This Should Be Interesting

Maybe I should have titled this fifteen minute blog . . . cause that's all the time I have. This is how devoted I am to this blog: I have a five page essay due tomorrow and about 2 hours to spare in which I can do it tomorrow, and instead of working on it now, I'm writing this blog. It's amazing how calm I can be during stressful situations. I put things off and put things off and when it finally comes time to do them, I don't panic. I just sit down and take care of it. I may rush and freakout a little bit, but I don't panic. But none of this information is significant. I want to talk about something that is. Why do people assume that just because I'm 18 I like to go out and party? People have this image of an 18 year old girl as free, crazy, and wild. That's not me. Infact, that's the epitome of me. I like to stay at home, maybe hangout with my friend, watch a movie and be layed back. Going out to drink and dance is the last thing on my mind. I know many girls my age that enjoy doing that, and that's fine for them, but I get tired of people assuming that that's the kind of stuff I'm into. People look at you weird when you ask them what you did friday night and you say, "I stayed at home." Another thing I hate is when people who I've known for only a short period of time come up to me and say, "You're quiet." I say, "Yup", but in the back of my mind I'm like, "If I had a quarter for everytime someone told me I was quiet . . ." Because the fact is if you think I'm quiet, you don't know me. I've had people tell me to shut up because I was talking too much. When I first meet people I'm not an extrovert and I won't say the first thing that comes to my mind openly. Maybe if there's only one person and I feel I can trust him/her, then I might talk freely, . . . but that's pretty rare. I always figured that if someone really wanted to know me, they could. I'm not that closed. I'm like a book, if you want to know something about me just ask and I'll tell you everything. I have no fear in telling people the truth about my past and who I am. I just have a fear of talking in general. Well, this has been an insightfully random blog.


~Jessica

Political Science

This is more for me. When I was taking the mid-term for my political science, there was a part that required us to write an essay about one of several topics. The one I considered but didn't write about is the one I'm going to address now. The question: What have you learned since you took this class? How has what you have learned changed or supported the views you had before this class?

Alright, first off I have to say what I thought the class was going to be like. I thought comparative Political Science would involve comparing governments, laws, ethics, stuff like that. The kind of social science classes I was use to were pretty much the same in content and execution. The class I'm taking now is unlike any social science class I've taken before- which is probably why I was lost the first week. We have learned about ethnic cleavages, regime change, different institutions, and modernization. Most of these things I had never even heard of or considered. I actually asked my fifteen year old sister what she thought an institution was and the only thing she could come up with was a mental institution, which I thought was pretty funny. Most of my past knowledge of history is pretty limited though, so I often find myself in uncharted waters. It seems like every week I learn something new and interesting from this class. Mostly I have come to realize how good we have it in our country. I hear about the governmental set ups in other countries where there are little or no human rights and everyone fends for themselves. There are constant wars, conflicts, and people often work for nothing. As a teenager, I often hear songs and see people that criticize our government. They say that our government is screwing us and not doing it's part to help and support this nation. While all of this maybe true to some level, we are still better off than most of the countries in this planet. We should appreciate the fact that we have the ability to affect change in our nation and benefit to such a great extent. At least we have the right to openly criticize it. Well anyway, I just wanted to get this out there. It was bugging me today. I don't even remeber the prompt I did chose for the essay. Part of me wishes I had written this one.

~Jessica

Same Old Same New

Well, . . . not much has happened. I took my mid-terms and did o.k. I really don't want to talk about school though. I originally wanted to write blogs about issues and ideas I thought were interesting. Now, due to a lack of creativity, they've become about my day to day life. Alright, I'm strting this blog by talking about three issues that crossed my mind today . . . First was how annoyed I get at rich people on reality T.V. who always complain about the fact that some luxury in their life is missing. For example, there was a show about a rap star who "preached" about God in his songs. He's a millionaire now. His son kept breaking his gameboy and the preacher kept buying him a new one every five- minutes. It seems wrong somehow that a man who is so intouch with God and helping others reach him could have so much money. Wouldn't he want to give it to those who need it instaed of wasting it on empty luxuries? It just makes me angry.
My second thought occured while I was walking down the street this morning. My eyes were burning because it was early and somewhat dry outside. I kept thinking how inconvenient the effects of having contacts were. Then I stopped and thought about what it was like to wear glasses. I looked around and I could see everything clearly- better than most people could using their eyes alone. The details of everything around me were clear and I could see off at a fair distance. Without my contacts I'm pretty much blind. Everything around me is completely void of detail. I can "make objects out", but I can't read or see any of the finer details on them. With my glasses, i could see well, but I was always aware of the fact that I had something on my eyes to aid in my imperfection of sight. All i had to do was look to the corner of my feild of view and see the same old blurred space that lied in the world beyong my glasses. With contacts you don't even realize you have an eye problem. You can't feel or see your contacts, so there's nothing there to remind you of how you would naturally see.
My third thought was how it seems like I have several versions of "me" when I write. Sometimes I speak in an articulate, orderly way. I don't know why, but when I write like that it reminds me of an old man writing. Then there's the "me" that writes informally and sarcastically - usually to my friends. I say words like "awesomeness" and "fo sho" (for sure). I often wonder which is the right version of my true self. I'm sorry if my topics seem a little vague or incoherent. I'm partially being distracted by the television. I don't know why, but I can't turn it off. I hate the silence. It makes me feel alone and scared. At night when my sister(who sle[t in the room next to me) was late coming home from work, I would turn on the television because I was afraid of the silence and darkness. In truth I probably had nothing to fear, but at night when everything is dead quiet I only have my thoughts. My thoughts during those moments aren't exactly comforting. At first I try to distract myself by thinking about things that don't really matter at all, maybe something that happened to me earlier that day or something I had to do the bnext day. Then i would hear some noise and become absolutley still. My mind would suddenly overrun with thoughts of every terrible thing that could have possibly made that noise. Then I would try to calm myself down, "don't freak out, it's probably just a peice of paper that fell from the desk". I'd pretend to accept this explenation, but in the back of my mind I still thought of the other frightening things. It would take me about an hour to fall asleep after that, and then I would have nightmares.
I should probably go now. It's 8:45P.M. I need sleepage. My eyes are drying out and stinging. Owww they burn! But hey, at least I can see clear. Speaking of seeing things, I inevitably made a couple of spelling errors. Please forgive me.

~Jessica

Life Themes

I don't really know what to write about- but that's nothing new I'll just see what comes. It seems like I have moments where my thoughts are deep, reflective, and meaningful and then have nothing to write them down with. Within five minutes those thoughts are gone and I ahve nothing to show for it. I feel jipped. Curse you brain, why can't you have good thoughts all the time? Instaed of those other thoughts like, "hey that girl has the same shirt I use to wear" or "I wonder who invented the first video game?" Speaking of which, I want to play Orgen Trail on my computer. I haven't played that game in years! We had it, then someone in my family gave it away. That game was awesome. I use to give my people celebrity names, especially celebs that I hated, and then when they died I would write something funny on their tombstone : Here lies Paris Hilton - she couldn't sing and she died of Typhoid. Granted they weren't the kindest intentions towards the game, they were still fun and entertaining. I also loved to hunt animals. In reality I think it's cruel to hunt for sport, but in the game I'd kill 50 buffalo just for the fun of it. They'd be wandering in the middle of the screen, slowly moving along, then BANG! and they'd kerlump right onto the ground, and tadah! instant meal. Then we didn't have to go hunting for another month. I'm not a violent person, really. but in video games, I can get a little . . . dangerous. You wouldn't want to play me at Halo. But it seems like games of that sort encourage violence, so it's not really my fault. If the option is there, then why not take it? It's not like you're hurting anyone in real life. your playing an imaginary game and killing imaginary things. It's worse for young kids to play because they're minds are still developing and they don't know how to separate what's real from what's imaginary. Anyway, those are my random thoughts for today. Here's a question though : Who invented the Caps Lock on the keyboard? They seriously need to die. I'll be writing just fine and then ALl of the SUDDEN I'll ACCIDENTALLY HIT THE CAPS LOCK AND START WRITING FOR A MILE IN CAPS LOCK, WITH NO WAY TO REVERSE IT. Then I have to rewrite it all again. eVIL cAPS loCK.


~JeSsiCA

Just Another Day in . . . Where am I?

Don't worry. I know where I am. Or wait, . . . do I? Yah, no I'm prettty sure I do. Anyways, I didn't get to do much this weekend. I had mucha tarea. *Tear. It seems like such a waste of a weekend. Whoever invented homework sucks. I'd almost prefer doing an extened period of time in class so I don't have to take it home. Speaking of class, I leave for Art History in about half an hour. I wish it were Tuesday. I only have one class on Tuesdays and it's my favorite class. Why is political science my favorite class though? I think it's the teacher and the way we are allowed to think. Interesting subjects always get brought up in that class, and I laugh the most in that class. By the way I took this pic in Scotland.

Holly Crap I just figured out how to upload pictures!!!!! Now I'll have to go back and add them to all my other blogs . . . EEEEp!

~Jessica

Slacking

Yes it's true, I'm slacking off. I have a million years worth of homework and yet I'm sitting here writing this. I have 4 classes in college. French 1, Art History, English 1, and Political Science. When I first started I thought my favorite class would be Art History. Now today here's what I think of each of these classes: French - a lot harder than I thought. I'm seriously debating going back to Spanish next time. Art History- we mostly take notes and look at slides of artwork. Interesting, but not as exciting as I thought it would be. English 1- I thought I would love this class, but we just read random essays about sight and memory. My first essays aren't doing so good. All we do in class is talk about themes and study how to write perfect essays. Political Science- definitely not what I thought it would be. The readings are harder because they sound cryptic and I have to rewrite each paragraph in my own words to understand it. But once I do understand it, I realize how suprising and insightful the essays are. They bring up ideas that never occurred to me before. I have an awesome teacher in my class. I'm quiet in class, so he allows students like me to participate by writing posts online about the subject. I think it's my favorite class. I could seriously take it all year round. I'll be sad when it ends in a couple months.

~Jessica

My 10 Minute Blog

As my title can tell you, I only have ten minutes to write this. A lot can happen in ten minutes though . . . . . . . . . . . . .(5 minutes later) O.K. so not much has happened. I went to the Egyptian Museum the other day. Wow that was fun. I saw Egyptian artwork. Twas awesome. How many people can say they've been to an Egyptian art museum? Not many that I know . . . then again I don' know that many people. I chose not to live on campus and I'm glad but the people at the school think I must have a hard time joining groups and meeting new people. If I really wanted to meet new people and join a thousand groups I'd be in one. I have met some new people. They're pretty cool. as for the group thing, I think we're already catergorized enough in life: ethnicity, sex, single or married, tall or short, fat or thin, smart or dumb, talkative or shy. I don't know if willingly placing ourselves into groups based on our interests is that much better. Say I go there and I join a movie group (which would sort of be awesome). I say to someone new, hey I like this movie and that movie, do you? They say yes, and if they say no I try to convince them that the movie really is good and they should watch it. Then the conversation is over. New subjects come up like, where are you from, do you have any siblings, what's your favorite candy? Suddenly it's not a movie group anymore. It's an all you can eat buffet of random information. it may not seem like such a bad thing, but doesn't it defefat the purpose of going to a group that's based solely on one subject? It's like an English teacher getting off subject and talking about science, math, or politics. It's entertaining and interesting, but it's not really why we're there. I don't know. I've had my five minute ramble. I thought of a new phrase today : a trip of guilt. It's like a guilt trip, only not. O.K. I'm done.


~Jessica