Hmm!

It's been a while.

Yet it goes that way, sometimes. My post-Georgia life has been a bit of a roller coaster, and the most intense bits have occurred in the last 24 hours. Right after I got home, a rowdy bout of pms caught me unawares and resulted in some downer days a couple days after settling back in to the home-routine. I've lost track of how long ago that was, to be honest. It feels like an entire month has disappeared because days of the week and dates weren't really important until I came home. So starting August halfway through? Where the fuck did the time go?

I created a three week health-and-fitness boot camp for myself, which includes limited internet and computer usage. Partly, I have a massive summer reading list that I'm just NOW starting, and I spend so much time doing nothing on the intarwebs, that I sat on my butt and thought, “How the hell am I going to read all this?” So, twenty minutes a day of internet, forty minutes general usage (time that I use to write blogs like these, for example), and then no internet on weekends, with 30 minutes general use on Saturdays.

It's not easy, I can tell you. You never really realize how much you use the internet for until you're limited to 20 minutes five days a week. Who knew checking up on daily comics could be so time consuming? Luckily I'm not the world's most popular person, so I AM enjoying the time away from myface-suck.

The rest of the boot camp consists of regulated calorie intake for every day, coupled with an increasingly intensive exercise routine. I've started out a little easier this week, but come next week the pace will be stepped up significantly. My goal is to officially be lower than 170 come my birthday on September 20th, because the last time I was as low as 170 was the day I turned 13.

So the real reason for my roller coaster-ness is Davis. Yeah, that whole school thing. That not-so-little thing that nags at the back of your mind, and causes you to have dreams where you're walking through the halls naked, forgetting that you have a big exam because of the cold draft wafting between your legs and up your once-were-private parts.

Regardless, it's a shit-pain in the ass. I love school, don't get me wrong, but it's specifically the learning part that I enjoy. The stimulation of the mind and flexing of the creative juices. The tests, the money, and the red tape I am not so fond of.

I should explain. Two years ago (ish) I entered Davis at either 15 or 16 (I can't remember which at the moment and don't care to do the math) years of age. I was young, and really didn't know what the fuck I was doing, so I just, you know, started taking classes. Looking back, I think I was immediately at a disadvantage because I entered in Winter quarter; Fall quarter was when all the beginning classes were that I probably needed to begin the stack-on method of class taking (each passing quarter some different classes are offered at higher levels of skill; so if you take beginning drawing in Fall, intermediate drawing might be in Winter, etc, etc). Not knowing this at the time, of course I had a shitty time getting into classes. Half of them conflicted with each other, or were canceled, on top of that.

Now that I was back at Davis this time around, after going through the readmission process, my intention was to go the Cultural Anthro route and fuck art because it was impossible to get into classes. Needless to say this last quarter was an amazing and beautiful nightmare. I had classes I came close to hating, even if I loved learning the material, and it was becoming clear to me that Cultural Anthro was not the way to go. However I did meet a couple of people who I suspect will turn out to be long-lasting friends, and my poetry class was an amazing happenstance that I am still reeling over.

So summer goes by, I flip flop between the two majors, and finally end up deciding that I ought to try art again, because in all honesty, I miss it. A lot. Especially with the self discoveries I've made in the process of several months. I met with an advisor today to talk about what it would take to graduate, because in addition to all of this fanciful stuff, I've come to the point where school is draining me emotionally and mentally, more and more which each passing quarter. In short: I'm sick of it. I need a break, badly.
She was a very nice lady. She was very helpful, too, in showing me what had to be done in order for me to potentially graduate in a year. The quick and dirty summary is: the most reasonable and easiest route would be Cultural Anthro, partly because of the time limitations I was putting on things, but also because of the “unit cap.” Meaning? I have a lot of units completed. And to finish with an Art Studio degree would go over the unit limit, so it would require lots of petitions, and testing out of a class, etc, etc.
So, okay, I thought, then let's look at the Anthro option.
Oh, more science classes. Oh, two science classes this quarter, otherwise I probably won't be graduating in a year.
Well, you gotta do what you gotta do, I suppose.

I called Mom after the appointment, and gave her the short version of what the woman had said. I was actually on my way to change majors right then and there when it suddenly hit me how overwhelmed I was. I couldn't make this kind of decision right away. This was insane. I needed to think about this before going with the what-someone-else-said option.

It slowly came on me how huge of a decision this was going to be, as I was walking to my car and getting ready to head home. The jaw started to clench and the breath went a little gaspy with each successive step, and by the time I was pulling onto the freeway, the leaky tear ducts were in full spray. I cried the entire way home. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, “What the fuck are you doing? Cultural Anthro isn't going to make you happy. That was made clear last quarter. What's another year of that going to do to you?” I was thinking things like, well, then what if I just don't finish? But I have a lease for an apartment. Maybe I could try and find a job?

I crashed once I came home. I watched TV, took a nap; avoiding anything that would make my brain think too much.

Then Mom came home. What would one ever do without a parental figure? We went through a brainstorming session over dinner, her with her fish and veggies with hummus, me with my fruit smoothie. I spent time trying not to cry, and spent more time not succeeding at it. She drew out three columns: Longterm goals, short term, and dreams, and filled each one in in different colored pen as I talked haltingly in a voice that resembled breaking glass. I said that I felt like I was “finishing” at Davis for the wrong reasons, that it was like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. A queer peg in a straight hole. The things I wanted to do, now, didn't include a career or degree in Cultural Anthropology, or really any specific degree at all. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and it had been clear for a long time that Davis, as a school and a place to get a degree, wasn't a good fit for me. I had too much exploring to do.

So what were my options? If I didn't want to continue at Davis I could try and break the lease, and stay at home, get a job. I could go forward with the petitions and try for Art Studio; stay in school so I could get the aid to pay for housing. I could try to find a full time job and just work to pay rent and live in Davis.

Or I could fuck Davis's requirements and take whatever the hell I wanted for a year, have the money to live away from home for that period of time, and then finish my degree somewhere else.

Which is what I decided to do.