Goals and Goals and Goals

After a rather stressful, sleepless, and slightly sad finals period, summer is suddenly upon me!  I’m staying on campus over the summer and doing an internship that’ll only have me working 10 or less hours a week, so I’ve given a fair amount of thought to how I want to spend my plethora of extra time.  Here’s a tentative list of what I want to get done:

1. Learn to play guitar.  Or, at least, learn to play a few songs for fun.  My friend is leaving his guitar with me, and I’m getting my brother’s abandoned guitar, so I’ll have the opportunity – I just need to find the patience.  And the right website to teach me.
2. Finish Harry Potter in Chinese.  I bought the first book when I lived in Taiwan two years ago, and now that I’ve at least slightly expanded my vocabulary, I’m finally picking it up to read.  It took me an embarrassing amount of time to finish the first page the other day, so this goal might actually be unattainable……Chinese is kind of hard, so get off my back.
3. Learn to cook.  I have no meal plan over the summer, so rather than being a goal, this is more of a necessary lesson.  I really would rather not starve/eat ramen and cereal for every meal.  Also it’s sad that I only know how to cook a few things; that needs to change.
4. Visit museums.  I get free admissions to all the fantastic museums that are within walking distance of campus.  I should really start taking advantage of that.
5. Make money.  I just received notice that I got my second on-campus job for the summer (in addition to my paid internship), so hopefully I’ll finally be able to save up some money instead of spending it all.  Hopefully….maybe…………
6. Watch all the TV and movies.  I mean, all of them.  During the semester I never have time to watch TV or movies (although, okay, I do tend to watch movies quite a bit), and I need to catch up.
7. Get in shape.  This is basically always a goal.  Aaaand it never happens.  That’s all.

Mostly I just want to have a relaxing summer.  I suppose if I achieve all of these goals, then I probably won’t end up having a restful summer, but it’ll be productive!  So that’s something.  Honestly, if I realize even one of these goals I’ll be happy.  Here’s to having a happy summer season!

I Need to Learn to Sew

So I’m a huge nerd.  As such, when a good friend and I received free tickets to an anime convention happening downtown this weekend, of course we jumped on the opportunity to go for several hours today and enjoy the awesome nerd atmosphere.  Here are my random reflections on that experience:

• I noticed immediately as we approached the hotel where the convention was being held that we should have dressed up.  I’m fairly certain in an unscientific way that at least 80% of the people there were cosplaying or at least dressed up in some way – and I realized way too late that I should’ve worn my one possibly appropriate Legend of Zelda t-shirt.  We were clearly in the minority but it ended up being okay.
• Janet Varney is my favorite.  She’s the voice actor for the title character of the TV show the Legend of Korra, and she was an incredibly charming, nice, and funny person.  Honestly, I wasn’t a huge fan of her voice acting for the series, but after seeing her (from probably 10 feet away – we were in the second row, yay!) in the Q&A session at the convention, I’m officially a fan.  I suppose it might be because she’s not really famous (yet?), so she still retains the genuinely-happy-to-meet-fans vibe that’s really great and refreshing.
• I need to have more money.  A large part of the convention involved local artists selling their crafts – mainly paintings/digital prints, key chains, plushies, shirts, etc. – and I wanted to buy something from almost every stall we passed.  I ended up getting two small Avatar buttons (one of Sokka and the other of Korra) because I just couldn’t resist, even though I initially went to the convention telling myself, “Don’t buy anything.  You don’t need anything.  Don’t spend money.  Seriously.”
• Being in an all-nerd, no-shame, judgment-free atmosphere was amazingly refreshing.  Random strangers ran up to each other to comment on costumes, share photos, and chat about their favorite anime shows or video games.  Again, I really really wish I had worn a costume.  But in order to do that I first need to learn how to sew.

Our free passes last for the entire convention (through Sunday), but I can’t go anymore and it’s sad.  At least I got to spend several hours taking pictures and enjoying the complete nerd-out!  Next time I’ll go in costume, plan nothing else for that weekend, and bring more money.

“Whatever happened with that guy you were interested in before?”

Here we go, self complaint time:

Something fairly recent that I discovered about myself is that I’m a bad listener. I suppose I’ve known this for a while, but when I really began to notice it was last year.  I reconnected with some of my high school friends when I visited home over Thanksgiving, and we were reminiscing about school and our classmates and teachers, and I was shocked at how much they remembered about me.  I guess firstly I should say that I like to talk – a lot, and a good portion of it is complaints, too.  I just kind of blabber on to whoever is around me, and usually to my good friends.  Often I don’t remember exactly who I say something to when I am upset or excited about something…..and so naturally, I was amazed when three+ years later, my high school friends remembered random details of my life that even I had forgotten about.

It gave me a warm feeling, for lack of a better adjective, to know that they had cared enough about me – and probably still care today – to really absorb what I had said several years ago and still remember it.  And it also felt awful when I reflected on it later and discovered that I could hardly remember anything that I did with those people, or anything personal that they had told me when we were classmates.  It’s not that I dislike them or have forgotten about them or hold any sort of negative feelings towards them.  I just realized – through that and other similar situations – that I am a bad listener.

I think the problem is that in order for me to really absorb what someone is telling me, I need to be 100% paying attention to their speech.  And for some unknown reason, that’s incredibly hard for me to do.  I get too distracted by things – the window, people walking by, my coffee, my phone, the temperature, where I have to be later, random other thoughts I have.  I really really want to listen to them.  And I really really want people to talk to me about their problems.  And I really really want to be able to help them solve their problems and also return to them later when we reconnect after years apart, so I can say, “Whatever happened with that guy you were interested in back in X year?” and we can have something legitimate to talk about.  Although sometimes talking about prior love interests is not a pleasant affair.

I’m honestly trying to make myself into a better listener.  I’m trying to focus all of my attention on whatever person is talking to me at any given moment.  I don’t really know yet whether it’s making a difference, but I sincerely hope so.  I have so many wonderful people in my life that put up with all of my complaints (okay I’m really not as whiny as I’m illustrating myself to be, I promise), and I want to be able to return the favor.  I’m going to have a new roommate over the summer, so perhaps I can start there.

Time for self-reformation!

Missed Moment

My university’s campus is stunningly beautiful.  Sprawling, huge green oaks line the roads that run alongside unique and interesting buildings housing both the students and the academic disciplines, offices, and classrooms.  The place that I eat food every day is a large, circular room of enormous glass windows that open onto my dorm’s quad as well as a long stone pathway lined with the same amazing oak trees.

As much as I appreciate the beauty, and can describe it to a prospective student or curious family member when necessary, I sometimes reflect on how much I take this campus for granted.

I’m nearing the end of my sophomore year, which means that my time at this place is halfway over.  I often find myself – especially on clear, blue-skied, sunny 70-degree days like today – walking through campus and having moments in which I think, “Damn, that building is pretty,” or “If I was visiting campus for the first time right now I would fall in love,” or “Man, I should’ve paid more attention to the beauty of this place when I first came here.” Because the reality is that when I first arrived on campus as a senior in high school visiting the universities that accepted me, I was still upset and hung up on being rejected by my dream school.  I had resigned myself to going to the huge state school that was my back-up, and didn’t even consider my current university.  My mother forced me to come for the admitted student day, and even after I had a bad experience (because of my own negativity, not because of the people I met or the meetings I attended), she persuaded me to choose to come here.

I love my university.  It took me over a year – at some point in the middle of last semester I had the epiphany – to realize that it’s a great place and that I’m actually incredibly happy to be here.  I love my friends, my professors, my classes, my dormitory, my roommate, and my life here.  I’m incredibly saddened when I think about my future of not being here anymore.

And I wish with all my heart that I could go back to that first moment when my parents drove me around campus in our rental car and my mother was ooh-ing and aah-ing at all of the buildings around us.  I wish that I could join her in absorbing that beauty and taking it in for the first time – because I know so well that having your breath taken away the first time you view something amazing is simply the best feeling.

It’s a sad reality that I know I cannot go back to that moment.  But I know that one day far, far down the road, I’ll return to this place as an aged alumni.  And hopefully at that time I can have the feeling second-best after the one of initial viewing: returning to a place where you loved, laughed, and lived, and perhaps then I can really appreciate my beautiful university.