I find I don't dwell on this enormous workload much, though; I only just realized it when writing it out here. I am used to doing large things in a small amount of time, unhealthy as it is, and I just work through it one day at a time instead of agonizing over the next day's essay. Consequently, I've been getting about 5 hours of sleep a night and I am starting to feel it catching up to me.
Right now I'm working on tonight's essay, Take a Shot for Every Elsa You See, for my Sociology recitation. It's about how gender (or race/ethnicity was the other option) is portrayed in TV and film. I chose to write about gender representation in classical Disney films, and though I am against the idea that Disney purposefully whitewashes, I do agree that in their earliest princess movies the heroines are all rather fearful, helpless, and dependent on someone else to save them. However, I will talk about this topic another time. I would instead like to focus on what the teachers here in college expect to see in my writing.
That is to say, what they expect to see in my paraphrasing of other people's writing.
I like to think that I actually did quite well in the first essay I turned in. I included lots of my opinions on a topic I know well without using the dreaded words "I" or "my," and I think that they were all valid opinions with solid evidence. I created arguments, acknowledged counter-arguments, and then struck those down with another point. I drew on personal experience and past knowledge for the most part, and only quoted and cited others on new information that I needed to know specifically for that paper. However, I got an 85%. And the only notes that were on my paper were cite, cite, don't use contractions, cite.
Let me repeat. I was marked down for not citing other authors as writers my own thoughts.
I would have been perfectly happy with a solid 85% on my first real college essay had I been told a legitimate problem to improve upon. But instead, I lost points for not attaching sources to ideas that stemmed from my own thoughts. I went up to the teacher after class to ask him about how I was supposed to cite my own opinion if I couldn't use "I" and "my" in formal essays, and from what he said, I gathered that he thought I was writing down information from outside articles without citing where they were from, when in fact it was my own opinion I was writing. His advice to me? Include more outside sources. In other words, I feel he did not expect me to think intelligently and independently of other author's ideas.
He's not the only teacher doing this. My dance teacher is a source mania, and expects a minimum of five sources to get a C grade. I've learned here in college that you should be citing everything, even if it's a common sense idea that shouldn't need a source to be accepted as true.
(I proofread just now, and realized that even here, where I am used to using contractions, I've subconsciously stopped in places. I think it's because of all the essays I've been writing where I'm not allowed to use them. It sounds stiff, but I won't change it, because it's psychologically interesting.)
I don't feel as though I'm being taught how to write. I feel like I'm being taught how to cater to a teacher's preference in order to get a good grade.
I would continue to rant, but I want to record other things too, so I will stop there. TL;DR: I understand citing sources improves your ethos, but you shouldn't have to cite every third sentence, as I was expected to have done.
Despite all that, Intro to Sociology is still my favorite class. After that I would have to say Chemistry is my next favorite. Granted, the teachers are dull as heck and take FOREVER to explain a simple concept, but the old ideas are easy to relearn and the new information makes sense quickly. Right now we are learning stoichiometry, which I remember was my favorite unit back in high school. It's always made complete sense to me, right from the beginning, and if the professor assigned optional stoichometry homework I'd probably do it, just for fun. I feel like I can't say that though - I can't say, "I love doing these problems," because there are people surrounding me on all sides saying stuff like, "I hATE stoichometry, I don't get it," and, "This is sooo boring." I don't want to appear as a know-it-all, rubbing my luck at understanding it in their faces. I always felt extremely inferior and awkward in high school when friends did that to me and talked about stuff I didn't understand very well (like advanced maths, or high literature), but I didn't like to cut them off because they clearly enjoyed talking about a subject they were good at. It wasn't their fault, but it was always disheartening on my part, not being able to contribute anything intelligent. I dislike not knowing.
Even though I am a biology major, the Gen. Bio class I'm taking is also dull as heck. I don't want to learn that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, or that fats consist of a glycerol backbone with three fatty acid chains. I don't want to learn that mitosis produces two daughter cells while meiosis produces four. I don't want to learn THAT kind of biology. Rather, I want to learn about specific animal species. I want to examine how they evolved to fit their environment, what features make them special. I want to go out into the field and study what those boring cells come together and create. They say start small, but cells are TOO small. Next year the required class is Ecology; let's hope that's more interesting.
Sadly, my least favorite class is the one I was looking forward to the most: Intro to Dance and Culture. It is partly my fault for signing up for a class with a curriculum I didn't understand very well, but I was under the impression we would be actually learning how to dance. Instead, we are assigned readings and essays on step style and palm play and other terminology. I did not want to learn terminology. I wanted to learn choreographed dances, where you know the steps really well so you don't stand there wavering, but instead pour your energy into moving. Workshops are like the former; if the dance style even gets the honor of getting a workshop, it's only for one day, and you're basically stumbling around the entire time with your head cranked to the side, trying to watch what the leader is doing, instead of facing forward and confident in how you're supposed to be moving.
Plus, we are required to pay money to see plays and performances. REQUIRED to spend additional money on tickets I didn't know I would have to be buying. The performances I've been required to see and write essays on so far were relatively interesting, but I can think of a whole host of things I would rather buy with $15. Allow me to be whiny and say that I don't think that's fair.
Socially, things are dead. I no longer regret not having a roommate as much, but I still wish I could meet more people who don't intimidate me and have interests similar to mine. I've joined Quidditch, but we don't hang out outside of practice (I think a HP marathon would be a great idea to get to know one another better) and all other clubs I'm interested in meet during my lecture hours. My dorm is very quiet and unfriendly too; people rarely come out of their rooms. In high school, I had a best friend, two or three close friends, maybe a dozen plain friends, and then a whole host of acquaintances I could comfortably talk to but would not hang out with outside of school.
Here, I can count - one, two - five people that I consider friends or acquaintances, and could imagine talking to outside of class, if at all. That's it. I don't know ANYONE else, largely because the majority of the people here migrated from nearby high schools, and I'm not about to approach a group of obviously long-term and close friends who are laughing about some inside joke. But more so because the majority of these people were clearly what was considered "popular" in high school: They are stylish, confident people with perfect makeup and trendy clothes, who obviously get invited out a lot, who just have that look of being at the top of the social ladder. I, on the other hand, am painfully socially anxious; I can't comfortably approach people like that. Unfortunately, they're what I see everywhere.
On the other hand, I've already (jokingly) insulted the clothing of a friend as being hideously ugly, and with me that basically means I'm about as comfortable with you as I'm ever going to get.
That just about covers everything I can think about. I've been bringing Blood of Olympus to dinner as of late, in order to reread it. It makes me happy, reading again. With no supply of good fictional books, I'm spending a lot of my time on my computer, and I'm aware of and unhappy about it.
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"Windmills," designed and animated by Guillaume Bergère, Guillaume Coudert, Maria Glinyanova, Bruno Guerra, Charlotte Jammet, at Georges Méliès school.
This short film was the winner of Best Animated Film Festival: Boston SCI-FI (Boston, 2012)
If you don't understand French, what they are saying is:
"We have enough time to leave!"
"I'm staying with your mother. Leave without us. Go away."
"I don't want to go without you!"
I love the art style *-*
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