Wednesday, November 11, 2009

My first blog :)

Today was was a really hard day for me. Since I am a senior in college, I have to start thinking about what I want to do with my future. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea what I want to do! It has been one of my dreams (for quite some time now) to attend graduate school at some point in my life. Well, today I realized that I might not be cut out for academics. I stress out too easily, and I am easily let down by myself. I was recently told that my GPA is too low to get into a graduate program with funding. If I did decide to go to graduate school I would have to start out as a lowly masters student paying for it on my own, in other words--working while attending school. Well, as anybody who knows me already can guess, I have had enough of working myself to the bone by overloading myself with credits, and maintaining a job, sometimes even working full time. Maybe I just need a break before I seriously think about it. It is just hard not to feel stupid.
This semester is also made harder by the fact that I am taking Old English. For those of you who don't know, it is NOT Shakespeare (you would be surprised how many people think that), it is, rather, Beowulf and other texts written so long ago that no one is sure of their actual date. For example, right now I should be translating "Eft pa on fyrst, aefter fela gearum, pa seo hergung geswac and sibb wearp forgifen pam geswenctan...." the sentence goes on for an entire paragraph, and I am sure that you have as much of an idea of what is says as I do. That is kind of the problem...
Other than this wonderfully challenging class (and a Philosophy class that I can't even mention right now) I actually love the rest of my classes. My day got significantly better when I got to show off a bit in my Dracula and Decadence course in front of the grad students :) The class is a mixed grad and undergrad class on Victorian literature, a wonderful period where horror and decadence flourished. We just turned in our prospectus for the final paper, and, to my own personal horror, we had to discuss our topics... on the spot. Most people, and by people I mean undergrads, are writing about gender issues (women were apparently pretty useless at that time) or excruciatingly painful to read modern vampire stories compared to the Victorian vampire stories (yes, Twilight, and even Buffy). But then there is me. I am a HUGE nerd. So needless to say, my topic is on the transformation of the original Gothic novel, being Wallpole's The Castle of Otranto, to the Victorian Gothic novel. At least that is the broad topic. More specifically I will be looking at how the views of each society on Gothic architecture influenced the literature. This may seem a little dull, but I get to write about castles!! And people being trapped in castles!! It will be fun.
Another fun class of mine is Literacy and Cultural Diversity. For that class I volunteer for a few hours every week at a high school for kids who do not speak English as a first language. Most are Ethiopian or Somalian. Most are also amazing young people with an incredibly bright outlook on life. One girl (I have to mention!) speaks four languages. She is Somali, so she know Arabic and Somali, and she also now knows English and Spanish. We have hilarious conversations of mixed Spanish, English, and Somali words, and both of us only understand half of what the other is saying. She also wants to learn German. Working here has already blessed me in so many ways. I am the one that is supposed to be tutoring them, but so often I feel like the student. I think that this has inspired me to learn another language. After I graduate, I may take a night class at a community college or something. I would love to learn Arabic, but it is a very intimidating language since it is so completely unfamiliar to me.
Part of the reason that I wanted to start this blog is because in talking about how stressed out I am, I actually realize how lucky I am to have the opportunity to learn all this. So often I get caught up in my own world of academics that I forget there is an entire world out there.

1 comment:

  1. Yay! I get to be your first follower!!! I love it. And I'm not just saying that either. What's so cool with having a blog is it's your own place to write and do whatever YOU want. When you have time or are feeling creative there are so many things you can do on your blog or with posts. And what's cool is you can change it any time you want.

    It is a great outlet to vent or talk about what your doing or learning or whatever is on your mind and it helps with your perspective on your life. For me, it's been a awesome place to meet people from all over the world and with different opinions. I've made friends with this young mom in Hong Kong and one in Austrailia and a couple in India. I have learned so much from so many people I have met through my blog.

    I cannot imagine taking that old English class. It does sound interesting though. It reminds me of the girl I have met from Utah(from blogging) She is a high school english teacher and she has lived all over the world as a nanny before becoming a teacher. And now she is getting ready to move to Switzerland to teach English to teens that are living at this treatment center for eating disorders. And she is this amazing artist and photographer and writer. She keeps telling me that she is going to come and meet me some day. If she ever actually does, I would have to have you meet her.

    I think it is so awesome that you are doing ESL tutoring. What a great experience!

    Also did you know that Jennessa is just going back to school now? She took a break from college for awhile and now she's going again. So just keep in mind that it's okay to take a break, figure things out and you never know what you might run into and decide you want to do! How exciting!

    Did you know Brittany has a blog? This is her blog address http://brittanyjohnson87.blogspot.com/ It's called Unexpected Surprises.

    I really hope you keep up the writing here. I look forward to reading it and learning all kinds of things from you. Love you and hugs, Lori

    ReplyDelete