"What we play is life."

Wow. This is boring.

I turned in my keys and moved out of Chinook this morning at 6:30 am. Drove to Leavenworth, where my parents dragged me around to their wine-tasting and cheese-tasting (that cheese shop smelled awful, btw). Had a faux-fancy Italian lunch, then came the rest of the way home. Went upstairs, and what do you know? There are at least three spiders in my bathroom that I counted before I came back downstairs and vowed to avoid the upstairs as much as possible. Seriously, I don't think that bathroom has been cleaned in months--the toilet is in weird shape, and the bathtub is actually dirty. Wtf parents? Apparently my mom is only a clean freak about the downstairs. Which leaves me with no place to shower. Not a biggie once they're gone, I can just use their shower which will be spider-free--but until then it's going to be a bit of a problem. Hmmph.

Promptly decided that I hate it here and I want to go back to Pullman. I want it to be June 13th already, because by this time on June 13th I'll be deciding whether to put my bed or my desk in the carpeted room. You know? It'll be really hot and I'll be all sweaty and tired from moving boxes all day after getting up early to drive up, but I'll be back in Pullman with nothing familial to think about except when my dad is going to leave the next morning. You know? Less than twelve hours and I already hate being home. Love the puppies and the nice weather and the friends and the mall and the month of reading and movies, but I would so much rather be complaining with those friends about how there's nothing to do in Pullman and reading and watching movies from the living room in Chinook.

I'm just complaining.

But srsly.

So I can't handle an entire month of this. There are nine whole days in which I have to coexist peacefully with my parents as it is. It will be better once they leave for Italy, because then I just have to feed the horses and let them out and clean the barn and take the dogs out and play with them and walk them and generally be lazy. But I don't want to spend this month sitting on the couch and drinking soda. I plan to do that, but I also would like to work on my weight. I tried Renee's South Beach Diet many weeks ago. I only made it through like two and half days, but I stuck to veggies and cheese except when I allowed myself to keep drinking soda because I couldn't drop the caffeine. Even with that modification and only a few days, it definitely worked, because the next time I weighed myself even after I'd reverted from the semi-diet I was down like three pounds without any rec center visitations. Weight fluctuation is normal, but it tends to fluctuate upwards for me, so this is a big thing. I'm thinking that I should try the modified diet again and see what happens. If I don't, I'm just going to sit here and eat pretzels and make hot fudge. You know? Bad idea.

In a similar tangent, I think I should volunteer. I will be here for, I dunno, 28 or 29 more days. If I have to spend 20 or more of them all alone in this house, I will go crazy. It's just a matter of time. So I need something to do. It would be nice to have a job for that time, but not possible. So the next best thing is to volunteer. The Everett Animal Shelter thingy has grooming, dog walking, and adoption specialist positions, among others, which require little experience. They seem to need volunteers, too. Somebody said that when the economy takes a turn for the worse, people stop volunteering and concentrate on working. So this is a good time to volunteer.

It just means I have to drive to Everett several times a week. Lame. Increasing my chances of causing a fatal car accident. Yikes. But I've got to suck it up and gain confidence in my driving abilities at some point. Might as well be now. If I die on the way to the animal shelter, at least that means I won't have to suffer through another sunburnt hell week of band camp.

And if I volunteer five hours a day three days a week or something like that, then I've got around sixty hours of volunteering to put down on my resume. Quizno's will hardly be giving me as many hours as I want, so then I can volunteer some more. The Whitman County Humane Society is less than a mile from my new apartment--an easy walk. So then I will have spent this summer improving my resume. Good deal.

Now I just have to motivate myself to do it. Hopefully by the time Monday rolls around I'll be bored enough to just call them and figure out what I have to do to be a volunteer.

Boring. Also, lame.

I have to be out of Chinook by Saturday at noon. No big deal, but my lease for next year doesn't start until June 5th. So, once again, I have to box up all my stuff and move it to other people's places, go home, then come back and move it all back. Gah. For once I would like to move straight from one place to another, instead of all these go-betweens. It's annoying, but more importantly, it gets other people annoyed at me.

I said a few weeks ago to my parents, very clearly, that if I had to choose between them taking me home and them taking me back to Pullman, I would want them to take me to Pullman so I could buy stuff on the west side to bring back, and so that my dad could help me move boxes back and set up furniture and whatnot. And what did my parents say? Oh no, don't worry about it, we'll bring you both ways. And what did my parents tell me yesterday? Oh, well we think we'll just send you back to Pullman on the bus, because we'll be so tired from our three week vacation to beautiful Italy while you're stuck in a big old spidery house cleaning horse poop and losing money because Penneys can't hire you back. Is that okay? No, that's not fucking okay.

They bought me a sofa-bed, a computer desk, and a chair from Target. But was this an act of parental charity? Oh no. They deducted the money from what they were planning on paying me for house-sitting. Of course. That's what parents do, right? They make well over $100,000 a year and I'm the one working year-round in food service to pay rent, and they're too cheap to just buy me a $180 sofa-bed for my new apartment. Thanks?

But anyway, they bought this stuff and they want to bring it over on Saturday because I'm supposed to take the bus back up to Pullman. But this would require storing it with someone. Steph only let me put boxes in her storage closet, because having a few boxes against a corner of her freaking gigantic apartment would just be too much of an eyesore for her. And Jon is less than enthusiastic about letting me store the rest of my boxes with him. I don't really blame either of them, but it's just so frustrating to be so helpless. I have no choice but to rely on my friends to help me out, and they get so mad at me, and it makes me feel like I'm nothing but an annoying burden. I'm really sorry, but there is nothing else I can do! So if I asked Jon to also store a sofa-bed, desk, and chair, I'm sure he would be just thrilled.

Plus, if I have to take the bus back up here, that means I have to get someone else to help me buy, transport, and set up the rest of the furniture I need. I will also have to get Steph and Jon to help me move all my boxes into my new apartment.

Can you see where I'm going with this?

I'm really frustrated, all around. I can't do this by myself. I need help. I hate having people mad at me, and I don't know how to fix it. I hate that my parents did exactly what I told them I didn't want them to do, and they just blithely assume that it will be okay with me. If I had known this from the start, I would have planned things much differently, but now there just isn't enough time. And the whole crappy thing is a losing proposition for me, because by house-sitting for them, I'm losing an entire month of pay. I just spent a bunch of money on the deposit and first and last month rent for that apartment, not to mention this laptop so that I could write my ten page and four page final papers without one hand holding the stupid adapter. I can't afford to be jobless for a month this summer, when I should be working 40 hours a week. That's at least a thousand dollars that I could have made from mid-May to mid-June if I could have stayed in Pullman, and I could have rented Chinook for only about $175 for that month. Then I could have moved straight from Chinook to my new apartment. As it is, I'm stuck all alone in that house for a month, cleaning horse poop, taking the dogs out, avoiding spiders, and doing NOTHING. Fuck.

So I texted my dad, saying once again that if I have to choose, then I'll get a bus ticket for this weekend or early next week. I mean, my mom was never going to help me move in to my new apartment anyway. She's like that. When any work is involved, she immediately opts out, even though she ALWAYS brags about how hard her job at Boeing is and how hard she always works. She didn't even help me move in to Gannon when I first came to college. She just said goodbye in the morning and that was that. She saw WSU for the first time late last semester, and I'm surprised she even made it then.

This whole situation just blows. With any luck, I'll renew my lease on this apartment and live there for all of junior and senior years. Then I'll have to move all my stuff back to Snohomish, which will be annoying, but by then I'll be 21, so I can just rent my own U-Haul or whatever and move it all and drive it all myself, no help needed from anyone else. Then I'll have to move it to whatever state I end up in for grad school. I'm guessing that I'll do the same thing then--just rent a U-Haul and drive it myself. My dad might come with me... he flew to Virginia when my brother needed to move his truck back to Washington just to drive with him. He might want to help me drive all my stuff to Indiana or New Jersey or Illinois or wherever. I don't know. Whatever.

Grr.

Maybe I will be a single mother some day.

I mean, I'm almost twenty. I used to think that I had so much time to find the right guy and figure out my plans for the future. But I'm already almost twenty. I used to think that it didn't matter if I didn't find the right guy here at WSU, because it would be better to find him at graduate school. But what if all the good guys I meet at graduate school are already married? By the time I actually start my career, I will be almost 27. Isn't that weird? God, grad school takes forever. What if I graduate with my PhD and start my career, and I haven't even been in a relationship since before undergrad school?

That would be okay. Because it's still so hard to imagine really trusting and depending on someone else. I just can't picture myself in a serious, committed relationship. All I can picture is getting to the point where I need to commit, and then getting freaked out and bailing.

So maybe instead of having that traditional get-married-and-have-kids stuff, I'll start my career and adopt a baby when I'm 30. Heidi did it, in the play I read for my Art Theory class this semester. And the character only did it because the author did it in real life. It was the best choice for her, and she was happy because of it. If the best choice for me is to stay single and adopt a child, then I will do that.

I can't believe life is changing so fast. For so long, I've been a teenager wishing I was an adult. Now, I am clinging to the last dregs of my teenage years and staring life right in the face. Lisa and Renee graduated yesterday. In two short years, that will be me. I will walk, shake Floyd's hand, and receive my Bachelor's Degree. Then I'll leave WSU. I have five years in graduate school after that, and then I'll walk again, shake someone else's hand, and receive my PhD. And then what?

I'm almost twenty.

Why am I having an early life crisis? This is ridiculous.

But it's still surprising to realize that I'm no longer that angry teenage girl, trying to escape from her parents and take control of her own life. Now I'm almost in my twenties. I'm halfway through my undergrad school. I have all these adult responsibilities. Life is changing.

It just took me by surprise, that's all.

Who the hell cares about gender roles in the Andes anyway? Not me. I care enough to write 5 pages about it. But 5 more pages? I really don't give a shit. I am not a crazy anthropologist. This is a 100-level class. I've written three 5 page papers, a 1-page lab review, and two 2-page movie reviews already. Why the hell does the final paper have to be 10-12 pages long? Let me repeat: this is a 100-level class. What the hell is wrong with my teacher?

Ugh.

Just 5 more pages, and I'm done with the entire semester. Just 5 more pages, and I won't have to worry about homework until the middle of August. Three and a half glorious months of absolutely no homework. Just 5 more pages.

I have until 5pm tomorrow. 18.5 hours in which to write 5 pages.

I hate Anthropology.

I have low self-esteem.

It sucks.

Life has a funny way of giving you rare gifts when you least expect them, doesn't it?

I applied for the Cougar Alumni Band Randal Spicer scholarship in January. I spent a long time writing and rewriting my essay, hoping that I could convey my love for marching band convince the committee that I deserved the $1500 the most. Well, I wrote my essay the same way I always do--not the way everyone else does.

This is my essay:



Ten minutes till pregame. I sigh and sneak a peek at the stands. Slowly, steadily, the few specks of gray are swelling into a sea of crimson. The marching band has been in the tunnel for twenty minutes already. I stand next to my fellow trombonists, double-checking that my collar is hooked and my slide is locked in place. Pregame is my least favorite part of the game. I usually kill the time beforehand by complaining to my bandmates about how long we have to wait in the tunnel, and actively dreading running out onto the field and then spending five minutes high-marching.

My membership in the CMB has taught me important lessons about life. I learned that the most difficult tasks in life are the ones that are most valuable. CMB is a huge time commitment, and none of us make it lightly. I know just how much time it takes to put together a really good marching band, from band camp in blazing heat to hours that could have been spent on homework. Marching band is very time-consuming, but it’s worth every minute of it. I learned that teamwork is vital to achieving goals; it may not be much fun to rehearse the same drill over and over again in freezing temperatures just to hear frustrated yells of “GUIDE!”, but after all, without the hard work of every single person in the band, the half-time show falls apart. Last but not least by any means, it was through the Cougar Marching Band that I learned the most important motto of all: Bones Rock. I think I am worthy of the Randall Spicer Marching Band Scholarship because I am a dedicated CMB member. I’ve been a member of the band for two years now, and loved every minute of it. This year I’m a stipend member of the volleyball and the women’s basketball pep bands. As much as I complain about the time and the cold and the running, I am always sad to see the season end.

Finally, finally, we hear the drum line start the cadence. And as with every other Cougar football game I’ve played at with the CMB, I admit to myself this one crucial fact: I don’t hate pregame at all. One, two, three, four… what in the tunnel seemed like the countdown to a hellish few minutes of running and high-marching is now a countdown to the most exhilarating few minutes of the entire marching band season. Seven, eight, nine… I check my slide one last time, grin, and yell the last few numbers along with the chant: “thirteen, fourteen, FIFTEEN, SIXTEEN, AHHHHHHHHHHH!” And as I dodge and sprint with my fellow bandmates, I hear the screams of thousands of Cougar fans. The stands are packed, crimson as far as the eye can see. I feel a fierce rush of pride as I realize, running to my spot and ready to march, that they are cheering for us.



I was happy with the final product. I felt like the transition from the scene at pregame to "give me money" and back was a little awkward, but really, how can you make that kind of transition feel natural? So I sent it off, and hoped that it would make an impression.

And it did!

They have not announced the results yet, and I honestly didn't think they would until after the next marching season. But I got this email today:



Ashley,

My name is Gerry Austin, and I’m on the scholarship committee for the Randal Spicer Scholarship that you applied for.

I just wrapped up reviewing all the essays, and sent off my rankings, but I just had to drop you a message saying, “Heck Yeah! BONES ROCK!”:

I was a fellow boner from the mid-late 90’s, and it was a real pleasure reading your essay. You brought me right back into the tunnel... ready for the dash, then the epic grueling march! WOO!

Anyway, there are several others on the committee as well, so my boner bias will probably be diluted, but I think there will be an announcement sometime in the not too distant future. This is the first time the CAB has done this, so I don’t really know how it will work. We started the scholarship a couple years after I graduated, and it finally got endowed, so this has been a lot of fun. I really hope that some year we can give more scholarships, as this year, I wanted to give everybody one. You sound like a real asset to the section, and it’s great to hear great things are still going on.

A lot of us old bones like to visit the bonepage (what others just call the section website) to see what ya’ll are up to. But it doesn’t look like it’s been updated in a few years. We had a similar problem back in 2000, after myself and Dave Kirkbride graduated… Dave had made it too complicated for non-techie wizards, and we fear the same thing might have happened when Andy left a few years back... he was after all, the grand techie wizard of the bonepage… It’d be great if you guys could make a push next fall to setup a new one…

As far as us after college, I married a clarinetist, and we now have two kids a son of 2 yrs and daughter of 5 months. Dave married another boner, and they have a son who’s a few months older than my son, so we have a great time whenever we get together.

Sometimes I still wonder what my life would have been like without band… even through we rarely, if ever play… it just seems like everywhere I go, I run into band people.

Lots of love to the boners,
Gerry




Wow. Wow! Wow.

How amazing!

I love the CMB. I love being a boner. I love my section, and I love Don. I love WSU. I love my life.

Princeton University:
First year of Ph.D study is automatically paid for with a fellowship; students must find their own fellowships after that.
Princeton! Badass!

Indiana University:
Ph.D students are required to have a Ph.D minor.
And IU has the Kinsey Institute! Badass!

Northwestern University:
All five years of Ph.D study are paid for, tuition and stipend! Wow!
But damn, out of 300 applicants they accept 25, and about 12 of them end up going there. That would be so freaking hard to get into.

Washington State University:
My back-up plan if nothing else works out (or works out well).

I am being silly. This does not merit any analysis at all. I am looking for trouble where there is none, and it's ridiculous, and it's unfounded, and I cannot keep doing it.

Well, if I quit my job at Quizno's, here is what will happen.

I have way more than enough money saved up right now to get me through this semester unemployed. I can use the extra time to volunteer--there was an article in the newspaper today about how the WSU YMCA desperately needs volunteers for academic tutoring. This would be a good experience for me, because I would have to learn how to interact with children, which is something I'm going to need experience with sooner or later. I could also volunteer at Orphan Acres whenever Steph doesn't think it's "too cold" outside. I can sign that AmeriCorps contract, get an amazing addition to my resume, figure out how to interact with small children, and receive the student award (which is not too shabby) all in one fell swoop. Not working at Quizno's means my feet don't hurt, my back doesn't hurt, I don't smell like sandwiches, I have a better opportunity to keep up with my homework, and I don't feel angry all the time about all the stupid shit they do there. It means no income for a while, but I'll apply for other jobs immediately and even if I don't get hired this semester, I will definitely be able to find a job over the summer, easy. Now I have retail experience AND managerial experience in food service, so I should be pretty hire-able.

Pros:
volunteering
new job
more time
no sandwich smell

Cons:
no income until I get a new job


.... the pros FAR outweigh the cons. But if this issue gets solved satisfactorily, then I will not quit. However, if she looks me in the face and tells me that his harassment of me is "a personal problem", then I'm going to smile and say "here is my two weeks notice, do you need me to sign something?"

So I dropped Chemistry 101 and signed up for Honors Anthropology instead. This is an okay change because I'm still fulfilling requirements and checking things off my DARS report, but the longer I put off chemistry the less motivation I'll have to take it. Gah. But it would be so much freaking work... pre labs and post labs and pop quizzes and online homework points and huge exams... if chem was my only hard class, it would be fine. But Experimental Methods is going to be really hard too... research proposals and research papers and more statistics and a teacher who doesn't like to give "A"s... I don't want to wear myself out to get good grades in both these classes, plus two other psych/soc classes AND a 400 level honors class.

But taking into account the fact that I might not ever be able to list chem as my only hard class and put in the amount of effort that it requires, I might cave in and take geology instead. That would be an easy A, but a boring one. So I'll either take chemistry during a semester in which it's my only hard class, or take geology in a semester in which it's my only boring class. We'll see.

Tomorrow:
walk to Streit-Perham and get my keys before class.
11 am Social Deviance
12 pm get lunch or something
1 pm Big Band (my chops are going to suck)
2 pm UH 440
3 pm back to apartment, get uniform, walk to work
4-close work.

Whoo.

Well, I am about 75% moved into my new room! Very exciting. Now I am just sitting here with a sore back, wondering what I'm going to do for dinner. Hopefully the groceries I bought yesterday will last me till the weekend. And hopefully on the weekend Steph will go back to the grocery store with me.

Tomato soup? Maybe. Comfort food sounds good right now.

I also want to commandeer (Renee's?) season four of Friends, which is sitting tantalizingly in the living room. But if I do that I'll spend all night watching it. And won't have time to watch more tomorrow, which would be painful. But it's only 5 and all I have to do for the rest of the day is clear the stuff off my bed so I can go to sleep. What else am I going to do with these five hours or so? Certainly not anything productive. Hmm... tomato soup and Friends... this sounds fantastic.

16 random things about myself? Okey dokey.

1. Uh-oh, I'm having trouble thinking of a number one. How am I going to come up with sixteen? Let's see... I hate my parents' house. HATE IT. It's huge and spacious and in the country, and I hate it. It's lonely and far away from everything and there are bugs EVERYWHERE. In the last three weeks there have been four spiders in my bathroom, a spider still chilling out in my closet, and some weird bug in my drawer. Fuck living in the country, I'm going to live in the city for the rest of my life and walk to work and only have to deal with one bug at a time.

2. I am so unspeakably happy to be going to college. I work at Quizno's and I think man, this sucks, I miss retail... then I work at retail and some customer insults me and I think man, this sucks, I hate retail... the truth is that if I really thought I would have to work at a retail or food service job for my whole life I think I would shoot myself. I am so happy that even though I have no idea what it's going to be like, when I get my Ph.D. I can spend the whole rest of my life as a counselor or an experimental researcher or a professor or any number of other professions. No more sandwiches and shirt returns for me.

3. My favorite color is green. I am very fond of white, though. Despite this, I have twice as many black articles of clothing in my closet than any other color. Ths is because I am ridiculously self-conscious, so when it comes to a choice between a red shirt and a black shirt, I'm going to choose the black shirt because it will hide me better. Hopefully my wardrobe will become more colorful by the summer. We'll see.

4. I love books. It really sucks that I haven't read very many books for pleasure in the last year or so. I kind of miss the days in high school where I would check out ten books from the library, read three of them, and fall in love with one of them.

5. As much as I love dogs, I am not going to get one of my own for many many years. They are far too much responsibility and take too much time and care, which I simply don't have. I don't want to feel bad every time I have to write a paper or see a client and leave behind those sad puppy dog eyes.

6. I wish I was better with technology. I'm way better with it than my parents, thank god, but not nearly as good as I wish I was. Jeff is majoring in computer engineering, so whenever he starts to talk about intense computer stuff I desperately wish I knew what he was talking about so I could talk to him about it without first needing him to explain everything.

7. I am fascinated with homosexuality. I get really excited when people tell me that they're gay, and I'm more inclined to say "oh that's so cute" about a gay couple than about a straight couple. If it's still in there by the time I get to grad school, I want to get Gender Identity Disorder off the DSM. I think it's a substitute for homosexuality, and who are you to decide that a little girl who likes GI Joe better than Barbie is mentally disordered?

8. I used to think that I always thought the best of everyone and never assumed that people were deliberately shafting me. Now that I'm getting older, I am afraid that that side of me is slipping away. These days if something bad happens I do look for reasons instead of just accepting that something bad happened. I don't want to become as judgmental and rude as almost everyone else I see. I wish I could hold on to that sort of innocence a little longer.

9. I hate listening to people eat. It drives me nuts. Especially if they eat loudly by intention, like my dad does. So unbelievably annoying. One of the scary things about relationships is that you're going to eat meals together, and I'm going to have to listen to you eat; and if you eat loudly, I'm going to want to shoot myself.

10. In order to avoid focusing all my repressed anger from my own childhood onto one of my own children (which is what my mom did to me, pretty much) I want to have five children. That way I'll be so busy taking care of all these kids and making ends meet and trying to still have a love life with my husband that I won't have time to be insidious and hurtful to any of my kids. Good plan, right? Plus, I love the idea of a big huge family. All that love in my house... what a great feeling that will be. But I don't think I'll get married until I'm at least 25, so I doubt I'll have kids until I'm almost 30.

11. I use this LJ way too much. I rely on it to write down my thoughts and feelings about everyday events and people, and to make plans about things like grad school and relationships. I used to write emo, melodramatic entries almost every day about how terrible my life was... thankfully I don't do that too much anymore. It still happens, but not as often as it used to.

12. On that note... my life is kind of amazing right now. Everything is going so well for me: school, grades, psychology, classes, work, friendships, living arrangements, money, and even an amazing boyo who for whatever reason seems to like me as much as I like him. Even though there will always be things to complain about--that jackass at work, my parents, time, commitment phobia--the truth of it is that my life is a really happy one right now.

13. I really hate women who fail to be independent. This customer today freaked out over something tiny and immediately called her husband to say she'd be late and blamed the salesperson (that would be me) very childishly and needlessly. Um, fuck you. You're thirty years old, way too reliant on your husband, and freaking out over a return at JCPenney. By the time I'm your age I'll have my Ph.D. and a family, and I'm not going to call my husband to childishly blame the teenaged retail worker. Grow up and be your own person. [And this ties in to number 8... she is rude to me, and I immediately think bad things about her. Gotta stop doing that kind of stuff.]

14. I hate competition. Hate it. So much. I don't want to lose, because I will feel bad about myself. But if someone else loses and I win, then I forget about how bad I feel when I lose things and just feel like gloating. I try to limit the instances in which I encounter competition, but it's not always possible. The only thing worse than a sore loser is a sore winner--someone who takes their success and flaunts it right in your face. I never, EVER want to be that person. If I get something that I worked hard for and am really proud of, I'll be excited about it, but the more I talk about how excited I am the more I feel like I'm rubbing it in somebody else's face, even if it isn't my intention. So the older I get, the less I talk about that stuff. [I write about it on livejournal instead.]

15. If I could go for the rest of my life without ever driving a vehicle again, I would be really happy. I hate driving. I never actively wanted to learn how to drive when I was little, and now I'm just afraid of it. However, since a life without driving isn't very plausible, I am going to have to get over my fear of driving and just do it. I want to be a good driver, and good drivers aren't afraid, they're confident. Therefore, I need to believe that I am a good driver, and then I will start to be one.

16. Psychology is the love of my life. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to be in another profession, like a professional musician or a German studies major... but the loss of psychology feels like a pang in my stomach. When I was little and fancied myself an author, I stopped writing those silly stories about horses and cute boys that little girls write because I didn't know how to make the characters act like real people... and thus my love of psychology was born. My life without it would be so radically different, I can't even imagine it. So even though it might be cool to play in an orchestra for a job or tackle something like engineering, I never ever seriously consider straying from my plan to get my Ph.D. in psych.

They're kind of limited.

I am conflicted about whether I want to study abroad or not.

I think it would be a fantastic experience, and I would learn a lot from it. I would love to study abroad Spring 2010 in Vienna. That would be badass.

BUT:

It is muy expensive. $17,000 just for tuition for just one semester, $3,000 more for housing, and that doesn't include meals or trips to explore Europe or airfare or anything else. Way too expensive. Even if I worked my ass off to save up for this, starting right now, I could potentially save $10,000. But that leaves over $10,000 left to account for, and there's no way in hell I would be able to garner that much in scholarships even if I tried my damndest. And while my parents are content to pay a few thousand dollars here and there, I doubt they would take kindly to me asking for $10,000 in one go.

So what does that leave me with? Take out a loan. The one thing I didn't want to do. Right now, without studying abroad, I can easily make it through undergraduate school without any loans, and provided I get an assistantship I can make it through graduate school too. The question is: is it worth it? $10,000 to study abroad. Is it worth it?

Well, I will be bored all of this week after my last day of work on Sunday. I might as well start printing out study abroad scholarship applications, eh? Maybe if I kill myself and fill out every application I can find, I might scrape up an okay amount. And possibly if I remind my parents that they promised me they would pay for half of my undergraduate school, they might give me $5,000 in one go. I don't know.

OR: can't believe I forgot about this part. There are exchanges, in which you pay WSU tuition and housing and then you go study abroad. That would only be about $10,000 including airfare which I'd need to cough up, and I already said I could make that much if I worked my ass off. That is MUCH more affordable. The only downside: they don't have Vienna for exchanges. Damnit. There is Germany, though, and also Norway and Denmark. Cool stuff.

I don't know. I would love to study abroad. I will have to go in to the study abroad office and figure some stuff out. And this week I will print up scholarship applications and start working on them.

The other thing about studying abroad is that it is SCARY in capital letters. I won't know anyone, everyone will be speaking German, I will probably make daily blunders in assuming that American customs hold true in Vienna when they don't... but how silly. I need more adventure in my life, and this would be a damn good one, don't you think?

Right, so, my world fell apart today. I was driving home from the mall and this Death Cab song played which I had never heard before. The radio station announcer dude said, "oh yeah, this song from their newest album Narrow Stairs." And I was like, whaaaaa? Did I miss a song when I downloaded the album? So I get home, look it up on azlyrics, and no I did not miss any songs. So, completely baffled, I start looking through the lyrics to each song... only to learn to my chagrin that half of the songs I had downloaded and coveted as sweet new Death Cab songs are in fact by a German indie band which just sounds like them.

Shoot me.

I even talked about this with Jeff--I gave him my Narrow Stairs songs, and we talked about how it was odd that Ben Gibbard suddenly has a lisp in some of the songs. Well, it makes sense now! Gah!

So now I have to correctly name all of these non-Death-Cab songs (apparently the band's name is Velveteen, but I really like those songs, so I will have to check them out) and once I have internet for my laptop again I'll have to re-download limewire and get the correct Death Cab songs.

On the one hand this is devastating, because I really thought that was Death Cab. But on the other hand, I have a new awesome band to listen to AND half of Narrow Stairs to hear for the first time. But still: shoot me. Unbelievable. It's even up on wikipedia--someone thought it would be clever to leak a fake Narrow Stairs album before the real one was released. Man, did I ever get duped. How ridiculous.

But anyway.

Caitlin and I went to the mall today! Much fun ensued. We tried on fancy dresses and took silly pictures, and shopped ourselves to exhaustion. Gotta love the Alderwood Mall.

Yesterday I saw Christian. That was also much fun. :) I wish I had internets on my laptop, because unless I take it to the library (and even their wireless seems to elude me) I can't change my profile picture to that really awesome shot of me and half of Christian's face that we took at the Olive Garden. I have rad picture-taking skillz. It's true.

I work the next three days in a row, but Sunday is my last day at Penneys. Weird. I still wish I didn't have almost a full week with no work and nothing to do. I am still toying with the idea of taking a bus to go home to Pullman early, get my new key to the apartment, and unpack my stuff for a few days. I mean, what else will I be doing? It's pulling teeth to get my parents to lend me a car to drive, and everyone else is busy. Christian will be gone, Caitlin will not be very nearby, Maria is back at school... I have nothing to do except laze around and complain about how bored I am. I would rather spend the last few days of break being productive, unpacking my new room and taking the bus up to the rec center in lieu of sleeping gratuitously and expending little energy. Hmm.

Well, now that I've talked it up like that I REALLY want to take the bus back early. I could probably even take the train up to Spokane, hang out with Christian and/or Phill for a few hours/a day, and then take a bus from Spokane to Pullman. And since I already paid for $20 of gas to Steph for the trip over, then she will not be able to complain about picking me up and dropping me off for a little while. More than a litte while, what with the snow. This could be good. I miss Pullman anyway, it would be silly to deny that fact. Snohomish is just not my home any more.

We'll see.

But Narrow Stairs! Agh. Cannot believe that.

Well, I only have one more week of working at Penneys, and that only ends up equating to four more work days, unless I can scrape up a few more shifts. How odd. One week of 40 hours, one week of 20 hours, and then one week of five hours. What weirdos. :D

I suppose with all my free time opening up in front of me, I will have to get to work on those projects I wanted to do over break. I don't have the WSU library with me, but I do have the online catalog, so I can start looking up some info there. See what I can find. And the roads should be all cleared up in a few more days. That means: MALL! Shopping = happiness.

But really... my last day is next Sunday. I don't think I'll be heading back to Pullman until the Sunday after. That's not cool. Almost a full week with nothing to do? Bad news bears is what that is. Maybe I can see if anyone else is heading up sooner than Sunday. I don't really want to stay here awkwardly if I'm going to be pretty much home all day, bored as hell and wishing I were unpacking my new room and prepping for my new classes.

Speaking of which--I finally checked back to see if UH 440 was open, and it is! So I dropped Motivation (ha ha, how ironic) and signed up for UH 440. Whoohoo! That drops my Tuesday/Thursday classes down to just Experimental Methods from 10:35 to 11:50 and Human Sexuality from 1:25 to 2:40. So I will have a break for lunch and general homework completion and then after Dirty 230 I'm done for the day. I like that better than three classes. And my MWF is still going to be odd--Chemistry from 9 to 10, break, Social Deviance from 11 to 12, break, big band from 1 to 2, UH 440 from 2 to 3. And on Wednesday, after that, I have Methods lab from 3 to 5, break, and chemistry lab from 6 to 10. So my Wednesdays this semester won't be fun. But at least my Tuesday/Thursday will be light!

Belatedly: grades came out a while ago. I am very happy: 4.0 this semester, which ups my cumulative GPA to 3.76. I am only 0.14 GPA points away from graduating with the highest honors from WSU, and I bet I can do that in the remaining five semesters. Now I'm wishing I had tried harder to do undergraduate research next semester, though, because I will need two to three letters of recommendation to apply for graduate school, which means two to three undergraduate research stints, and I only have three semesters left before I will be applying. Hmm.

I will have to make an appointment with my psych advisor to see if the letters of rec have to be from undergraduate research, because I will be taking the undergraduate practicum class for Basic Helping Skills sometime next year, and you'd think whoever teaches that class would be qualified to write me a letter. So that would bring me down to one or two undergraduate stints. The only problem with it is that I am not sure I'll have adequate time to do research assistance fall semester of next year, especially if I make section leader. But then, I could take 14 or 15 credits and then a full three credits of undergraduate research, and that would equate to about nine hours a week in the lab; so I could do those hours during the day time when I would have had another class. That would work.

We'll see.

Dentist tomorrow. Don't know how that will go, since when I open my mouth too wide my cheek hurts. I'll have to tell them that, and maybe I'll get lucky and they won't do the stupid tooth-polishing thing. That would be sweet. And it spare me some unnecessary cheek pain.

Words cannot express how much I love retail.

Love it!

Love it.

I sized the juniors jean wall and the clearance racks. My next project will be the petites/women's tables, they always look terrible. And then I am going to take on the men's jean wall. Go me!

Yesterday my managers told me they loved me three times. :)

I heart retail.

In less awesome news, unless the weather gets even worse overnight, I have to go in for wisdom tooth removal tomorrow morning. Not cool. I will be nervous right before they anestheize me, I know that, but really the only thing I'm worried about is afterward. Am I going to be out of it and on pain meds? Or will I be bored and aching all day? It would be cool if the former were true. Ugh. I wish I didn't have to do this. But it's necessary and all that. Gah.

I can't drink water within eight hours of my surgery. That means that I can't take my IBD meds tomorrow morning. That's no good. Grr.

*sigh*

It's been less than two days and I miss Pullman. I started missing Pullman somewhere past Ellensburg. Snohomish isn't home for me anymore. The whole thing with holidays and spending time with family doesn't apply to me... I just have to get through three weeks without too major of problems between my mother and I. Let's see if I can do it. But I really miss Pullman. I wish I could fast forward to three weeks from now, getting ready to go to the first day of new classes and unpacking my inordinate number of boxes into my rockin' new room. That is what I want to be doing right now. Not sitting in my dead silent freezing cold parents' house, dreading wisdom tooth removal and worrying about things instead of enjoying my free time.

Bleh.

This whole going home thing is looking not so good.... I don't know if I'll be able to drive if it's still snowing and icy when I get back. If I can't drive, I can't go to work and I can't make money for three whole weeks. If that happens, I will be stuck all day long at my parents' house with nothing to do. That would suck big time.

But really, I have to learn how to drive in the snow sometime. Maybe I'll ask my dad to teach me. That would be stressful and bad, but it would be worth it if I came out of it knowing how to drive in the snow. So perhaps I will do that.

Today I have to review my study guide for stats. That's my last exam, tomorrow at 1pm. I have a few boxes left to pack (but really I'm practically done right now), and I have to clean this room really well. Then I'm out. Bye bye to living in Wilmer-Davis. Wahoo.

This thing with driving in the snow is really going to bother me. But, you know, maybe I can work something out with Maria. She told me herself that she doesn't have anything to do all day because everyone in her house leaves for work. If worst came to worst I could ask Mark to schedule me in the mornings, and that way I could blearily get up with my parents, they could drop me off at Maria's house, I could sleep there and then get up and shower and walk down to Penneys, work a long shift, and have my parents come back and pick me up on their way home. That would work out really well, actually, and I bet Maria would be cool with it. Or even if I worked in the evenings, I could sleep at Maria's house and then hang out with her in the morning, and then go to work. But that would require my dad to come back and pick me up in the evening, which I'm sure he wouldn't be too happy with doing. Hmm. This is difficult. But then again, if that situation only happened for a few days and then the iciness went away and it just rained a lot, then I would be able to drive myself with no problem. So I don't know, we'll see.

The more I think about psychology these days, the more worried I am that I don't really know what I want to do with my life after all.

The most fascinating thing about psychology, to me, is interpersonal relations. I am not interested in clinical psych--no thanks to schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder--but even purely psychological problems like depression aren't NEARLY as interesting to me as the way people relate to each other. Taboos, group dynamics, social constructs... that is the kind of thing I want to learn more about. But I don't think sociology would be a better major for me, because when I think about soc I think about racial inequality and education inequality, which is all well and good but not what I want to do.

So I think my major is correct. I am very interested in psychology, but maybe I should take more sociology classes and sort of test the waters. I guess social psychology would be the right way to describe what I want to do. Looking at the Princeton website (because how badass would it be to get my Ph.D at Princeton), they have a very extensive social psychology program. This is good. It all looks ridiculously interesting.

The only thing is: what would I do with a concentration in social psychology? I am toying with the idea of marital counseling. That has to do with interpersonal relations. I could also go straight to being a university professor, and conduct a bunch of my own research.

I don't know. It's all very far away.

But I do need to start preparing for grad school application. Hopefully either this summer or next summer I can find somebody to take a trip to the east coast with me and visit a bunch of universities over there. I know that I want to apply to a few Ivy League schools, but I would like to explore my other options as well. I also want to see what the campuses look like, because five years spent at an unpleasant campus wouldn't make me very happy at all. I should also talk to my psych advisor about applying to grad school, when I should start filling out the applications and whatnot.

(Also--I got over 100% on my stats exam! How exciting is that?)

Things that I HAVE to keep in mind about being a manager at Quizno's:

1. Respect must be earned. I have to remember that whenever I'm lower in the pecking order than someone else, I firmly maintain that if they don't deserve my respect, I'm not going to give it to them just because they're in a position of authority. The same applies to me. I can't take being a manager for granted and demand respect if I'm not really earning it.
2. Regardless, I have to take my job utterly seriously. I can't let inappropriate comments and overt disrespect slide any more--if something is going on that shouldn't be, it is MY RESPONSIBILITY to put my foot down and be firm, even if it means writing someone up. That is a part of MY JOB.
3. I have to follow the rules everyone else follows. If a customer is downright rude to me, that doesn't give me permission to be snarky in reply. No matter WHAT ELSE is going on in my life or between store employees, I ALWAYS have to be nothing less than polite to customers.

I am going to be so pissed if I miss an A in my stats class by FOUR POINTS.

I got my grade from the second exam back, and even though I was sure I didn't do very well on it, I got a solid A. 19/20 on the multiple choice, and 14/15 on the essay. Wtf? I mean, that's completely fine with me. My midterm grade is now an 88.6%. But my teacher for this class won't give + or - grades, just letters, so even though I'm like two points (two points!) away from an A, my midterm grade is a B.

That's fine--but what if, judging by how I'm doing now, my final grade is a B even though I'm FOUR points away from an A? I would be so pissed. Four points. All it would take to get those four points is perfect grades on the rest of my homework assignments.

Which leads me to my conclusion: I should probably put in the effort to make appointments with my teacher and ask him to help me out with my homework. Because he takes points off for the most ridiculous things in the homework assignments. So I should just suck it up and ask him to spend ten minutes with me going over my homework assignment and pointing out what I'm doing wrong.

Because if that's all it takes to get an A in statistics, that is damn well what I'm going to do!

Today I somehow managed to successfully improvise a sixteen bar solo.

!!!

This is a very huge accomplishment for me. I was stressing out before rehearsal, thinking I was going to just tell Pat that I don't want to do this solo crap, it's too difficult for me, I don't come up with ideas that quickly and even if I do I can't put them into slide positions on the trombone in time. But luckily we skipped the solo part in rehearsal, and then in our little improv sectional with Pat afterward, I just thought, fuck it. If it sucks, it sucks. How many time, when I'm playing the flute and when I listen to other people playing the trombone, do I think to myself that it would sound better if it was just louder and more confident? So I pretended like I was a really great trombone player and busted out a solo that consisted of probably five different pitches. But magically, it sounded kind of okay and intentional, and Pat was like, "yeah!"

So that's good. I did it!

I guess I just have to keep the "what the hell" mindset going when I'm in rehearsal and we play it. I mean really, most of this band consists of freshmen, so what do I really care what they think of my improv skills?

Whoo.