It’s been a while! But for the first time in a long time, I finished my work before midnight! Happy!
Okay, so I am going to use this post as a little update of the whatnots of my life and so forth.
- Last week, while sitting in my Japanese class, I thought, “What am I doing to myself?” I must have been crazy when I decided to take two advanced French classes anda Japanese class. If I only took one French class, that would have been reasonable because although the work is a bit difficult, it’s more of the workload that’s getting to me. My French grammar class is completely manageable (lots of mindless homework exercises and an 400 word essay about each week), but my French literature class is a tad difficult (presentations, exams, analyzing literature, reading classic texts, and listening/responding in French basically 90% of the time). Tiring. But then on top of that, a whole new language – Japanese! The class is quite easy and the language so far is simple, in my opinion. But all the memorization on top of my other school work makes for a heavy workload. And currently, I kind of suck at prioritizing or not so much prioritizing but actually forcing myself to follow through my attack plan. The amount of work I have is so daunting that sometimes I just take a nap or do some completely useless thing and then cut back on my sleep to finish everything on time. It’s bad. I have to find a way to get myself motivated to finish my work early.
Getting down to business.
- The last two weeks, and still continuing now, I have been on a race to finish my library books before their due dates. Way back in June, when I was really ambitious about reading, I borrowed tons of books. I finished all of the shorter ones and didn’t touch the books with 500+ pages. (I opened The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins and it seemed a bit drab at the beginning so I just put the book aside.) Instead, I borrowed new books and finished those first. Time passed and I accumulated more books than I could read. I kept renewing the prior books but now, I’ve run out of renewals. And so I finally got to cracking down on my books. In conjunction to reading books for class, I was reading my library books from three/four months ago. It’s been a crazy journey. I successfully finished The Woman in White and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, two great books. I personally enjoyed The Moonstone more of the two. And that book, I actually finished it a couple hours before the library closed for the day it was due. Unfortunately, I had to return Doctor Zhivago without ever getting past the first page. I’ll get back to it eventually. Now, I am on a race to finish One Hundred Years of Solitude and possibly, but very unlikely, Love in a Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez before they are due next week. And unfortunately, I borrowed six new books on Friday that I really want to start and now have a stack of 14 books to finish. I never learn, do I?
- I realized that the seasons have changed and I still have yet to upload my photos of my summer adventures. Oh how time flies by!
- This is something I wanted to post long ago, but kept putting it off: Do you ever wonder what America would be like if there were no roads or houses or civilization? No? Well, I do. My family frequently drives through areas where there’s just one or two roads paved through a small mountain of trees, crossing a lake, etc in Ohio, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. And lately, I’ve been reading a lot of “nature” books, as in the Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfeld and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. And they take place in these natural kinds of settings and I guess they just make me curious what it would have been like if I just roamed through the forests without any hope of ever reaching civilization. Quite a daunting yet romantic/beautiful thought.
- Lately, I have stumbled on other blogs (outside of Macaulay) and they’ve made me wonder if I should change my blog style to a more simplistic format, with less photos, less writing, and just small talk. I think that would greatly enable me to post more often. But it might take out from the content of my eportfolio. I don’t know. I’m torn. I’ll do some more soul searching and get back to you on that.
- However, I am excited to start my study abroad eportfolio soon! I think that one will be more simple, but will still contain tons of photos and writing, just divided into smaller individual posts. That way, I can update them quickly and often while juggling schoolwork, homework, and independence in a foreign country. Exciting! I cannot wait.
I think that’s all I had to say. Feels good to outline my thoughts like this.
