Yeah, I know I was hella trippin' Sunday, but when I get my emotions out of my head and out into the world, I feel a million times better. Actually not even just emotions, but thoughts too. I will think something to death and back, but if it's "written" down and out to people who know me, be it an email, blog, whatever, my mind clears pretty quick. But it has to be written down and to other people who know me. Writing it to myself or saying it just makes it worst. On top of mental clarity, it's good to let the people around me know what's up.
Anyways, I am definitely feeling so much better today, I've been singing and smiling all day. I can't spend too much time being sad, this semester will make or break my college apps and if I fuck it up cause I'm moping about then I'll fucking hate myself for it. That's not to say I won't have some moments, but they will get further and further apart until they're not at all. This shit came at a fucking bad time, but I gotta keep my business on lockdown.
Oh, the fucking college apps. It's exciting AND scary, every time I log in to work on one of the apps I get butterflies. I WAS going to submit ASAP, but it's better to wait for this semester's grades. That way I have all my shit in a row at once, instead of sending in my app in pieces slowly over the semester. Also gives me time to write the damned essays, ugh. As good of a writer as I am, and as much as I ramble about myself here, you'd think having to write a short essay about myself would be easy. But it's not! I have to decide what about me is important for these schools to know, and that's kind of hard when it's a short essay because there are a lot of good things about me academically. (Sometimes my academic strength is my only redeeming factor....)
I started this post yesterday, but didn't get to finish it. It said I might be in the school paper, and sure as shit stinks I am. It's just a casual interview, nothing horribly exciting, and there is a pic of me plastered on the front of the paper. My mom said I "look like a bad ass but sound like a philosopher". Which is pretty true for the most part. It's a horrible pic from a weird angle though...and now people are recognizing me right and left, a small taste of fame (I hate it).
Plus, I'm not there for attention, I'm not there to find a guy to marry (AKA get my M.R.S. degree) I'm not there to show off just how tight of clothing I can fit into or hiking around campus in 4+ inch heels, or playing the whole beauty/popularity contest game, I'm not even there to damn socialize, I'm there to fucking learn. That whole idea blows some of my classmates away. They ask me when do I have fun, and sad to say class IS fun to me. I like to read the textbooks and learn new things, if there was ANYTHING I could point to and be like that gets me going, it's fucking school. I ride the bus across town to the university, and I kinda giggle cause it's like riding the bus to school as a kid. I love this shit. In an academic environment is where I reign supreme.
My hair went from white to silver to short and blue. And I loved the blue hair.
However, I shaved my head like 2 weeks ago. People ask me if it's cancer, or a Britney Spears mental breakdown thing, they assume it's something bad.
It's not, it has many many things to do with my Buddhist philosophies and especially vanity, humility, and arrogance. I've mention off and on that in the past few months I have wandered pretty far from the Buddhist mindset I once had. What I noticed is that I slowly became more vain and arrogant. I wasn't going back to old ways, but I was becoming less of my idea of me and more caught up in what other people want me to be. I'd planned for a couple of months to shave my head, and that's why I went with the crazy hair because I knew it was coming off anyways. You have to shave your own head, otherwise it's seen as a sign of weakness to make someone else do it. And so, after meditation and in the midst of incense and moonlight (there are reasons for this), I shaved my head. It was insanely freeing. I felt a sense of relief and a weight off my shoulders. I felt less stressed, confused, confused...and more like the me I'd spent so long trying to cultivate.
It's easy to do my hair in the morning too. :P
My hair grows fast so things like this don't last long because it's not much of a wait for it to come back. It gets to my shoulders (curly, so it's actually a bit longer) in under a year.
It's funny, a classmate of mine asked me why I did it, and I replied just because (wasn't even about to get into religion with this person) and she said she could never do such a thing because it's not very lady like and because she spends almost 400 bucks on her hair a MONTH so she's "invested" in her hair. I wanted to "invest" my foot up her ass, but hey. That's the kind of person I never want to be.
By that I mean so vain that I always have to chase the latest beauty product, replace my clothes with the latest fashions every season, wear a bunch of makeup, it's just NOT me. In my psych class we were discussing body image disorders and such, and most of my class is female. We had to have a discussion about the beauty industry and how do they affect the public's idea of beauty. More than one person said the beauty industry was only trying to help people look better to boost their self esteem. (God damn BA psych majors.) Others said they provide a valuable service. I stood alone (as usual) in saying that they skew both women and men's idea of beauty. The kicker on that is most of the girls you see in ads are "computer enhanced". No woman is going to live up to that. So, the beauty industry keeps making new products that are the latest and greatest to help you look like some model you see, on top of that a lot of guys EXPECT women to look like that, so women are now super insecure they'll die alone with 100 cats because they aren't what they see in ads. The only reply to my commentary?
"It's not like that."
ARGH. Don't people value themselves or education anymore? No wonder I feel like there's no one like me, THERE FUCKING ISN'T. I'm being a bit hyperbolic there, but I'm starting to feel that way. I guess I'm jaded that college isn't the collection of intellectual peers and academic rigor I really wanted it to be. A group of peers who could match me brain to brain. If I could find that....*sigh*
So, I've recently signed up 3 psychology research studies done by grad students, basically because I get bonus points for it. However, I've completed 2 of the 3 (and need to sign up for the 2nd part of one of them) and I'm FASCINATED. The two I've done are Alcohol's Effect on Women's Responses to Dating and Social Situations and The Role of Humor in Choosing a Mate. The alcohol one is the one where I'm going on to part 2, so I'm going to get bonus points for drinking until my BAC is .08 then checking out guys. (Maybe college isn't SO bad...) The humor one I did today and it was rather curious. I'm usually smart enough to figure out what they're looking for to relate it to what they are studying, but I couldn't figure this one out. I had no idea how that questionnaire had anything to do with choosing a mate OR humor.
It's been a fun experience playing test subject to grad students, plus I get to be on both ends of the research dynamic this way. Sometimes I'm the researcher, sometimes I'm the guinea pig. The whole research process fascinates me, hell, I like reading research journals (at least on topics I like or find interesting) just to see how they approach trying to gain info on their hypothesis. How they approach the problem, how they set up the experiment, the results they got, any possible things that might be affecting the results or if something went wrong....love that stuff. Especially psychology research, obviously. Research has always intrigued me, because it's other people asking why, which is something I do almost constantly. Now that I am on both ends of psychology research, it fascinates me even more. Maybe it's a calling....
So what you've learned today is I'm the ultimate in nerd because research and school are fun and exciting for me. I'm cool with that though, because I'm enjoying the hell out of myself.
It's about time.
~A.
Posted by
~A.
comments (0)