a result of a recent vacation to Mexico. The general consensus is that it was caused by applying sunblock to a wet body, which made the lotion run down my arm. Whatever. I hope it stays, because honestly, it looks like a bad-ass knife wound, which is what I've told a few people.

I've never quite known what tone to take, when writing these posts. I suppose that is because I don't exactly know who I'm writing for, due to the fact that I'm not attempting to tell a story. I imagine that I'm talking to some one, since I aspire to attain a conversational tone, which would imply that I'm talking to someone as I rarely, if ever, talk to myself. Which is strange, actually, because I consider myself very interesting; in fact, I believe I'm the most interesting person I've ever met.

Hey, self. Call me sometime.

. . . I won't call.

I should get back to that essay. If I've learned one thing this semester, it's that I'm not nearly as interested in history as I thought I was.

Good to know, I suppose.

Still alive. Still hanging in there. I'm a little bit less exuberant now than I was in the weeks prior, but that is the nature of life; happiness and survival are not always contingent upon one another, and while some may think it a tad... extreme to refer to my efforts as a bid for survival, do note that I am speaking of survival in the more esoteric, emotional sense, in which I regard happiness and contentment as key components of survival. Because if you lack those things in your being... well, you're not really surviving. You're just sort of living.

One thing that I do appreciate about college, now that I'm back, is the almost ironic method in which I compose stories and poems; often I do this is the middle of a lecture in order to escape the boredom, or else as a course in rebelling against the iron authoritarianism that comes with "paying attention." There is a particularly amusing instance of this behavior when I choose to write short fiction in my short fiction writing lecture; it's as though I'm paying attention and not paying attention at the same time. I wouldn't call this necessarily ironic, since irony is not an amusing coincidence so much as it is the opposite outcome of what one should expect, a concept which I believe has been lost in the modern era.

Regardless, it's an amusing situation and one that I wouldn't change even if I thought the lecture was interesting, which thus far, it has not been. But then, I've never really liked English lectures. I only specialize in courses dedicated wholly to English because I like the homework in those classes.

-Draxle

Post Script: The title is a lyric from a Linkin Park song. It doesn't have anything to do with anything, it just happened to be what I was humming under my breath as I wrote this post.

Just a couple of things because, after looking at my non-specific little hit counter (I never bother to reset it, so who knows how accurate the damn thing really is) but it seems that there are, in fact, people out there aside from me who read my little blog, so, hey, this one's for you guys. Just writing to let you know that I'm still alive, and in fact, doing a pretty good job of living up to my promises that I made over my birthday and New Year's. So, that's pretty awesome. I'm not sure why I felt the need to sort of retreat from posting for a while, but it just seemed that I needed to curl up inside my own head and just regrow my emotional tendrils or limbs or... you know what, fuck it, the analogy got away from me. Sufficient to say, vacation time is over and I'm back in the business of writing things that only I, and few of my closest friends will probably ever care about. But hey, that's what this whole Vox thing is all about.

I'd write more tonight, since I'm feeling particularly writerly, but I really do have some minor homework to do. It's only the second week of class (and not even the first full week) but already I'm procrastinating on junk and wishing I could do something else, like read or play video games or whatever. I did, however, find time (or create the time by ignoring responsibilities) to watch Donnie Darko, which is now officially one of my most favoritest movies of all time. I'm hesitant to recommend it, though, because I'm the guy that includes Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain in my list of favorite movies, so consider yourself warned. If you happen to like movies in which reality itself is a questionable, unstable concept, movies that will leave you with that wonderful "WTF, I think I got smarter from watching this" feeling, then, by all means, jump in and thank me after you're up late at night researching the meaning of the film. Unless said research causes your real life and/or academic work to suffer, in which case, well, ah, sorry about that.

So yeah, I should probably get to that studying now, because unlike movies, even extremely fantastic ones, I know for a fact that studying will make me smarter. Or so I hope.

-Draxle

I'm writing my paper even though I'm a little bit drunk. I am certain my grade will reflect this.

-Draxle

I've figured out why I don't work on my novel as much as I used to: it seems like every time I sit down at my computer to write something creative, there's an essay or research paper that I have to write instead, and those academic prospects inevitably crush the desire to write out of me for the duration of the experience. And even after the damn paper is written, it's usually too late at night for me to contemplate devoting an hour to my novel, so I end up just crawling into bed and crashing.

I will also state that I have been trying to keep to my reading promise, and while I've failed to even open the book on my "reading for pleasure" list, I've opened numerous other fascinating books on subjects such as educational reform and other exciting topics.

-Draxle

This is my blog, so I can whine about all the trivial shit that plagues me from day to day.

I have a headache right now. It feels like the same headache you get from a tremendous hangover, except that this hangover defied God and nature and mated with a cold, so it's not only a throbbing pain that makes every bright light and loud noise (which is to say the entirety of a college campus, which is where I am right now), it also means I have that lovely skull-pounding pressure that feels like my brain is going to explode outward through my nose and eyes.

Been like this since yesterday, and I've already started to become delusional. Is it possible that I've studied so much for my stupid classes that the information density of my brain has exceeded the carrying capacity of my skull? It certainly feels like it.

I have to go do a presentation now, for a subject I don't really care about, on a a paper I didn't do very well on, in a class that I really don't like.

-Draxle

Not a lot to talk about today. I don't know whether my inability to focus on my creative works is a result of overall laziness or if it might have something to do with the fact the college is crushing the creative juice out of me. I didn't think this was ever going to happen; I mean, I went to college so that I would write more, rather than sit around and play video games all day. But now, it seems like whenever I have even the remote interest to write, I'm usually sitting at my desk buried in so many procrastinated essays that by the time I'm done, it's so early in the morning it might not even be dark out. And that kind of frenzied, last minute writing really takes a number one one's mental health, not to mention makes the very act of sitting down to write something a painful torture.

On the other hand, I'm sitting here typing on this blog, whining about that unpleasant writing through, irony of ironies, more writing, so maybe I'm not so painfully afflicted as I like to imagine. Still, it'd be nice to have to write less bullshit essays and more, I don't know, poetry and fiction and whatever. You know, the creative things that a creative writing major actually does. Maybe I'm taking the wrong kinds of classes? I don't know.

I've noticed that my page view count seems to climb steadily, which makes me wonder if more people are reading this than I imagined. It's hard to tell, you know, it's not like I'm running a store where I can watch you come in and look around at the stuff, and then leave, a situation that leaves me secure in the knowledge that while you didn't buy anything, at least you stopped by and looked, which is really the only thing I ask for. Maybe people could start leaving comments or something? I guess that would represent actually purchasing merchandise at this imaginary store analogy, except that you wouldn't actually be spending money, so... yeah, I sort of lost my focus there. Let's move on.

What else do I usually do in this blog, aside from the whining? Ah yes, usually there's a link or two. Here's a good one: The Guild, a series of short videos about a group of people who play World of WarCraft waaaay too much. The sad part? I'm willing to bet that at least of quarter of the people I associate with (including myself) are or have been in this same situation: So it's Friday night, and...still jobless. Yay. Haven't left the house in a week. My therapist broke up with me. Oh yeah, there's a gnome warlock in my living room. Sleeping on my couch.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

-Draxle

Still working on the essays.

All I can say is that my enjoyment and appreciation for fine literature is become more and more diminished as I pour over these texts. I propose a new hypothesis: university literature classes are responsible for the erosion of interest in classic works.

At least the damn bird is gone. And in case you were wondering, no, I'm not just being a cynical, heartless bastard (even though I am all of those things.) The truth is, a former family friend basically foisted this burden upon us, that of caring for his daughter's birds when she went to college. The problem is, after she graduated, she didn't want them back, so we were stuck with noisy pets that we really didn't want to keep. Of course, my mom, being the animal lover that she is, cared for them anyway, because she's kind and nice like that. But none of us really liked the noisy, shrill little things; there's something evil and unpleasant about a creature that begins to keen just as you're getting ready to go to sleep, night after night.

-Draxle