Sunday, October 17, 2010

2 and a Quarter Things

I've been meaning to write an installment of 4 things, and I am doing that right now, but to tide you over here is the remnants of one I wrote at the end of August.  Some of it makes no sense, and it cuts off at the end, but I still think parts of it are pretty awesome.  So, enjoy that shit.


This Week I Became a Mentor

I've already told you that this semester I will be working as a mentor for incoming freshmen at McNeese, which I was totally excited about until I learned I'd be expected to sit through four hours of productivity meetings to be trained.  There is nothing I hate more than meetings, maybe it's because I have an instilled inability to sit still for more than six minutes straight without losing concentration and begin to think of more important things like penguin birth and the direction that Justin Beiber's career is heading.   More than likely though it's just that I hate being in a group.  I'm not trying to say I'm a loner or anything because that is totally not the case.  In fact I absolutely hate being alone, but if I am going to be with a group of people it should be people of my choosing. It should not be a hodgepodge of uninterested twenty somethings being forced to listen to a middle aged woman speak about "how uplifting it can be to mold the young minds of tomorrow" or whatever bullshit the lady in charge of this meeting was spewing. 

I guess I've always hated that rah-rah, we are the world bullshit.  I hate forced enthusiasm, that kind of hokey empowerment makes me want to seriously consider bulimia as my new religion.  I dread one day having a career where I may be forced to sit through seminars with motivational speakers and team building exercises.  I'm not sure I could possibly be able to keep my shit together long enough to stand it.  I don't want to come off as cynical or anything, it's just that this kind of forced giddiness does not work on me.  I do not want to work with a group I would rather work alone.  Mostly because I know that I am not stupid and anyone I were to be paired with more than likely would be.

 I'm  not trying to belittle the work that this woman is doing, or the work that these other people are hoping to do with these students.  It's just that I'm not in it for self satisfaction.  In fact I'm only doing it because the head of the journalism department asked me to, and I don't want to piss her off seeing as she is the professor of most of my classes.  Thankfully I was able to do what was expected of me in this meeting.  I sat, and I nodded, and I acted as if I was pondering thoughtfully.  I hate knowing that I'm expected to smile and nod and speak thoughtfully instead of screaming the obscenities that are blaring in my mind.   I just hate that "we are all in this together" mentality. We are not in anything together except for this awful room.  Everyone one is in it for themselves.  Teamwork was only ever meant for migrant farmers and lesbians.

I guess it's no surprise that I hate working in groups because I am prone to hating all strangers.   I have to had talked to someone at least twenty times for me to consider them as a human being.  I am notorious for avoiding strangers at almost all costs.   I like to think it's the precocious first grader in me who is worried about STRANGER DANGER, and getting molested. Which let me tell you my parents were always unusually vocal of the possibility that any moment I could be molested.  I'm not sure what gave them this impression I'm not sure that I was an unusually attractive third grader or anything.  

This Week I Started School

I know for sure that one of my teachers is already on the first day starting to piss me off. She is teaching my "production across media' class which is basically video editing and learning how to use final cut pro.   Not only did the professor do that stupid thing where everyone goes around the room and talks about themselves endlessly.  I have never been good at this exercise, and like I mentioned earlier I hate strangers so I care very little about the lives of my classmates.  I don't care if before they came to McNeese to study Mass Communications they were in a troop of African tribal dancers that used to entertain America's elite in the backrooms of strip clubs across the Midwest.   I don't care about the lives of strangers because I barely have time to care about myself.  People should be more sensitive to the fact that I think about myself all day long, constantly and therefore do not have the time to be pondering other people's existences.  Anyways after hearing about Melissa who with a tilting sort of whiny voice told us that she couldn't decide whether she should continue with her degree in Public Relations or purse a career in dance.  She then proceeded to tell us that she had never danced before but was willing to now start trying at the ripe age of twenty two.  No one picks up a new skill at twenty two.  At twenty two you already have everything you're ever going to have.  You will from that point on neither get any smarter or dumber.  You will not pick up any new talents or skills.  You are constant from that age forward.  You cannot just decide you want to be a dancer.  Twenty two is too old to become a prodigy or an ingenue. 

Hearing Melissa talk about herself for near ten minutes reminded me of something I just heard about someone I was once friends with.  This person is quite possibly one of the dumbest people I've ever met.  I remember once we shared an English class and after the teacher had painstakingly walked around the room to pass out that days test.  He waited until she sat down and without even glancing at the exam stood up and turned it back into her.  When she asked him if he wanted to try to answer the twenty something questions upon the page he replied "that it was just too hard"  He also used to turn in papers with thinly veiled plagarism.  He once wrote a research paper on some celebrity that I cannot recall right now and in lieu of copying what was in the book as "she was born in 1962" he wrote "she was born in the year of 1962".  See?  He was painfully dumb, the kind of dumb that only usually occurs after head trauma.  Anyways I recently found out that this dumb ass has decided he wants to become a pharmacist.  Not only is that the most terrifying thing I've ever thought of, but what the what is he thinking?  You cannot just wake up one day and decide you are going to be a god damned pharmacist.  That's just not feasible.  That's like me saying I have a secret desire to be a mathematician, or an Asian bikini waxer.  I have no chance of being an Asian bikini waxer (that is to say an Asian who waxes bikinis not an Asian's bikini waxer).  I have almost no chance of being an Asian bikini waxer because I have no preposition to become one.  First off, I don't think I'll ever be able to magically become Asian.  Second of all, when have I ever shown any sort of gumption in the field?  Did I dream as a child of one day pouring hot wax on the genitals of strangers and speaking in broken English?  Did I train for years on the pubic regions of my sleeping friends?  No, I did not and that is why I will never be an Asian bikini waxer, and he will never be a pharmacist.  I don't appreciate it when people dream too big. 

This Week I Joined a Gym

You've heard me bitch about how fat I am on more than one occasion I am sure.  I've said it before that I am not crazy fat.  I am not the kind of fat that seat belts can't contain, or that airplanes cannot accommodate.  I am not the kind of fat that has to resort to shopping at the Big, Fat, Tall, and Ugly store, although they do send me the catalog that way I may one day be able to order in the privacy of my own home.