Writing for the Media:
"Suzanne, will you read next please?"
"I'm Amanda."
"Oh....."
It's okay. I'm used to it. My mom's friends all think I'm "Sue" when I answer the phone.

Poetry:
Stevick didn't photocopy my poem with the rest of the class's, which I wouldn't mind except I don't want him to think I never turn anything in, and I didn't email the first assignment. I didn't know we were supposed to. I didn't read the email asking for it until after class let out. So I was extra careful to send this one in plenty of time for the deadline, and somehow...... it still disappeared.

I had a 3 hour class at 9:45, which let out after an hour and a half, which was how long it took us to go over the syllabus. The whole time I stared at this kid who looked like Sisky (from The Academy Is...) and tried not to laugh that his name was Bill..... same as the lead singer for TAI. =3

In my time off I drew a new map of Myriad that worked out better with the storyline I mapped out last night. It also showed more details and names of places on the mainland.




Then I had Media Writing, 1:15-2:50. Then Poetry, 3:00-5:00. Next I'm going to my applied Communications meeting, which is essentially the same as film club but I get credit for it. That's from 5:45-7ish. I was supposed to brainstorm ideas for a documentary this summer. Didn't do it. I'm not big on documentaries. As Robby has said, real life is just so boring! "There aren't any werewolves!" But last night I thought of something that would make a really interesting documentary: synaesthesia! Remember when I went on and on about that last spring? There's a documentary I'd enjoy working on!

At 9 I'm going to the meeting about the school paper. I'm not a noobie so I don't have to, but I want to make sure nothing's changed since last year, and I want to meet my editor in person.

I'll sleep well tonight.

So I am nineteen today. I can't really think of any songs to usher in this new year of my life. "17, 18, 19, routine...." Ugh, no, not that one. Anything but routine. Oh, well.

This means I've only got one year left as a teenager. And that makes me sort of sad. I feel like these past couple years have been what being a teenager is about, but before that.... I don't know what I was before that. A work-a-holic or something. Anyway, I'm happy to be nineteen because it is SUCH a better number than 18. It's odd AND prime. Good things are going to happen this year...... I'm really weird, aren't I? But I don't know, it's always nice to have that hope that the best is yet to come.

And this year IS going to be good! At least this semester is! I only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays (and one for 3 hours on Monday nights). So, I will have LOTS of time to work on my fantasy book, The Broken Sword. MAYBE if I'm REALLY having a good semester, I'll even post excerpts! But ONLY IF PEOPLE START COMMENTING! Bwahahaha.... bribery... I love it. I also need to get a job. I've got one month of car insurance covered. That's my birthday present. My dad told me he feels weird not giving me anything tangible, but I'm so stoked to have my car on campus that it really doesn't matter to me. I'm gonna sell $200 of meal points to cover October. After that, I really WILL need to be working. That'll suck, but I guess I can't complain. I have the easiest schedule in life and I'm still scraping together 15 credits for the semester. That takes skillz, yo. =P

Okay, off to make The Broken Sword be even half as epic as LOTR.

In-freakin-credible.

Would you believe it, I got stuck sitting next to the same girl for the third New Testament exam in a row? Completely and utterly by chance! And EVERY TIME, I watch her shuffling through the notecards in her lap while I struggle to recall which column of my chart had contained the correct answer. It's freakin distracting, thinking about how easily she gets to fill in the stupid Scantron sheet while I'm racking my brain for everything that hit my eardrums in the past eight classes.

I overheard her saying that exams were always her debut appearance in class. Then she was bragging to her friend that she had cheated on a test in a different class, too.

THAT PISSES ME OFF like you have no idea. I went to EVERY lecture, took copious notes, read the material (more or less), and actually give a crap about understanding what I'm being taught instead of just using the professor to boost to my GPA, but she will get a better grade because while I was resigning myself to the fact that I didn't know the right answers, she had them on a piece of paper in front of her.

While I'm ranting about tests, "NONE OF THE ABOVE" SHOULD NEVER, EVER BE AN ANSWER ON A MULTIPLE CHOICE TEST! What is the point of having an exam be multiple choice if the options don't even help you narrow down the possibilities? Then you see the four answers that ARE there, and they're in your head and you start thinking maybe they're right after all, but you can never be sure the answer wasn't something else.

And how about when you start to think you see a pattern to the answers? Or you notice that they spell BAD ADD or AC/DC. Or when you get a ton of the same answer in a row - oh man, that is the WORST. I think I hit 8 A's in a row today, and it really had me worried, but I was pretty sure all of them were right, so I just left it. STUPID BUBBLE-IN TESTS, MESSING WITH MY SANITY!

Everything aside, I think I did all right on the test. Maybe if I took a little more time to study beforehand, it wouldn't be such a toss-up every time. But it's like Andrew and I always say... "I was going to... but then I fell asleep." So true. So true.

Do geese live forever or something? I mean, aside from if you are a hunter, have you ever seen a dead goose? What happens to them after they die? Where do they go?

Is anyone concerned that I am asking this about geese and not people?



So there's this paper. I'm working on it now. It's for my Christianity, Character, and Culture class. The more I think about the name of that course, the more I think they named it that solely because it could be abbreviated "CCC." Anyway, I think this paper would be going a lot better if I had read the books it's supposed to be based on. And if I didn't have to turn it in in less than two hours.

Hey, I watched the movies, okay? And I participated in the discussion. I know what happened in the books, more or less. All Glenney really wants is a well-written paper with a clear thesis, not a book report. So long as it mentions one of the things we read or watched, it's all good. Although I wish he wouldn't hold me to such an exceptionally high standard. It's mad stressful and doesn't seem quite fair. Come on, this is CCC, people! This should NOT be a big deal.

All right, ALL RIGHT. I'll stop procrastinating now. The geese flying past my window just really got me thinking about the bigger questions in life, you know?

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of tapping. Not like, tapping on the door kind of tapping; I mean I'm furiously typing so I can finish this novel before sunrise kind of tapping. It freaked me out because no one else has lived in my room for months now. Then when it got light out I realized it was hail. That's right, folks, another gloriously rainy day at Gordon, and me still without rain boots. I ordered them on Monday, but they were out of stock and I can only hope they'll ship before the April showers REALLY hit. I just saw someone with the exact same boots I ordered and it made me a little sad that I wasn't as original as I'd thought.

Okay, I'm going to be late for creative writing. Ironic, isn't it?

Thankfully, I did manage to finish my ten poems. Just BARELY. I still have to write my paragraph responses, but luckily, I've bought myself time by consistently writing these in my writer's journal, which he has yet to collect, so I just stuck a post-it on the first page saying the responses were in my journal and am going to write them before Friday's class. My prof liked the title of the collection ("The Youniverse is Crumbling All Around Us"). I couldn't bring myself to say that that was probably the only brilliant thing about this poetry collection. I think I skipped one stipulation, too, which was editing a poem for repeated vowel sounds. I hope this doesn't have too much of an adverse impact on my grade. Although, the fact that some of the poems suck so bad they make me want to vomit might have an adverse impact on my grade.

Today was fabulous. I was worried that I would wake up from my nap and it would be dark out, but I had to take one because I had only slept 5 and a half hours on account of the poetry assignment. It was the best nap I've ever taken. I actually fell asleep and had dreams! This simply does not happen to me during the day. I'm not a good napper. And the slightest sound can wake me up - mostly voices, actually, but there are a lot of those in my paper-walled hallway, so usually a nap means futilely laying in my bed with my eyes shut until I get too bored. For instance, if I wanted to sleep right now, I would probably have to set up camp in the study room, because a couple of girls who live down the hall are in their room screeching, as usual. They aren't fighting. It's just how they talk. Sometimes I just want to screech SHUT THE MUCK UP back down the hall, but I kind of think it wouldn't make a difference. Especially since they'd probably just laugh at me (screechingly) for using the word "muck" instead of a rhyming alternative.

Anyway, when I woke up from my nap two hours later, it was still broad daylight, so I threw on a long skirt and took a looooong walk in the woods. I have to say that I didn't want to come back. It was so glorious outside today. The sunlight was beautiful. (Oh man, all I have to do is vaguely reference the song "Daylight" to get teeny tiny chills up my spine. Ahaha.) Trish said I was turning into Henry David Thoreau for being in the woods. I was deeply insulted. But if I start telling y'all about how much I spent on branches to build my treehouse with Taz or something like that, please virtually shoot me in the head. Thanks.

It's... snowing? I walked out of the library after my last class, and the rain had mysteriously turned to snow. Yet the thermometer outside of my window still reads 36, so this is a mystery indeed. Even I am a little upset about this messy snowstorm. I think I'm the only one left (besides Sarah, who is from Arizona and is amazed by snow because she grew up without it) who isn't sick of snow. It doesn't matter how much snow we've had, I will always be happy to draw the blinds and see little (or big) white flakes floating down, and I will always go spinning around in the parking lot with my mouth open to catch them, and I will always skip to meals singing "Sleigh Ride," even though the rest of the world insists that it is a Christmas carol. But this half-and-half, not-really-snow-or-rain stuff is just nasty. And I don't even have cute rain boots to protect my sockies from the puddles. I love that the word galosh is sort of onomatopoeia. Think about stomping in a huge puddle while wearing rain boots: it would go "GA-LOSH!"



These would do nicely.



Or these.



Or these ones, except they might make me hungry every time I wore them.

Boo! I really want to learn the song "Enamel" by Brave Saint Saturn. But as we all know, I don't have a guitar.

But I guess I should be studying for psych, anyway. Why don't I really care...?