A New Ride

October 8th, 2003

That was the title of the paper that I just finished writing. Finally. I’ve been staring at blank Word documents for days. And when the page wasn’t blank, it was full of false starts and conversations with myself about all the things that I didn’t like about the book.

But that wasn’t the assignment, so rather than do all the complaining and foot dragging that I’ve got nearly perfected, I hauled my ass to the library which, as you can see by that photo, is beautiful, and is also open until 9pm monday through thursday, and is full of wonderful books, and only half full of distracting computers with distracting internet connections (which is why I went there to begin with – to get *away* from my precious internet). I lucked out and someone didn’t show up for the study room that they had reserved, so the lady at the reference desk told me I could have it, but if someone shows up claiming it’s theirs, it’s suck city for me. And that worked out well. No one came.

Apparently the rest of Bellevue was also in the library tonight, as the parking lot was nearly full, and the tables and desks in the common areas were pretty much taken. Lucky for me in my very own private study room, things were quiet. Outside the study room, not so quiet.

But I got the damn paper done, and that’s all that matters. I’m wondering why I want to be an english major again. That sucks because it’s a sign that lazy me is resurfacing. The one that does really well in classes, and really amazingly well on tests, but tackles assigments with tons of dread and hemming and hawing, and makes things out to be way way harder than they really are.

Take for instance the discussion that’s supposed to be going on, bulletin-board fashion, in my english class. The instructor posts four questions, one by one. You have so many days to go in and answer the questions. You are also required to respond to two people’s answers – thoughtful responses, not just “hey yeah, good point!”. But then the instructor got tricky on us. Instead of posting a fourth question, he leaves the last question to us – “Post a question of your own reguarding the text.” Um. There are several reasons why I haven’t completed my discussion work. 1) I honestly don’t care what most of my classmates have to say about this book. There is so much drivel going on there. Many people are obviously just answering for a grade and hardly putting any effort into they responses – Please tell me how I can possibly go through these posts and patiently read it all. In a class discussion, you sit there and listen. You don’t have to click, wait for the server to pull up the info, and then read it, only to find that you think the person is a moron and should learn to spell check. But you see, those half-assed people that are actually answering the questions – they’re getting a better grade than I am, not answering them. So far I’ve answered 3 questions and posted ONE thoughtful reply. Participation counts as 10% so I’m guessing that if I can get by with /some/ participation, I can still get an A in this class.

And then there’s reason 2) I seem to pass judgement pretty quickly on others. I assume the rest of the world does too. How wrong is that? Me and my timidity need to get over ourselves already. Timidity? Yes. It’s listed in M-W. I didn’t just make it up. Well, okay, I did. But I have backup this time!