Smart

So I had my bad decision for the week on Monday of freaking out about a 3 page paper I shouldn't have been freaking out about at all and basically napping all day. Right through my history class and the beginning of my English class. Was not my finest moment but that's ok! Onward I go to not making another mistake for the rest of this week!
So I almost made a mistake today by waiting to the last minute to do an assignment. Really, it wasn't waiting to the last minute to do the assignment but waiting to the last minute to read my teacher's comments on my last assignment which directly affected how I should have been doing the assignment due today. Basically I got a 79 because I didn't "have enough secondary sources for an initial bibliography" and my thesis was terrible. Okay, I knew I needed more secondary sources eventually and that my thesis was terrible but it was the best I could come up with at the moment. I mean, it's an initial bibliography. You're going to drop me down two letter grades for that?? Seriously?!
So I didn't have enough time to come up with another secondary source that I could quickly annotate so I just annotated the ones I had the best I could and talked about two more primary sources I found. So I'm running to the library figuring, for sure he's going to give me a terrible grade for not having another secondary source but whatever and I'm trying to quickly print it out when I happen to be next to a guy in my class who also happens to be running late. I see his annotated bibliography and gasp! He's got a thesis statement too! He assures me it was required and tells me to just write one quickly since I'm already late. I do, and keep in mind his issues with my thesis before. I mean, it turned out alright considering I wrote it in a couple seconds. Anyway, as I was leaving I caught another student from my class just printing out his bibliography too.
So I run to class, we have class, and at the end he starts talking about the paper we had due the last week.
Basically, we all failed. Apparently (and I still don't believe this) only three people in our class of ten cited quotes and paraphrasing. This is a 400 level class. I don't understand how this is even possible. How could you survive the other history classes without being called out for plagiarism and fail? How could more than half the class do that?! I actually started wondering if I was one of those people even though I knew I cite almost everything in my papers just because of the odds against me. Then he said it was obvious that most students didn't understand the text, which I didn't. He goes on and how, like, only one person talked about Practical Realism which was a huge part of the chapter (I did...) and then about Truth and Objectivity, which the whole chapter was about (this was definitely my whole paper). So now I'm kinda like.... I think he just expected more because I did all of that.... I think. And then he finishes with "They really weren't that bad."
Can you even say that after saying most of us plagiarized?
I get it back and I got a 70. I'm just like "Ok, what the heck did I do" and I go through my paper which has next to no marks on it throughout but a big paragraph of comments at the end. The guy has probably the worst handwriting I've ever seen so I'm going through trying to pick out words. So far his comments have been pretty positive but this one ends with "This is not complete" which isn't a good start. I seriously can't figure the message out so I decide to ask him to read it for me so I can figure out what I didn't do.

It read: "This is great as far as it goes but given that it is only half as long as the assignment required and that many issues are either not discussed or just mentioned in passing, it is more suggestive than complete. Indeed, it is not complete."
I had forgotten that I had only written two pages when the paper was supposed to be four... but still I cannot express to you the shock I felt when he said "great" and I remembered I got a 70. He went on and said "You know this is really good, I mean this is obviously the work of an intelligent person"
And that's about the second I stopped hating him. Can I tell you a secret? I don't think I've ever been told I was smart. I always kinda knew because I could remember things others couldn't, especially concerning history, but to be told by... anyone that you possess intellect, that you are indeed not just average but smart, is a feeling I find difficult to describe. The best I can do is to tell you I stopped disliking his attitude and subjective grading and walked away unable to stop smiling and tearing up.
I was smart. It was official. It was not just a thought in my head but I was, indeed, smart. I felt like every moment of self-doubt, self-loathing, self-scrutinizing and comparing myself to others that other people around said were smart just kinda fell to the wayside and I thought "I'm one of them. I'm smart too."
And then I thought isn't that sad? That such a declaration at my age could have such an effect on me?

Onward!

So I managed to finish my third week of school with everything turned in.
Ok, not everything. I've been slacking in my English class with the assignments. I've been forgetting! But tomorrow I have a 3 page paper due on an essay I've now read a couple times. It's supposed to be on form and style but I'm not entirely aware of the "styles" and "forms" so it's going to be a little difficult.
I think I've mentioned this, I'm going to start looking for my "career" February 1st with the school's career fair. I just found out I have to pay $10 to go which sucks but thankfully I just cleaned my aunt's place so I have $50! So I'm sign up tomorrow and then make an appointment with a resume person to help me figure out just what I want on there as well as what other careers should I be looking into with a degree in history besides museums.
Wish me luck!

Coolest Dream Ever

OK, it's 4:30am but I can't sleep because I keep reliving this dream and adding to it and I don't want to forget it so I'm writing it now.

So it's around Christmas and apparently my mom is doing some renovations on our childhood home (the one we haven't lived in since I was twelve- side note- why is it always my childhood home and never the other homes?). She has hired a new contractor because the old one was incompetent who advises all the things that should have been done/suggested before. Even suggesting we change the guard at our house to not being one guard all night (because the guy fell asleep in 3 hours) but to three guys working 3 hour shifts. Now it would make sense if these guards were guarding the outside of the house while we were living with friends or a hotel or something but yeah no that's not happening. Apparently, my mom had a baby-gate set up to her room (but there was no wall to put a baby-gate there in real life...) to leave something out? or leave something in? Not entirely sure. What I do know is that I woke up in the middle of the night and left my childhood room to find the baby-gate closed and our dog, Hunter (never had a dog named Hunter and this was not a German Shepard like the dog we did have), wanting to get in my mom's room. So I stood there for a second at the gate, looking at him, and let him in.
In my head I'm thinking "That stupid guard. I can't believe it! This time he isn't even here! Unbelievable!" As I'm thinking this, I'm trying to turn the backstairs light on, but I keep flipping the switch and it isn't working. (this is also in the wrong spot of my house...) I keep trying it and it's not working and in the dream I'm wondering if I've forgotten which light works for the backstairs. All of a sudden, a flash of a man runs out of my mom's room, through the baby-gate and down the stairs. And that's when it all clicks and I yell the ever appropriate and the ever clever remark "Yeah, you better run!" Then a second flash goes by that I think is a man.
Soon after that, I go into Mom's room, yelling "Can you believe that?!" and so forth.
Mom's in bed and goes "It's okay." Probably trying to tell me she's okay because she was asleep and is still groggy and, of course, in shock.
"Okay?! Look at this room!!" And it was true, there was junk all over the floor, things turned over; who knows how Mom slept through this.
I start going down stairs on the back stairwell, without light, and see the place is trashed while continuing to yell up to Mom while only for second thinking I might wake up Stacey and Lesley. I see he didn't touch Christmas presents (yes, robbed on Christmas Eve no less) and go to the back door that, as I go through it, becomes the front door. I call Hunter over and there he is still in the yard, all yippy and excited, knowing he did a good job. I of course praise him immensely and you can tell he wants a treat. Problem is, I don't think we have treats. Apparently our dogs (yes, there was another one) don't do much that warrant treats.
And that's where the dream ended.
So I'm thinking the guard did it.
Also, why this dream is interesting, it's the first time the layout of any of the places my dreams are staged has been wrong. The layout is usually the only thing that makes sense, believe it or not, but this time little things were wrong, like the back wall where the backstairs were being beside my parent's room which held up the baby-gate and the light i tried turning on, or the backyard having the front door view (actually this isn't that weird.) What was weird is that the tree was in the wrong spot! It was next to the TV stand instead of in the diagonal corner.
And then there was the backdoor. I don't think there was even a door there. At least I didn't until I started trying to figure out what was there. And now I'm thinking there might have actually been a door there that we just rarely used. And now I'm thinking we the Christmas tree there once.. and now I'm questioning everything! Except the backstairs- that's totally the wrong spot.

Against the Clock

Well, I've done worse- let's put it that way.
So the resolution to make good decisions is not going as hoped. Obviously, this is going to take some time and work. Basically, I freaked out about a paper I wasn't sure how to write and instead of asking the teacher for help I sat in my dorm and wallowed in my anxiety and tried to calm myself down by sleeping. Needless to say, the paper wasn't finished on time. Thankfully, I have a very laid-back and understanding teacher who has given me more time to turn in my work but, course, will be taking off points. Fair enough.
I also have a paper due today that I'm having trouble with but now I'm too scared to call the teacher because I waited so late to read the chapter. This book is about as hard to get through as a fat cat and a kitty door. It reminds me of the book Imagined Communities I needed Eric to translate for me last year. I've gone online to look for summaries but I'm not finding anything that goes in depth into the chapter. I mean, really it sounds like I understood the gist of it but it's 29 pages to describe what could be written in a paragraph and I need 3 pages.
I should just suck it up and call him.

So Upset

So tonight we had a returnee study abroad meeting which was great and a lot of fun. I got to meet a lot of great people who visited different countries and hear about their experiences. It really was great; I was one of the last people to leave.

At the very end Kimberly, who runs the study abroad stuff was telling a friend Jeff about how the school has a program to Taiwan.

"... And you know, we just had a girl come back from Taiwan who stayed for a year. And she earned six-credits over the summer."

I froze "Wait, what? You could have credits transfer over if you went for just the summer?"

"Yup!" says Kimberly.

I had actually went to the study abroad house and specifically was told by a graduate assistant that if I went to Taiwan during the summer my credits would NOT transfer and that it would only cover my study abroad requirement.

You have no idea how upset I was, and I'm finally starting to calm down but I missed my friends' wedding. I missed a bunch of other things too like my boyfriend's birthday, his graduation, but the wedding is what's really getting to me because  that's something that will, hopefully, only happen once in their lives.

Plus, I had known the groom my entire life, my boyfriend was the best man, and my best friend was going. These three people and their two families have been close their entire lives and have gone on holidays together and are just so close and because I live in Atlanta I've always been on the cusp of it. Moving to Chicago finally gave me a chance to not miss any more big events and be apart of these things and then I have to study abroad in order to graduate. I try to change the date because it seems like my only option is the Fall when everything is happening and then I find out NOW after so many things have happened and I've missed so many things and had such a hard time that things could have been different.

And I just might have been there.

I can not explain to you how upset I am right now.

First Week

I like my classes. I obviously have a favorite and a least favorite but I actually like all of them. I don't think that has ever happened before.
My favorite is my class on the capstone, ironically. I like the teacher, I like the subject matter, I'm all for this. My least favorite is the U.S. history class I have to take, simply because I have little interest in U.S. history after having learned it at least 6 times already over the course of my school life. The class that's in the middle somewhere is the English class I decided to take in hopes that it would give me tools to better my writing. The teacher is weird but in a nerdy, cool way that makes the class more interesting and the homework assignments include reading but are also exercises that challenge me in odd ways. For instance, my first assignment I had to write the longest sentence I could using only one semi-colon and it remain grammatically correct. The next one we had to diagram a two paragraphs at the beginning of this essay and then write sentences using that diagram. For example, a sentence would be "Jane ran home." That would be diagrammed as "subject verb object" and I would then have to write a sentence using those parts of speech (like mad libs but a lot more complicated) so I would write "Mark likes dogs." That's obviously a very simple example and it became a lot harder. So hard that I was pretty stumped because you also had to make the paragraphs cohesive and make sense.
Anyway, I'm thinking my last semester isn't going to be so bad after all. I really just need to keep up with my research and just stay on top of things.
I have my first therapy appointment this Saturday since being back in the states coming up which should be interesting. There's obviously a lot to talk about. Also, my family is going to come up for my graduation (even my dad who hasn't been back to Chicago in god knows how long) which is in June so I have that to look forward to.
My grades still haven't come in yet from China so I'm not sure if my Chinese classes will count towards my minor or if I'll have to drop it. I also don't know if my internship class will count as my independent study so I might have to quickly add an independent class to make up for that if I want to finish with classes by the end of March. I've decided I'm going to wait until the beginning of February to start applying for jobs, simply because I should have all of my information then. Or at least most of it.

New Year, New Attitude

This year is going to be filled with "can do" and less "can't."
I don't know if it's my stay in China for four months or that I recognize barely anyone on campus, am not dating, and it being my last semester, but I definitely feel different. I definitely think my stay in China played a huge part in it though. Having a large amount of homework due everyday, class everyday, no therapy meetings, not enough meds, and no close friends or family for support really made last semester difficult. I really learned that I had been using my anxiety and depression as an excuse, believing things like "I can't do that because of my anxiety," or "It's really hard for me because of my anxiety and depression." In a sense that is relatively true but it was more true because I made it so, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I figured that out at the very end of my stay there when I started making better choices and saw my situation improving. It really came down to my attitude towards myself and what I'm capable of.
I know a number of people have said this to me many times but for some reason it clicked after this experience.
So I was also going to start the year writing my first rough draft (because, hey, I decided I was going to do it so why put it off?) but I don't have the book with me. That might be good though so I can get situated this term and figure out when I'm going to do homework for which class and so forth. Then maybe February 1st I'll start writing. I'm taking an English class that focuses on how authors use grammar to get a point across or use certain tools and tricks so I should probably start writing after I learn a few things because those might be helpful. Actually, they will definitely be helpful. I feel like my writing is at Stephanie Meyer level and no one respects her writing so I really need to step it up.
Anyway, so my New Year's Resolution is to believe in myself and not put myself down.
I hope all of you have taken a moment to think about how you're going to make this year different :)