I feel miserable.

There's loads of things I need to do, none of which I actually want to do. Especially the stuff that should really get done soon (like now). I could get away with not doing some of it. But I just don't want to do any of it.

But what else is new?

I've spent the past few years fucking everything up.

Last summer, I wasted away my research job with a professor I respect and admire. And she knows I didn't work that hard. Yet I've still kept in touch with her and I still feel bad.

I spent last semester doing not enough work in most of my classes. I could have worked harder. I could have managed my time better. I didn't.

I could have worked harder this semester. I've done about 10% of the reading for one class. I could have done better in my math class. I could have studied for that test, and not got such a bad grade.

I could have actually sent in an application for a few internships. Especially at Upward Bound. It would of been great. But I never finished them, and I never sent them, and I never got them. And now I'm probably spending my summer being an uneducated bum in my parent's basement.

I could actually work hard. I could use whatever knowledge I have and apply it to my studies and do good things. But I'm not.

People work hard here. Really hard. Crazily hard. I have my priorities wrong. I should have quit crew a while ago. I should have admitted when I couldn't handle the workload. I could have got help on it.


There was an event at Hampshire by Richard Heinberg, one of the most well-known writers about peak oil in the U.S., brought here by the aforementioned professor by back home. I heard about it ahead of time and there were numerous avenues I could have told people about it from. I could have posted flyers at all the five colleges. It would of been because of me that my peers would of learned about peak oil, and might have been able to see what will happen in the next few years in a time of resource scarcity.

But I failed. I never e-mailed or told the professors from my political science class who would of probably been interested. I never emailed a few of the groups on campus or friends that might have been interested. I never put up any flyers.

It was well attended. By people not my age. I saw my professor from BCC, and felt mildly embarrassed for how bad I felt, doing nothing.


This is becoming a reoccurring theme. I haven't done my taxes. I haven't done them from last year either. I haven't done my financial aid. I have a 20-page term paper I haven't started, due two weeks from now. I have a few books and articles from one class I'm doing well in, not read. I didn't put up the rest of the posters from the dance club I'm a leader of. I haven't made posters for our end of semester event.

And who knows if I really want to do any of it?

What do I want to do?

I'd like to cuddle up in my bed and fall asleep. Maybe think of my girlfriend in India.

And I'm not really sure I want to do all this work. But I should. I guess.

Tags: amherst, college, stupid me
Current Mood: miserable
Current Music: Matt Nathanson - Car Crash

Man, I'm so frustrated about something I did a while while ago that I can't even write about it.

I am definitely a social retard.

Some of you will figure out when I'm talking about soon.

Tags: friends, stupid me
Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: Pandora

It's just so frustrating.

An equally precocious friend of mine I met at BCC who was planning on applying to Amherst but didn't said to me at Awards Night some weeks ago that even his mom was excited about my acceptance to Amherst. I quipped that she was probably more excited about it then my parents were. I wasn't joking.

Life is generally an uphill battle and there's roadblocks that need to be fought through, but I continue to just hit a roadblock time after time and it's mostly my parents fault.

Yes, it's easy to blame my parents. So easy. But that's not why I do it. It's because they continue to be the roadblock to a promising future time after time.

Besides posting that I got into Amherst, I haven't posted anything about it because there's been a quaint uneasiness about the details behind it.

I never filled out the financial aid applications (FAFSA + PROFILE) back in February when they were supposed to be due. At the time there were quite a few problems. I hadn't done my taxes. My parents hadn't done their taxes. I hadn't been in touch with my father in almost a decade and the schools PROFILE wanted a non-custodial parent form. I was busy with schoolwork and tutoring. I didn't actually think I would get into Amherst.

And then I got in. The whole night I was panicing. I just got into one of the top liberal arts schools in the nation and now I may not be able to go because I didn't fill out any financial aid forms. I called them up the next day and they said I could get everything filled out soon and hand it in and still get the same amount of aid because they're rich and have a huge endowment and pay 100% of need anyway. But it was near finals so schoolwork and tutoring was getting crazy, and I still hadn't filled out my taxes.

And I still haven't finished them. My FAFSA is done but the more complicated PROFILE still contains the uneasiness of contacting my aunt who handles my father's affairs and having her fill out a huge complicated financial form.

But why do I have to do them anyway? Why do I have to pay my parents rent when I could have saved about $6000 by now for college. Why do I have to pay my own car insurance (another $4000)? Why did I have to pay for my first car, and pay off part of my parent's inept financial loaning to get my step-brother's old car on the road after mine died ($600+1000)? How come my mother doesn't have anything saved up for college costs, when my late grandmother on my mother's side wanted both my cousin and I to be able to pay for college? Why did she continue to get in the mail useless college savings plans with $100 in them? Why do I have to fill out financial aid forms most of other parents fill out for their children? Why do my parents not care? Why do they seem to not want me to go to college?

When I finished the FAFSA, the expected family contribution was about $24,000. Even if everything worked right, I would probably still have to find $24,000 out of a third-party loan, and my mom probably still can't even cosign because her credit is so bad. Even if I wasn't going to Amherst, I still probably couldn't go to college. An EFC of $24,000 means that no matter what college I would go to, even if it's little State School at $15k or big university or liberal arts school at $25k or $40k, I would still have to shell out nearly all the costs to go there, unless I got a hold of some serious scholarship money (possible option if everything fails me). Who knows how I'm going to find money to pay for another semester BCC if everything else falls through with Amherst.

My mom innocuously complained about me not having a job today when she left for work. Technically I'm tutoring (they know about that) and have a research work-study position (they may not know about that). This is all for crap pay, $7.50 hour. Technically I could still play poker and make more than that much online propping once I build my bankroll back up for paying for everything I shouldn't have to. And technically even I wanted a good job during the summer, it's not going to pay me enough to meet my goals. It's like my parents want me to leave the house at 7am, come home from work at 9pm and be frustrated and miserable while I then spent all my money on material goods. It's like they don't want me to have a future.

I really want to go. The opportunity is amazing. Everyone other than my parents is excited. It's still possible. But it's frustrating me that I can't pass this parental roadblock. After my mom complained I complained about having to now take up a new car insurance plan on new car, and not being able to afford it, and how I'd like to be able to pay to go to one of the top liberal arts colleges in the nation. And it's like she thinks I'm kidding. It's like my own mom doesn't think I'm worthy.

I know she just doesn't get it. Doesn't get college, doesn't get me, doesn't get why I view work differently.

But it's just so frustrating.

Tags: amherst, college, future, life, money, parents, stupid me, thoughts
Current Mood: see above
Current Music: none - I'm reflecting

I miss writing in here.

Wherever I am next fall I want to try to write more LJ posts, because there were times this semester where I could have used some reassurance and some time to sit down and think. Maybe I'll just have to focus more on myself and write less about other people that way I don't end up alienating every new person I meet when I go to Amherst.


As expected, the last few weeks were pretty hectic and as expected, a lot of the trouble I experienced could have been avoided. There was the quote honors project unquote for English 12 that I was supposed to be working on the entire semester with my professor. It consisted of reading Their Eyes Were Watching God and writing a paper comparing the bildungsroman genre that is emphasized in Miguel Street and Tom Sawyer which we also read. I ended up not writing two of the papers I should of in that class, one on Tom Sawyer and one on some reading on nature and a separate writing assignment, and instead of doing that I wrote the honors paper to make up for fucking stuff up the last month or so.

I told my professor I'd work on stuff about two weekends ago, the weekend in between my finals, and I didn't have anything done (I didn't even have the book finished). I told him at the final I try to get it to him and be at school around Thursday, I didn't even have anything written then. I sent him an e-mail telling him I'd have it done by Friday night, and I had about 4 pages written but I wanted to try to get about 7 or 8 done to make up for everything else I didn't write. I sent him the final copy Sunday night. That's a whole week of procrastination over a fairly important assignment, especially when my final was Wednesday and the grades are supposed to be due 72 hours after the final.

Now, I must admit in my entire "academic career", it's really only been the last few months that I've begun to consider myself a good writer. I've felt like a shitty writer ever since Mrs Sutton gave me a crappy grade on something I actually felt was good, ever since then I've felt like what I wrote was shit. And maybe it was. But all through the BCC I've been getting A's on everything I felt was shit. My two General Psychology research papers I absolutely felt were horrible and nearly didn't finish writing, I got both A's (maybe even A+'s). My Sociology 11 midterm I nearly didn't finish and I was willing to bet some serious money on failing, my essays for my History professor who felt I was a good writer, and my English 11 essays. All of these assignments I got basically A's on even though I felt what I wrote was horrible. Same thing with the two papers I did write for my English 12 professor, I thought they sucked, I got them back with lots of scribbles and an A at the end.

So for my Honors Sociology Oil Depletion course, we had to work together on a final group paper describing our "service-learning project", and I started to realize that compared some other people's writing, that yes my writing is actually good. I was in charge of basically taking everyone's writing and putting it together in an outline someone else came up with, so I did some editing and in some instances I had to do a lot, like making complex sentences where only basic sentences existence. In other instances I had to make the connotation and the diction a little more positive. And in most of the other cases the writing was really good, I was just being picky about punctuation and format. But I basically realized that the way I write, it sounds good, it looks good, maybe it actually is good.

So I actually felt that this Honors paper was actually fairly good. It was a little disjointed, because I was supposed to talk about the bildungsroman theme and I got off track and talked about the way gender plays a role in all three books from the bildungsroman perspective, basically taking Hurston's first two paragraphs and looking back at the male-dominated books to see if it's true. I thought it was a good comparison, just not going straight down the bildungsroman theme.

Now, I get a rather caustic e-mail back from my professor on Monday morning, critiquing the paper, saying he was disappointed in it although glad I finished it.

I'm going to quote the e-mail here although I'm afraid of getting in a bit of trouble over it, and I still want to keep this a public entry :

( E-mail )

I felt like my paper was good, and then all of a sudden it sucked. The writing was maybe more uninteresting than other papers I've written, but I tried to be more formal and tried to keep some parallel form between my contrasting of books. I made it long because I could and I felt an "honors paper" shouldn't be just 5 pages in length. I didn't think the court scene was that amazing even he thought it was one of the greatest literary scenes.
I'd read the book before in high school and while the plot of the book I could remember, I couldn't remember the court scene.

Why don't I like it? First, the court scene is hardly necessary, it's clear Tea Cup's death was an accident/Janie's self defense, and second because of that it is clear she is going to be found not guilty. If she had been found guilty, then that court scene would of meant something because it would have left Janie all of a sudden karmicly betrayed by Tea Cup's loving relationship and unfortunate death. NOW, To Kill a Mockinbird's court precedings might be some of the most powerful in literature, I can give you that. And for possibly the same reason Janie's trial is even slightly powerful due to the issues of race. But that trial scene in Their Eyes, you could remove it completely from the next to last chapter and it would not affect the book at all. In fact, I would say it would be better off not in the book because there are some continuity issues. Are all the people at the back of the courtroom against Janie too stupid to realize Tea Cup went crazy and tried to kill Janie? That part doesn't really make sense.

Anyways, Their Eyes rant and English rant over.

I got a B in Physics, really only because one of the things I slacked off on during the semester was turning my Physics labs, and when I asked my professor if I could still turn in some of the ones I hadn't handed in, he set it was too late and I should have turned them in last week. I probably aced the final. Physics was the one course this semester that was a victim to the fact I was doing about 15 hours or more worth of tutoring a week, in classes 17 hours a week, in meetings about two hours a week, and driving back and forth from school 6 hours a week. Unfortunately, it was the one class that I really needed put some extra work into to do well. That and the class that I missed because my car broke was just about everything on a quiz that happened the next week. Oops.

I got an A in everything else, Diff EQs, the Honors class, the Eng12, and my Philosophy class, despite my procrastination. I hope Amherst doesn't get mad I got a B in Physics. I was a little afraid of my Eng12 grade because I think my professor was a tad fed up with my continued tardiness in getting my paper(s) done, and I really hadn't done my fair share of the work in the class.

Sigh. When I don't write a lot in here often, I write a post like this.

So this summer I have a work study position being a research assistant in my Sociology professor's Peak Oil book project, it should be great but I need to start working on it. I have 10 hours a week but there's no set schedule so I'm already behind. I'm also tutoring at least one day a week in Fall River.

I need to turn in the financial aid for Amherst. Apparently they'll still give me money but the later it gets I don't know.

I wanted go to Las Vegas at some point, but my poker bankroll is dwindling. I want to go to Foxwoods soon, possibly this weekend or maybe Friday, and I may try to go to AC at some point too.

I kind of feel like this summer might get a bit boring, but we'll see.

Tags: bcc, college, procrastination, stupid me
Current Music: Willy Porter live

I went to a tutoring conference up at UMass Lowell this Saturday. It was cool and well put together, although I think I expected to get more out of it than I did.

One of the presentations I went to was on tutor burn-out. I went to it because I am very very burnt out. One of the suggestions of combating burn out was to do journaling, and since I haven't posted in a while I've been inspired to post. But I don't have too much to say. Or time to say it.

When I first started tutoring I opened up basically all my non-class hours for appointments. I'm taking 16 credits, which includes a 2 hour physics lab, so essentially I have 17 hours of class. There's a mandated maximum of 20 hours per tutor, so I can't pass that, but I'm come quite close to it sometimes. I've been averaging around 15 hours a week I believe. If I end up getting a lot of no shows every in the week, they jam my schedule up later in the week with appointments. Last week I went from having 3 appointments on Thursday to having 7 or 8.

I'm basically overloaded, and I don't really know what I can do about it. I do enjoy tutoring, and get paid for it. I have a lot of tutees who count on me for help and I'd feel bad if I had to give certain ones up.

Unfortunately, it's basically the reason why I have no time for anything right now, and why some of my recent work has suffered. Granted, I got A's on both the writing assignments I did in a last minute furor, but then I got a 70 on my Differential Equations exam, and an 80 on that Physics quiz (could of been worse). The Diff EQs grade is baaad because I'd really like to get an A and that test is about 10% of my grade (should be 16% but my professor devalues the lowest grade). I have an honors seminar I haven't been doing the appropriate amount of reading on, and an honors component in my English course that I haven't done ANY work on. I have an Exam in English on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure tomorrow and other for in class readings and the movie I don't know anything. And there's a Physics take-home due Wednesday, another Diff EQs exam Friday, and especially for Diff EQs I haven't done any of the homework that the exam is on (which is why I got a 70 on the first exam).

This hasn't helped much, I still feel very tense.

Off me...

I've realized that I really enjoy partaking and listening to human conversation. I had a very intriguing discussion on the ride home from the tutoring conference with the two adult women/moms/students who me and my friend and fellow tutor were riding with. It touched on many different subjects, from professors and classes, to psychological theories, master programs, and parenting. I don't think I would have said this 5 years ago when I was 16 and a pathetic loner. There's a certain human knowledge element of conversations I find interesting. Even if I'm just listening and absorbing as much information as I can remember.

Also, I've "discovered" Pandora, a music matching program that plays streaming audio of the music it matches you with. It's pretty cool, but I don't know if it'll stick. It'd be nice if it'd play in a regular music program rather than the web. And sometimes it's nice to play your own stuff, like live recordings you have over forty gigabytes of.

Sigh. Still tense. I think I'm going to go dance like no one's watching to Maroon 5.

Tags: bcc, college, life, stupid me, tutoring
Current Mood: tense
Current Music: Matt Nathanson - Answering Machine (live)

You can get up 3 hours before you have to leave for class and bullshit two writing assignments two nights in a row, but you can't do the same thing and pass a Physics quiz and Differential Equations quiz on the same day when you haven't done any of the homework.

Fuck.



Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Tags: bcc, college, stupid me
Current Location: BCC TASC
Current Mood: distressed

Hi.

I was just trying to think about the perfect word to describe where I am right now.

Lost.

It's that limbo between the end of one routine and the beginning of another. Between the end of last semester and the beginning of the next one. Waiting in limbo.

But I'm also lost because I also don't know where to start with writing in here. I must admit that I think I stopped writing for a while because there were certain things I didn't want to admit to myself.

For instance, I was going to start tutoring at the school, after meeting the professor and having a good conversation about things. He gave me some seemingly long winded application type paperwork to fill out, stuff for Human Services, and I put it off and put it off. I really was interested in tutoring for many different reasons, but after a few weeks the papers just sat there and then I felt like it was too late. It had been lingering over me for a while and bothering me. But I was too embarrassed to write about it because I realize how stupid it sounds. I got a call from one of the tutor center coordinators about the tutor application I never filled out and cleared everything up. It took me less than an hour in the computer lab filling out the application.

Things like that have been happening for a while. My room is a kerfuffle. It's mainly left over school binders I have no place for, papers that don't belong anywhere, left over college paperwork from the past few years. The disorganization seems to cause further disorganization in the rest of my life, school, poker, anything you want to imagine.

Right now, my crutch is the Amherst college application essays. I had some very grandiose ideas back when I wrote that last entry. Working on them immediately, doing many drafts, writing several different essays.

I haven't started the three essays. Except for the assignment I had in my English class to write a college application essay. I used the Amherst prompt and got a B- because I didn't care since I knew it wasn't going to be the one I sent. It's bland and harsh.

I said something about how I had a chance of getting into Amherst if the three essays were the three best essays I've ever written. I'm obviously behind the eight ball. But to use a poker analogy, I have outs. Application is due February 1st, and if I actually sit down and write something very soon (like tomorrow), I'll have some good footing to keep reediting and rewriting to write what I need to write.

I won't go into my analysis about the different prompts like I was just planning on. Maybe I'll save that for a later post or I'll write something tomorrow. The prompts are in the application here, if anyone does care. It's basically the Common Application transfer essay which is why are you transferring etc, and two intriguing and thought provoking essay questions in the Amherst supplement (at the end). Those may take some creative writing and thought.

Anyways, I didn't mean to go into my "OMG Ryan, WTF are you doing about essays mode", but truly it's whats bothering me right now. I've given recommendations to four of my professors to send out, who should all be writing me fairly good recommendations, and now for the most part it's up to me. Numerous times they've told me what a good opportunity I have to have the chance to go to this prestigious school and I spend my winter vacation jerking off instead of doing some work. Typical me.

That wasn't all I wanted to write about it, but it's the main thing that's been bothering me.

I've been thinking about the past year, seeing as it's now 2007, and what would sum up the last year. In a word : adultish. I've done a lot of adult things since turning 21 last year. I've gone to Foxwoods numerous times, and seeing as before than I've never really been out of state by myself all that much, it's certainly a change. I visited New York to see the U.S. Open and drank some beers with adult friends in a NY restaurant, went to Atlantic City in November and experienced the joy of Greyhound and. Went to see some concerts in Providence for the first time in a while. And I quit my minimum wage job to play poker for a living.

In the first part of the year, I went to "college" full-time, met some cool acquaintances, and got close but whiffed. I suppose in the scheme of things, 2006 might just be the crossroads of my life. The gap between young Ryan and old Ryan. I don't like the phrase old Ryan one bit, but it's got a pint of truth to it.

So, in terms of what I missed that I hadn't written about in a while, things got hectic at the end of the semester as all the work I hadn't done got piled on top of more work that had to be done. I got lucky in a lot of ways. My calculus professor let me hand in a few labs extra late for no points off, which the rest of the class felt was unfair and I felt kind of bad about it. I had a whole bunch of work I hadn't done in Chemistry, about 6 Labs, my whole lab notebook to write in, studying for stuff, etc.

Actually, the Chemistry final is sort of worth a paragraph itself. The professor is really nice and almost too lenient, and the final was almost like an open book final. There were a few charts in the back we had to use as a reference on some answers, and she also said that we could flip through and find someone if we knew where it was. She didn't make it explicitly open book, i.e. look up whatever you need to, but it seemed like a few people in class were doing that. There was some stuff she didn't really cover at all in class on radioactivity and wavelength equation stuff that I basically thumbed through to figure out how to do, and a few answers where I knew where they were so I figured I might as well find them. So it took a while, but I test got done as I thumbed through the book carefully.

And the day of the Chemistry final happened to contain the funniest moment of 2006 and the most I've probably laughed ever. This requires a bit of set up to explain it.

See, my Chemistry professor has a sort of lisp. She'll explain something and use the phrase "to work with" a lot. It wasn't until about halfway through the class that I noticed this, because one of the girls in class was badmouthing the professor before lab and mentioning "Have you ever noticed how she says "to work with" all the time?". Like 5 minutes into lab, she says it about 2 or 3 times, and I start giggling a little bit, as does this other girl in class who heard the comment out in the hall. I couldn't help but notice it the rest of the semester, and it's strange. It's almost like a defense mechanism for her, because for instance there was one time I walked into one of the other classes' labs to talk to her, and she's talking to some students about something and ends the sentence with "to work with" for no reason.

So fast forward to the last day of class, we're doing presentations of labs we were assigned to, and one of the groups is up there. The guy presenting and doing the talking I've done a few labs with an he's a cool guy, really nice and not the mean spirited type or anything. He's doing his presenting and talking about the experiment. "You do this with the ammonium chloride and put it into the container to work with", and I burst out laughing uncontrollably. I tried not to laugh loudly and control how hard I was laughing, keeping it to a giggle, but it was hard because the other girl I mentioned who had giggled back a few classes ago was laughing as well and we were both looking at each other like, "oh my god that was hilarious". I felt really bad because the professor was sitting right in front of me watching the presentation, and I was laughing pretty loudly. Apparently she didn't notice at all though. But I just kept laughing whenever I would look at the the other girl and I couldn't help it. Eventually I left the room and went to the bathroom to control myself because I just couldn't. I literally kept laughing for a few minutes. Even now whenever I'm thinking about it, I can't help but laugh a little. Most hilarious thing of the year ever.

I know that story probably doesn't make any sense, it was one of those things you just had to be there for, but it was absolutely hilarious. To work with. Tehehe.

But yeah, fun fun.

There was also an English research essay that I did without even doing a rough draft. I kept putting that one off and off. Sociology final, etc. The Chemistry stuff was the biggest deal because it was stuff I should of had done long before. In the end I got all 4.0s except for English, where I got an A-. Still great. I remember when I was waiting for my grades online and looked at the first batch of grades from Calc and Tech and Society, where I got an A+ and A, and I was really excited, and then not nearly as excited to see that I got one A-. I really was hoping to get another full 4.0 to bring my whole GPA up and have a better shot at Amherst, but one A- isn't bad. I've got an A+ in both my math classes and an A+ in the SOC12 class, so that looks good I guess even if it's the same numerically.

That's about it. Nice to get most of everything I've wanted to write off my chest. Good latenight. That's the other part I'm lost about, lately I've been going to bed near this late (this is the latest), and waking up at like 1 or 2pm. Not good. Oh well.

Tags: amherst college, college, life, stupid me
Current Mood: lost

you once talked to me about love and you painted pictures of
a never-neverland and i could’ve gone to that place
but i didn’t understand
i didn’t understand
i didn’t understand

This is very cryptic and so it is. I just spent about an hour (or 2 or 24) moping about how I have two essays to write for my history exam tomorrow (today) among other things including a party tomorrow in Child Psych for Valentine's Day. Sounds wonderful right?

Yeah, I'm a sad bastard because one of the assignments we were supposed to do was ask 3 people (1 not related to us) the reasons why they love us. Obviously, my mom and my step-dad love me, but who else? It's just kind of awkward to ask that question, especially when I'm me. It would be weird asking some person on the internet who barely knows me why they love me. I spent a while contemplating faking it all. I meant to ask my mom and step-dad tonight when they came home but I didn't. I asked my cat Blackie why he loves me and he yawned.

This is all very ridiculous sounding and so it is. I just figured I'd realize this and write this down so I could see how ridiculous it is. I'm sure the number of times I've contemplated killing myself in order to not do a school assignment is in the double digits now. Something I just remembered the professor said in Child Psych. Suicide is a permanent solution to an often times temporary problem.

Yeah...

I'm ridiculous. I should probably start working on not killing myself right now. God I'm such a donkey.

Tags: bcc, life, stupid me
Current Mood: not dead
Current Music: music and light makes me less depressed i guess