The life and times of a normal university student
Showing posts with label Pages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pages. Show all posts

18 January 2010

Seventh Post

At my school, we have these evening activities in the lounge for each dorm. Ours is "Cultural Leaders," which I find rather lame. I'm actually not really sure why that had to happen.
In other news, I actually had my own friends (just because I have a blog it doesn't mean I don't have friends) over to my room. I felt kind of like I had a life. So, to combat that feeling, I am typing up a new post and fighting with an essay that's not due until tuesday. I'm actually kind of enjoying the paper-writing, since it's the first time I've had to write a real paper with correct references and all that in college. I'm a science major- we don't really do that much writing. Just note-taking and lab write-ups, and those don't have citations required. We do have gen-eds required to graduate, which mostly ensures that we are "well-rounded" and fit to go to grad school and med school and make the school look good. I love my school, but that doesn't mean that I'm not cynical.
To tell the truth, I'm really frustrated with the paper. I would try that super cool awesome full screen distraction-minimising feature in Pages (mac word processor), but I need at least three other things up, including the internet to write the darn thing. Therefore, I go on the internet with every intention of looking things up, but it just doesn't happen. I'm extremely unmotivated to write, since I don't really believe in doing assignments before the night before they're due. I think this is proving that I'm constitutionally incapable of doing otherwise; perhaps I should get a start on other tuesday assignments so they don't all hit me at once tomorrow night at about midnight.
Americans- enjoy MLK day. Yay world peace and post-racial life.
There. I've been politically correct and whatnot.
To be honest, I think that a lot of minorities just kind of scrape by because they don't want empowerment, they want free stuff. I don't want to knock the people who have been successful, pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and changed the world, but I think that anyone who doesn't even want to get a job because they won't get government handouts anymore deserves all that life throws at them. For anyone who thinks I've just been a horrible racist bigot, I am talking about white people, too. I am a true post-racial citizen because I don't care if you're white, black, yellow, blue, green, or red- you should learn to respect yourself and reach for greatness. Not everyone can be president- I certainly wouldn't want to be- but everyone can have a better life than they have now. But the government isn't going to give it to you- you have to go out and find it.

Sorry about that little soapbox speech. It can be argued that this is how boring university life is- I have time to think about all this.

EDIT: This is Raeann from  three years later. I would like to apologize if I sounded like a total prick up there. I still agree with the basic sentiment of what I said, that anyone who just wants handouts is a pain in society's ass, and they make us as a society (and I do mean everyone, especially including people who started in the same place and made something of themselves because they wanted to) look bad. However, having lived a little with people who (gasp) aren't exactly like me since writing this post, I feel that I'm really not a "true post-racial citizen" because I'm basically the product of a society that really, really isn't post-racial. There are little things that I do, that a lot of white people who never went hungry when they were a kid and who can afford to go to college do because society is governed by us, really, that I don't even notice, and certainly didn't notice when I was an itty bitty freshman.
The only reason I came back to this post -- I don't even remember writing that paper, much less this post -- is because it is coming up pretty high on some google searches, and I'd like to not seem like a racist moron in front of the whole internet. Whether or not I am a racist moron is probably debatable, but I just wanted to make it clear that I don't endorse other racist morons.
I mean, wow, do I sound angry then! I've been thinking about freshman year a lot, especially in light of having only one year left before I'm turfed out into the real world, or the world of grad school, and I was a very angry freshman. I scowled and dozed my way through all of my classes. I look back on the year with fondness, but I don't think any of my professors thought I liked them, except in my women writers class, which, incidentally, is part of what made me who I am now. When I wrote this post, I'd enrolled in the class, but hadn't started yet.
Pro (i.e. slightly less amateur) tip: don't be angry all the time. It'll make it that much easier to come back to your accomplishments a few years later without blushing.