Grumble
Sometimes, when I can’t seem to concentrate on work, I surf university websites. It seems that I work better when I remind myself what I’m working for.
Funnily enough, the courses I usually end up spending my time reading up on aren’t related to what I tell people I want to do. For example, I just spent the afternoon reading about places that offer ‘Archaeology and Anthropology’ as well an an interesting course from Melbourne called ‘Media and Communications’. This is new for me because normally, when someone asks me what I’m going to study, I just say -
‘ Lawyering, on account of the money.’
I don’t really want money. Money is problematic and worrying.
What I want right now is job satisfaction. I do not know what that means, but I’m reasonably sure I know what it feels like. It’s what makes you get up in the morning and lets you sleep at night.
If I get a job that I enjoy – if I do something I’m happy about doing – I wouldn’t mind not having excessive amounts of stained paper under my mattress. HOWEVER, if I happen to end up doing something that I thought I would enjoy, but ACTUALLY DON’T, I feel I would need a great deal currency to find comfort , hopefully by defining myself with Scandinavian furniture.
So what do I want to do? What do I want to do!?!
Journalism sounds like fun – it sounds meaningful and exciting. It’s also pretty easy to study for. Just do something besides dentistry and then go and get an internship. But could I be a journalist? (Oh, you laugh. How sympathetic of you.)
A & A is also interesting. I don’t know what I can use it for, but something regarded as the most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the sciences, really should be worth something.
And Law also has its merits. People have assured me that being a lawyer doesn’t automatically make you rich and corrupt. They have presented detailed case studies with helpful diagrams. Lawyering is still an option.
So many choices, and so much time to decide. Why doesn’t it feel like enough?
But then again, maybe this whole discussion is moot. Money may be a terrible thing, but you really need a lot of it to actually get an education. And besides money, you also need grades. I’m a man who has never sat for an international exam EVER. I do not have any guarantees.
At all.
Really.
Wow.
I think I’m going to go sit in a corner and rock back and forth slowly.
Prelims over and returned. Not happy with grades, but thankful since I should have scored 9 points less, if the amount of work I put it is any indication. I’m very thankful to God for giving me grades that I don’t really deserve.
I don’t think I can say that I’m getting closer to God each day, in this stressful and formative period of my life. I’m very far from God, and every step forward I take, the distance is still there.
But I shouldn’t be talking about this here.
People are making lists of things to do after IB. So far I have come up with this.
1. Come up with a list of things to do the rest of your life.
Need to be funnier! FUNNIER! I hate it when I think of a joke after the conversation has moved on. I think I’m getting faster though. Following some templates now. Templates are easy and always get a laugh. Over-the-top Indian has got me stage time for 6 years in a row. I admit that’s more of a stereotype, but you know what I mean.
On another note, I am disturbed at how easily people are willing to believe me though. I don’t think I’m a good liar, especially since no one ever believes me when I lie. I’ve been told that my face is like an open book – unfortunately it wasin Sanskrit.
I just think I have a bad reputation.
I want to be a professional sleepwalker. I once knew a man who was a professional sleepwalker. In 1996 he sleepwalked across Europe, stopping briefly in Tuscany to be knocked down by the Trenitalia. ( need to change to something else.. maybe to do with the trans-Siberian railway.
I want to take the trans-Siberian railway one day.
Shiv’s recent post on Thunderbird has prompted me to open up the program once again. It’s not that Thunderbird is a poor application, it’s just that I didn’t have the time to properly make use of it in recent memory. I spent today clearing it up and deleting/downloading extensions. The people at Mozilla really are a wonderful group. They make give us poor oppressed PC users a chance to strike back again both the dastardly Microsoft Corporation and smug Opera-users everywhere. But we must remain wary -lest we are consumed by the hordes of the unnecessary widgets. I do not need a program that automatically loads up a flame template every time I get a chain mail. I prefer to do that in the spirit of the moment. Real life desperately needs widgets though. Although I personally would not, I believe that there are people out there that would pay to have a man on hand who screens your post for junk mail and roughs up the postman.
I don’t think postmen get the respect they deserve though. Their purpose is a noble one and should not be thwarted by the electric magics. I fear the day that the legions of postmen gather to plot the death of the internet. I have no reason to be worried though. The delivery people would never allow it.
…
I think I’m very worried about the Finals, but completely unable to act on that. Everything seems very distant and surreal now, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to start studying just yet. I’ll probably start tomorrow by reading Paddy Clarke and the remainder of my history readings. We’ll see how it goes from there. I really hope that Paddy Clarke turns out to be as enjoyable as people are claiming it to be. I’m only at page 4, but I don’t think I’m going to like this book.
Achievement Forms
I think that any form that forces you to summarize your achievements into little boxes is a bad form. A bad, bad form. Its probably the primary form of torture that they employ in hell. That and a never-ending cycle of waiting rooms.
I hate these forms because they force me to reflect on my life. I don’t want to reflect on my life! I have better things to do right now than wish I did better things last month when I had the time.
These forms, they forces me to take a long hard look at my life and realize that nothing I have done for the past 18 years of my life has any relevance to my future. I could have spent the past ten years in a box and I would be no worst off than I am now, according to these forms.
To make matters worst, it becomes apparent that , in recent times, I have done less and less in general.Every year there seems to be less and less time. In sec 1, I was involved in at least 3 projects. In sec 4 I was involved in at least 6 projects. This year, I was involved in 1 project for less than half a year. Woohoo for me.
It’s so depressing to look at those empty boxes and desperately try to convince yourself that two and a half hours of selling flags on Orchard road for a charity you can’t quite remember counts as an Achievement. It’s also depressing to look at all the silly things you’ve done when you were young and realize that they represent the crowning achievements of your non-academic life.
But I think the most depressing thing about filling up Achievement Forms is that we have had to do this at least 4 times in the past 3 years. Are they trying to scare us into become contributing members of society, or are they doing this to remind us that life only gets worst as time goes on?
Books Part 1
Post-IB Reading List
Fiction (Novels)
1. Midnight Children
2. Catcher in the Rye
3. Snow
4. Breakfast of Champions
5. The Grapes of Wrath
6. Demian
Fiction (Comics)
1. Doctor Thirteen
2. Scott Pilgrim Volumes 2-4
4. DC’s New Frontier
Non-fiction
1. New New Journalism
2. The Art and Craft of Playwrighting
3. Comic Insights : The Art of Stand-up Comedy
Movies
In this brief period of respite, just after Prelims and just before studying for finals begins I have decided to watch as many DVDs as possible to make up the past few months. There are a few movies I’ve been meaning to watch for a while now, stuff which I should have watched a long time ago, but didn’t, for variously inexplicable reasons.
Clerks.
Fight Club
Being There
The Pink Panther Series
Full Metal Jacket
Castle in the Sky
Howl’s Moving Castle
Ghost in the Shell (1 and 2)
These are of course, the ones which I know I can find. I’m also looking for some of Ingmar Bergman films, but I think the only place I can find those are in the Esplanade Library. My visa to that magical realm expired in August, and I don’t really think I want to fork out the cash for renewing my membership. Hopefully with sufficient goading I can extract them from Reuben, or convince him to invest with me in Winter Light.
