35 Things I Have Learned So Far...

Today is one of those days. One of those drink two Pepsi's in a row days. One of those come home and munch on a bag of popcorn days. One of those listen to 3 Doors Down because that's the only thing that will make me feel better days. One of those body aching days, where everything hurts, mentally and physically. One of those days where I come up with a list of things I've learned in the four weeks that I've been at a 4-year-university days because I'd rather do that than muster up enough energy to rant about my ridiculous week.

So here it goes.

1. If your parents are divorced, everything is way more complicated. This includes university and non-university stuff and you will have to deal with it weekly.
2. If you don't feel like you want to collapse of exhaustion by the 4th week, you're either not taking enough classes or involved in enough clubs because, by this time, everyone is saying, "HOLY CRAP!"
3. Use your friends who have been here longer than you. Seriously. Use them for job opportunities and for finding a good place to hang out when you're bored and for financial aid/study abroad/ect. information. Use them!
4. The moment that you think something is a big issue, it probably is just a small one in diguise. And the moment that you find that out, you will feel very frustrated.
5. You could fill every inch of your schedule and still find time to hang out with your friends. (For ex: one of my friends is taking 27 units and is in debate and the other is taking 19 units and works 30 hours a week and we all still have time to hang out somehow.)
6. If you bike to school every day for 4 weeks and decide to take the bus on a sunny day, when you really don't need to, you will feel very stupid waiting for the bus after class and seeing all of your friends bike past you to much farther destinations than where you live. Especially because in the 1/2 hour that you have to wait for the bus to show up, you could just walk home.
7. By the 4th week, if you haven't taken out a loan, you will, and if you have taken out a loan, you'll be asking for more money.
8. No one needs to go out to have fun. Staying inside and playing old school N64 for 4 hours can generate quite a bit of laughter.
9. Don't you dare do anything wrong near campus or on campus. Especially riding your bike on campus. Police are ruthless. They will ticket you for a meter expiring only 2 seconds before you get in your car, riding your bike on the wrong side of the road, not having lights on your bike at night, putting your lights on wrong, a "California stop," looking at them wrong, crashing your bike, riding upside down, sideways, and backwards, and anything else you can think of.
10. However, they will NOT ticket you if you're not registered under the state of California. Confusing?
11. The response to asking questions in the student center will only lead to this answer, "It's on the website. Did you check the website first?"
12. Even if a job is posted, don't expect them to hire you. Or anyone. Many times, they'll just decide to close it and just run overload with their current staff instead.
13. If you forgot your cell phone and have to ask someone for the time, they will look at you funny.
14. If you don't have your cell phone out during class, you're not cool.
15. The people who say that they hate texting during class will be doing it 5 minutes later, guaranteed.
16. If you're standing in financial aid, deciding on a loan, and say, "Let me call my mom," they will look at you funny.
17. Anything involving calling parents more than once a week (and you have to react to it painfully) is taboo and people will look at you funny if you mention that you talk to your mom every day. (And enjoy it.)
18. There are some teachers who want to be there and some who don't. Those who don't will either be every funny (due to sarcasm) or mean (hatred of the system, the students, and their small income) and those who do will either be funny (and you might enjoy the class) or mean (they enjoy watching you work your ass off to get that A). There is no middle ground.
19. If you're doing a group project and have a problem, try to work it out before you go to the professor. Chances are, he wont know how to help you either.
20. The classes that you think are the most relaxing will probably have the most homework due the last two weeks before finals.
21. Administration likes the student to get exercise. They achieve this by giving the student a little nugget of information and smiling as the student runs around campus, trying to figure out what to do with that nugget, before crawling back for more information and trying the process all over again.
22. There is never any parking. Day or night. Weekends? Don't think so. Holidays? You've gotta be kidding.
23. Students will use any excuse to drink. Holiday. Beer pong! Weekend. Beer pong! Stats test the next day. Beer pong! Bad day. Beer pong! Car battery exploded. Beer pong! House on fire. Beer pong!
24. Assuming this, you will find parties on days Sunday-Wednesday, not just Thursday-Saturday.
25. For some students, there is no definition of a weekend. Every day is their weekend.
26. Biking every day = about $20 spent on gas every two weeks to fill your tank up 1/2 way. At first it seems like a god-send. Then, you'll even begin to despise spending that much.
27. It is strange if anyone visits you in the first 2 months of school starting.
28. WinCo is the K-mart/WalMart of food stores. Use it. It is your best friend.
29. If your pantry isn't stocked with rice, mac and cheese, and ramen, you have too much money.
30. Cable is superfluous. Don't waste money on it. Everything you could ever want is on high speed internet (for cheap)!
31. Your university will either have more or less school spirit than your high school. If less, you will miss football games from your high school days. If more, you will laugh at the people who were previously mentioned.
32. The term "dumb blond" does apply to some people. You will meet those people.
33. Playing the Sims 2 is not cool when you are in a group of friends who enjoy War Hammer, Diablo, and Star Craft. Playing Sims 3 is iffy.
34. If you couldn't find people like you in high school, you will certainly find them in college.
35. Apple cobbler fixes everything.

So, this is the list I've combined so far. I might add more later but, for now, I cant think of anything else I could add. I bet YOU probably could, though, so feel free to comment with what you've learned at your own universities.

Valentines Day

Last night, I was talking to a friend of mine about poetry that we used to write in high school. It seems to that a lot of people in high school write poetry and I've never really been able to figure out why that is. (I know why I wrote poetry but a few of my friends, who couldn't even put a simple story together, could end up writing some of the most beautiful poetry I have ever read.) I'm assuming that, due to raging hormones in high school, poetry was written as a release from all that.

This reminds me of the fact that I'm finally going to be done with high school this year, once and for all. I know what you're probably thinking: "you're in your 3rd year of college; you've been done with it for a while!" However, that's not quite true. As a senior in high school, I experienced something that I hadn't experienced in about 3 years: being single. One of my best friends who had graduated the year before had been bugging me to "take on a freshman" or guide a new one through the craziness that is high school. Surprisingly, I actually took on this project and I say that it's surprising because I had a huge resement against freshmen at the time. My boyfriend of 3 years (who was a senior) left me for a freshman. Never-the-less, I sort-of accidentally became friends with this girl and she is finally graduating this year. I talked to her the other day and it hurt my heart so much to hear all of the high school drama that I'm finally over. I could only assure her that it would be over soon and she could start over in life.

Anyway, back to the topic of the first paragraph, I found on my myspace (which I can't believe I still have) a poem that sounds a bit like residue from high school. Since it's fairly decent poetry, I thought I would share it with you all.

The Most Mocking Holiday of the Year

I say I'm content with everything
My friends, my family
They hear me
Content with everything
My school, my work
They see me
Content with everything

And there, looming ahead, you lie
Taunting, twirling, with your red, pink, and white
Dancing and mocking, never leaving my sight
Until I am not content with everything

You laugh and you play, making my each step heavier
As I hold out my hand to you;
Brushing the bare edges, my fingertips rejoice,
And then you move away.
I am left with nothing.

You stand before me, in your pink and your red
Holding what I want, flashing what I desire
Commercialized now
Visual affection, according to the media
And I don't want it…
But I do.
Not the candy, the cards, or the gifts
But you.

You may loom ahead but I
I sit instead
Turning a blind eye as you mock me openly
And I allow myself to hide
Just for one day
I hide from you

In the darkness, then, you return to me
Colors shed; I feel your cool touch on my face
Your smile prickles my skin
And I know you have returned to me once again
Returned to my heart
And I am comforted.

What's Your Life Made Of?

I sat in the back seat of a car Saturday afternoon, staring out the window next to me, tuning out the blasting "scremo" music and hanging on to the handle of the door as the guy driving the car blasted down the street, racing his friend next to him. The guy in the front passenger seat made faces at the driver that we were racing and the guy sitting next to me was quiet, saying nothing. I assumed he wasn't pondering the same thing I was.

What was on my mind was a line that my friend had pulled on my best friend and I on Friday: "You two must either have low standards or love each other for no reason."

Love, I thought, struggling not to fall to the left as we turned right. What does he think love means? Was is this? Speeding down a street, laughing as you cut people off, making stupid jokes, after seeing a mediocre movie that only 4 people out of a group of 16 liked? This might be fun but it certainly wasn't love.

My two best friends came into town this weekend and wanted to meet the people that I hung out with. As per usual, it didn't go very well. One isn't a geek (and I hang out with mostly geeks - hence the D&D) and the other one is very shy. However, the one thing the three of us have in common is that we love one another despite our many differences; we see past everything to the true beauty that shines beneath. I don't know how many people can say that they can do that. Although we made have our bad times and our fights, although we live 10-15 hours away from one another in any direction, although our hang-out experiences maybe mediocre, we still love each other's company.

Living here, away from my best friends and my family, I realize how the college students view the best times of their lives. It is the times when they had the most fun. In this town, it's drinking. Today, I was ashamed to read an article that was specifically meant for the new students of this town. It described a typically Thursday in the life of this college girl and it basically went like this: beer pong (8-11pm), alcoholic tea(11-12), shots and beer(12-2), and more beer pong (2-4? 6?). The girl writing this article described these years of drinking every Thurs-Sat night as the best years of her college life and that she felt young doing all of this.

Myself... I can't imagine throwing my weekend nights away on black-out juice. The best times in my life have been spent with the ones that I love: giggling with the girls, watching a movie with friends, doing homework next to my boyfriend... I find it so sad that people don't really appreciate those things in life. They want their next high or their next buzz or their next... well, you get the point. This is why I don't drink or do drugs. I'm trying to appreciate the things that matter.

Do you?

Momentary Discomforts

Today was Jo and my first trip to the vet with Esther.

We were as scared as two new parents could be. She's been doing this weird thing with her left eye where she will sit with the right one open and the left one closed. This also wraps into our other theory that she is partially blind. She has always been very clumsy and it tends to affect her eating habits. For example, we feed her meal worms instead of crickets because she cannot catch a cricket even if her life depended on it. She might catch two out of five/six and then just give up because the other three/four were faster than the first two. As you can probably tell, this is not good for a gecko. If she had belonged to a family who decided to let her go in the wild, she would probably die after a very short amount of time.

The vet was very kind to us. He explained that since reptile eyes are so much different from dogs or cats, it's almost impossible to tell whether or not they are blind. He suggested that, if she's always been this clumsy, then it's possible she could have always been partially blind or just have sight problems since birth. He also explained that lizards have horrible depth perception, which is why she occasionally tries to take a suicide leap when I let her run around on my bed. He weighed her, he measured her, and he checked her eyes and mouth. She became quite peeved with him at one point and opened her mouth very wide, which indicates that she's pissed, and he soon put her back down after that. (She allowed me to pet her for about 5 seconds and then turned away, as if to say, "You're responsible for this as well.") After the short check up, the vet came to a conclusion.

My poor little gecko is suffering from obesity.

We left shortly after that; I was in a bad mood because Jo was doing all he could to torment me. "Megan spoils the little girl," he taunted. "'She looks hungry, Jo. We've got to feed her!'" And, of course, I'm trying to stay away from arguments, so it was all I could do not to explode and say something like, "You fed her too!"

Thankfully, though, that's all that's wrong with her. I'm grateful for this. If she had been impacted or had something horrible such as mouth rot, we would have left with an enormous bill. All we have to worry about it that she gets more exercise and less food. Silly thing.

Also, before I end this blog, I would like to note something silly that I just did. I have been searching for my Bible for the past 3 months, since I started living here. I've looked through boxes and drawers and bookcases but I couldn't seem to find it. 3 months. I was ready to buy a new one, a nice one (which I still might do). Then, today, Jo walked in the front door of my apartment, looked over at the top of my stationary rack, and went, "Uh... Megs..." There sat my Bible, in the one, most obvious place that I had never thought to look. Yay for brunette blond moments!

Dreams of the Past

I love walking into used bookstores.

Normally, I head straight for the fantasy/sci fi section to see if they have any new David Eddings books that I have not yet read (and I found one today that was originally $27.95 hardback and sold used for $6.50!) Today, however, I headed into the children section for a trip down memory lane. I absolutely adore looking at the books that I used to read, the books that changed me into the person that I am today. Most of them were magic, of course, such as Half Magic, which my mom used to read a chapter of every night before my sister and I went to bed...

The Tales of Chrestomanci, which I discovered on my own (and would recommend to anyone)...

and, my favorite, the Roald Dahl Treasury. I used to own this book but it got lost somewhere and I've never been able to find this again. This is sad because it is something I would love to share with my future children when they get to the age to appreciate the beautiful insanity that is Roald Dahl's genius. (I will pay anyone who finds this book and wants to send it to me!)

Then, of course, I went down into the fantasy/sci-fi section.

When I look at these books, I feel revived again and I wish desperately to someday be one of their number. I would like to publish a book that is unique, one that people will read for years to come.

By the way, my mom discovered the most interesting video that I've ever seen. It's pretty steampunk, although I will mention that it isn't what my book is exactly going for. It's a little sad but a great video. Hope you all like it!

Changin' My Ways

Today is marks the first day of my "addiction" project for my Drugs in Our Society class.

The project is sort of like the one that I did last semester in my Woman's Health class, where I take some part of my life that I'm not fond of and work on it. This project is specifically something that I am addicted to that I want to change about my life. Some people are going to try to stop smoking; others are going to stop drinking caffeine (which is what I attempted to do last semester and it didn't work out so well). I, however, am going to try to stop arguing.

Stop laughing.

All of you who know me well, I know that you're rib-cages are probably just bursting at the thought that I'm actually going to attempt this feat. I have a bad temper. Yes, I know this. I'm a lot like my father and I love to win arguments. I know this also. However, I have a boyfriend who despises arguing and almost always refuses to argue with me. This will be safeguard, my corner stone.

Although, when I told Jo, he thought this was just as funny as you probably do and told me, "I wont even give you a week." My goal for this week is to prove him wrong.

So yes, this is Day 1 of that. And this project is going for about a month. I will keep you all updated on my progress.

On other news, I have decided to Steampunk my novel.

For all of you who don't know what Steampunk is, it is a mixture of the Renaissance Era and the Industrial Revolution, a time torn between the era of beauty and romance, and the beginnings of new technology, such as clockwork and steam powered machinery.



Airships, steam powered technology, but still with the hint of fantasy and renaissance dress. I've always been fascinated by this type of fashion and lifestyle, and a friend of mine (whom I play D&D with) has suggested more than once that we try a Steampunk D&D group. (Airships! Yay!) I would gladly partake in that!! Anyway, this just means a lot of research but a lot of fun. Especially if I could dress up in Steampunk at some point while I wrote the novel. (Maybe I'll get a group together to dress up and debut my novel.) It also works really well for the storyline that I'm writing because it's just the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, so some things are "in" and some things "out."

Anyway, that's all that I can give to you about the storyline right now. I'm still a fantasy writer but I'm getting more into the sci-fi stuff, so I can't ignore it completely in my novel anymore. (Also, it doesn't help that I'm dating a scientist who helps me with basically anything that I want to know regarding science and technology.)

The Writer's Conference is only a few weeks away!!!

An Odd Take

I was going to tell you all about the protest that is going to take place on Tuesday, the first California mandatory furlough day of the semester; however, I think that blog will do further justice on Tuesday when I (hopefully) attend the protest.

So, on a different note, I'll start with this thought:

There are some memories that never die.

This was brought up in my human sexuality class on Monday. We were discussing love, the different types of love and your "LoveMap," which are the traits that your subconscious finds attractive in other people, when my professor just so happened to mention that love can be a very strong bond. Especially when it's your first love.

People shun high school relationships as something temporary, and mock their endings, when both sides are left bleeding. People laugh at the love that children feel for one another and shoot it down, saying that it can't be true love because they are only children. How can they know what love is, right? But, truth be told, they are experiencing their own version of love, which is the strongest emotion their minds can comprehend at the moment. There's even been studies done on it. So I have to ask, why don't those same adult's who criticize a child's "puppy love" mock the love of college students? They're just high school students a few years older. Or why don't grandparents mock the love of adults? They're just full-grown children. What do they know of love, right?

Heck. We might as well mock all love in America. It means nothing with as high as the divorce rate is these days.

I suppose this is why I found the video that we watched in my Human Sexuality class uninteresting. It dealt with love and how we find love, our LoveMap as it were. With all the divorces this day and age, telling people that they should get married just based on love just makes me want to laugh. The end of the video, however, was all about arranged marriages from the perspective of those who are in them. I found this interesting because those people actually preferred those marriages and said that, if they had the option, they would rather choose to have a marriage arranged than actually to arrange one themselves.

This is because the people in arranged marriages base their marriage on trust, obligation, and duty, instead of just love. "Love isn't important when you first get married," one man said. "Love comes later." Surprisingly, because of this, the two people learn to trust each other more because they aren't blinded with those romantic feelings. According to these people, their relationship works better that way because, as one person suggested, "You have a lifetime to get to know someone. You're never going to know them completely when you first get married."

Now I know that you all know my second biggest fear is marriage because of my parent's divorce. However, this video gave me some hope. If I can, someday, get married and build a marriage upon those foundations (including love, of course, because a marriage needs love), then I have a better change of staying married longer. And my fear of marriage should begin to shrink.

Instead of ending this on a "I'm all hopeful" thought, I'd like to ask you all a question. What is your LoveMap? What are the things that you for in a person personality-wise, physically, ect that make you go "I need to walk across the room just to talk to that person"? Everyone has their own LoveMap. What's yours?