Hell Week. The most dreaded week in the lives of college students. The week of no sleep, binge eating, and rolling out of bed and going out in what you fell asleep in all in the name of studying for a final that can (literally) make or break your grade…no matter what you have in the class up to that point.

A friend of mine posted a status on her facebook saying that studying is in fact student and dying put together. At the time, I found it quite comical. But now, I agree from her perspective. I am indeed a walking, talking, zombie of myself just like every other college student on this campus at this exact same moment . The only difference that distinguishes me amongst stome of them is that I actually go back to my dorm to take a shower periodically.

It’s amazing how the library has become my home away from home this past week. Approximately 90% of my time was spent at the library ever since last Saturday since it decided to go live and stay open 24 hours a day until the end of Hell Week (yay for us who have no place to study do to cramped quarters in their dorm).

In addition to discovering as to wether you actually learned anything in the class that you have the final in, you learn other key concepts in your life as well.

Number 1: You Learn What Studying Is

All before, I thought I know what studying was: read a book, until you memorize almost every line and you’re good. Maybe take a practice quiz and that’s it. That sure is hell not the case. Lest, you can’t do that during finals week. It won’t work. Studying means actually dedicate time to that one subject: not deviating from your math to checking your farm on facebook or watching Jeff Dunham’s comedy clips or retarded stick figures on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTBQY29BVak).

Studying means barely seeing your roommate during the week due to your late hours at the library and the only time you ever seeing the inside of your dorm is to (hopefully) go take a shower and grab a quick bite. And maybe get an hour or two sleep in your own bed.

Number 2: You Learn As To Whether You Are A Facebook Addict

I had prided myself in all of the months that I had a Facebook that I wasn’t a Facebook Addict like some of my friends whom logged in and updated their status every hour and took every quiz known to mankind (or the facebook world). But In leu of studying for five finals during this killer week, you find yourself pressing that Facebook bookmark two many times for comfort, and after three hours, you basically know more about what’s going on in your friends’ lives more than you know about the DNA sequence. I literally had my friend change my password on facebook and agree not to give it to me until finals week is over with…if it was anyone else but me, I would be laughing. But I am faced with a cold, hard truth: I am a genuine facebook addict. Typing my blog instead of studying proves this. Otherwise, right this instant, I would be on facebook.

Number 3: You learn to Love Coffee: Even if you hate it

They call it hell week for a reason: long hours of studying at the library/studyroom/wherever you study all the material that you learned in the course of a semester. All those hours of studying mean that you barely have time to sleep.  And when you do get the time (and when I say time, I mean around 30 minutes, not 8 hours), I’m telling you that it will most likely NOT be in your own bed (you don’t get picky where you do it, as long as you get some).

Hello, coffee. How I love you. You keep me awake when I most want to throw my book out the window and sleep in my own bed. Oh, and may I suggest that if you do actually study in your room (who in the hell short would risk that during Hell Week, though)I suggest you invest in a coffee pot. Or hit your nearest [nonprofit] Common Grounds where you can score free coffee/lattes/teas and snacks. And some sweet study rooms.  Cici’s gets expensive after a while.

Number Four: You will feel suicidal during Hell Week

Now, I’m not saying that you are gonna carry it out (please don’t…finals are not worth your life, even though it may feel that way). But you would be surprised as to how many ways you can think of (with friends input) offing yourself to avoid the trauma of taking a final. Jumping out of the 3rd floor library window is the tamest of the few.

Number Five: You learn All That Fun You had Earlier In The Semester Is Gonna Kick Your Ass

Now, I’m not saying that I partied every night when I had class in the morning. I did maintain a balance of fun and school. And I am doing good. But lets just say that I could have dedicated some more time to actually studying. Or at least stayed off of facebook or FML.com when the professor was speaking of the coding of genetics on DNA.

Number Six: You Pray…A LOT

Enough said. You are gonna be praying to God, to Jesus, to anything in the universe that you believe in to do well on your final. Or to give you the strength to study…because that requires a lot of strength and dedication….and patience.

Number Seven: It’s Gonna Be So Good To See That Good Grade From your Final

All that time you spend studying will (hopefully) pay off. It’ll be worth to see a good grade that carries a large percentage of weight on your grade. And the best part ever? You never have to take the class again or deal with that subject matter again. Unless, of course, you are in a cumulative list of courses, such as a string of Biology classes in your immediate future. Then, if you didn’t do so hot in the class or the final, and hate the subject with a passion, then…well, you’re screwed.

Number Eight: You Actually Realize How Hard college Actually Is

I don’t care if you already endured your first semester of college and thought it was a breeze. For me, as I look back on my first semester, I am grateful that I am still alive. It was a hell of a difference from High School.  To those High School Students complaining about their petty dramas of their teachers assigning too much work….I just want to slap them right now.

But the semester’s worth of struggles help me to realize how much I need to apply myself to do even better next semester. And help me firmly determine what it is that I actually want to do in life. But I’ll worry about that after finals.

Four Finals Down…Two To Go. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll survive this week after all. And my celebration afterwards? 72 solid hours of sleep.

I am writing to you now as a graduate of high school. Break out the applause and party hats

So there are two things that graduating does to you:

 One, it makes you look at your life in the past and present.  Questions plague your mind such as ‘Have I done all I can up to this point? ‘What regrets have I made?’ Has my life been meaningful up to this point. Two, it makes you look at your life in the future. Questions plague your mind such as ‘What can I do to better my life?’ ‘What will my future entail?’ etc, etc.

I am at that point in my life now where I’m ready to start on volume two of my life. Yes, I am beginning a new chapter in my life, but in a diferent book.   Come fall, it will be a whole new ball game: seems fitting that it would be in a new book.  Volume I of my life has been written, read, and closed.  Now Volume II must be written….hopefully in my case, sequels will be better than the original.

In the meanwhile before I avidly start my new future that will be (hopefully) filled with exciting new challenges (stress on the world exciting and throw in the word adventerous), I need to do something that will save my sanity this summer: getting a job.

I feel the stress of the economy now. I also experience the stress of being jobless. It’s not a good feeling. Of course, my reasons for a job are entirely selfish–I dont’ have a family to feed, nor do I have bills to pay.  It makes me feel guilty….

I read a quote today that inspired me to do something that I had previously set myself against doing:

“The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble throughas well as well as we can.”
Robert Cushing

So I jumped in blindily and did something out of the norm in terms of romance for me personall. Unfortunately, it did not play out like imagined in my head. I’m sitting hear cursing myself for being disillusioned that this guy would have any sort of feelings for me. I got….nothing. My years of obsession and dreaming are pointless now.  It seems like I must take a strong dose of the advice that I’m so use to dishing out.

So I can’t help but wonder two questions about guys: do they see what they want to see? Or do they truly not see at all?

I’ve officially graduated from two things: high school and a guy.  What’ else must I graduate from?

Until next time~~~~~~~~~

<3 ash

So it’s Spring Break on my end.

Sleeping in late is total BLISS.  How I love the fact that I don’t have to get up at 5:30 am until next Monday. Then its only a few more weeks until graduation (I swear, the day that I walk out of my high school’s front double doors will be the happiest day of my life).

I never really leaned the depths of boredness until today. Seriously I felt like i had nothign to do.  I didn’t feel like watchign tv, I didn’t feel like reading, so you know what I did?

I googled the word bored.

Over 59 million hits matched the term bored.

Of course, I didn’t look at the 59 million pages detailing on the word bored, but guaranteed, I found some interesting websites. One that amused me for quite a bit of time was this website with audio clips from obnixous, bogus, not to mention hilarious 911 calls.

(911callers.com)

I’m telling you, I’m still feeling the aftershocks of laughter from the woman calling 911 because of a wrong taco.

In other news,  the progress on the writing of my novel isn’t progressing so well.  Mind you that I finished the whole thing, but I’ve gone back and supplemented changes reguarding to material, spelling, and gramatical errors.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been saying that I’ll finsih it today.

But I’m still on page 8

:/

 

Edit: 1.25 am…..I have to say, I’ve had cases of wrong numbers in my life, but can you imagine dialing a number that could be to a significant famous person? I was watchign the Tyra Show and this average woman hairdresser mistakingly called Tyra while trying to call a long lost friend.

Seriously, what are the chances of that I find it highly hilarious

Peace &hearts;

New website on the block: secrettwitter

Well, I long with the other thousands of people across the world have recently discovered the realm of Secret Twitter.  The name says it all: people can tweet secrets annonymously on the web. 

Now, my curiousity took the best of me and I visited the website to look at people’s secrets that theycouldn’t muster up the courage to say to their friends and realiatives.

I must say that the sight is actually depressing.

Well, of course, you have some funny tweets (I’m not going to repeat them), btu surprisingly, a lot of the tweets are depressing, involving issues that I honestly believe should be revealed to someone for help. Although it is the internet, the personal things that people reveal would make me hesitate for a LONG time before I even posted.

Its amazing how much the internet has submerged itself into our daily lives so much that it has become our perosnal therapist. I, of course, am guilty of using the internet as my personal billboard on ALL counts (i.e., my blog post about my crush on my tutor ) and using secret twitter (as a trial run of course).  But remarkably, my tweet wasn’t posted

Of course, it was a random secert that isn’t so shocking (i.e. I have a phobia of cockroaches or I have a love of cheesecake)

Guess my secrets weren’t tweett worthy.

Peace <3

I actually have people reading my blog (yay!) Thanks for the comments and taking a few minutes out of your daily schedule.

 

In other news……………….

This is going to be a short blog, but I just had to blog about this.  I have DVR (one of the best inventions on the planet next the the iPod and MacBook )  and I was watching an old Tyra Show from Thursday.  I didn’t know what the episode was about so when I turned it on, I expected it to be on women’s issues or some sort (gotta love Tyra…she boosts up my self esteem alot (: )

Well anyway, the segment was on a pregnant girl who works at the Bunny Ranch (aka, the legal brothel).  She’s says that she works there to support her baby, and that it’s her only option.

I’m not one to judge a person wholy just by their actions (yeah, I’ll comment about it or whatnot), but I just gotta say that something is not right if you feel prostitution is the only way to go to support a baby.  Millions of women (and teens) are faced with this decision everyday without family support and many don’t run to prositution as their sole source of income. Sadly, yes, many do resort to that lifestyle, but many do not.

I’m not trying to downgrade this girl (Alana Love is her name [kind of makes me wonder if this is her real name...it sounds kinda portstar/hooker-ish]), but sweetheart should have worked out some more options to support this baby on her own.

Its sad that women in our society turn to degrading their bodies just for monetary reasons.  I wish that we lived in a society that people wouldn’t consider this route an option.  But with the decline of the economy in recent months and people looking for work whereever they can…it’s sad to see the extremes that people are falling to.  People loosing their jobs, their homes (Oprah’s special on tent cities made me realize how badly people were loosing their homes and living litterally in tents outside), and even their dignity.

Even with the bad economy, don’t you think that a mother should resort to another option other than prosituting her body? I’m not judging her, nor chewing her out, as I feel deep sympathy for her. But the thing that I’m most worried about is that what happens when that child is born? Will Alana  be too deep into prositution to get out? And most imporatntly, how will that affect the baby’s peronal and mental developmental growth. Prosituting your body to strange men can endanger the baby’s health, you know. 

Anyway, that’s my two cents on the situation.

As always,

Peace & Love

 

<3 Ash

The unexpected, yet [sad] inevitable thing happened. Another plane crashed today, this time in Amsterdam.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/25/plane-crash-amsterdam-schiphol-turkish]

It gets worse: at least 9 people were killed and at least 50-80 were injured on the 127-135 passenger airline.

This is the 3rd major airplane crash since the infamous [nonfatal] plane crash in the Hudson RIver that occured in earlier January. The second happened in earlier Februarywith the 45 passenger [all fatalities]  plane that crashed into a house in Buffalo.

What is the deal with all these plane crashes? Is it a mechanical problem or the fault of the pilots? Or is it just inevitable fate? I know that there have been many plane crashes in the past, but 3 in two months? Makes me too freaked out to fly with the thought that my flight may be my last.

Its generally freaky that these plane crashes occured in such close proximity to each other. And its only the beginning of the year.

Maybe now would be a good time for people to try consider sescondary travel (ie, a train).

 

On a lighter note, I was watching Inside edition and I saw a newsstory on a dog that actually says ‘Mama’. Well, it comes out sounding like, “maw.. maw’ in a creepy, raspy voice, bust its still pretty cool!

I know I made a post earlier, but I want to say something.

I, along with the rest of the world, have heard about the whole Chris Brown/Rihiana incident.  I don’t like to follow the around the lives of the rich and famous in those crackmag’s called tabloids, but I feel bad and sympathy for Rihana.  No woman shoudl have to go through an ordeal of being beaten by your partner.

Now I know that there are people behind Rihana, and there are people behind Chris Brown.  I expected that. But I didn’ expect this:

Here’s a quote I gotten off another blog:

WHITNEY wrote: I’M STILL GOING TO SUPPORT CHRIS BROWN UNTIL THE END. I DONT CARE IF HE DID IT OR NOT. OBVIOUSLY SHE PROVOKED HIM AND EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES SO, IM NOT GOING TO DOWN TALK HIM NOR TRY TO BRING HIM DOWN LIKE THE WHITE MEDIA IS GOING TO. HE’S STILL A KID. KIDS MAKE DUMB CHOICES EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE. GIVE THE KID A BREAK IT’S HIS FIRST TIME IN HIS 4 YEAR CAREER.

 

Read the line in dark print again. What hurts me is that this is one post of the many supporting Chris Brown. I’m not upset abotu the fact that people are supporting Chris Brown (its disheartening, but still we do not know all the facts of what happened that night).  What strikes a chord of anger inside of me is that some people are saying Rihana deserved it.  That she prevoked him.

I have a strong opinion when it comes to domestic violence.  If you are a man, you gon’t put your hands on a woman with any intention of doing her harm.  Ever.  Even if you slip up, or blame it on a sudden sprout of anger, you don’t have any authroity to hit a woman.

So when someone says she deserved it, then yeah, I will get angry.  I wouldn’t wish for anyone to hit their girlfriends, wives, etc. I wouldn’t wish that hell on even someone that I may dislike.

Now I hope Rihana can recover in peace with the full support of her family. And I hope Chris Brown will be dealt with accordingly.

It’s just sad that in our society, some people still believe that some men can be excused for domestic violence just because they were prevoked.

I want a grilled cheese sandwich.  Seriously.

I want a grilled cheese sandwich.

It’s been years sinc eI had one, and playing the Sims 2 game on pc made me want one. 

Of course, if I decide to prepare one now, I hope I don’t set my kitchen on fire like I did in the game.  That would be a bummer.

 

Anyway, I had the talk from my mother.  You know, the talk that everyone has with their parents when they hit puberty, which is usually around 13 or 14?

Well, I’m 18.  And I had the talk from my mother. Again.

The intial fueling of the talk stemmed from the fact that my clinically insane/promiscious cousin may be pregnant. And her sister had another abortion.  Which would make this her second abortion.

I am the first to state to anyone that nobody should tell anyone what they should do.  But I am strongly against abortion. I believe that its murder, and the worst option that a person can resort to (of course, there are some special cases in which the child or mother’s life may be in trouble). There are other options (namely adoption). When I heard this news from my mother, first I wanted to throw up. Then, I felt an anger creep into my veins.

But back to the discussion with my mom, she asked me if I wanted to go on the pill coem August when I’ll be entering University.

I felt angry at first when I heard this from her. DId she think that I was going to turn out like my promiscous cousins? Or did she seem to think that every entering college freshman was sexually active.

………………………………………ok, maybe she does………………………………..

My point being, I haven’t even had a boyrfiend yet, much less kissed anyone.  I seriously doubt that I will be pregnant by the end of my freshman year. I’m not the kind of girl to dish it out to anyone. I have morals.

Besides, the side effects of the pill terrifies me.  I researched it online, and some  include: blood clots, liver disease, gallbladder disease, stroke, heart disease, and weight gain (okay, this isn’t life threatening, but I’d hate to gain an additional 20 pounds or so).

I know its uncommon for everyone on the pill to get these effects, more like the 1-5% of people….but I know that I could be a part of that 1-5%.  Bad things happen to me.  It’s like I’m a magnet to unfortunate  events.

So why take the risk to get on a pill that I won’t even need for a while? And when I’m ready to have sex, I’ll make the decision myself whether I want to get on the pill or not.  It shouldn’t be a decision forced on me by my mother when I’m not ready.

Need I to state again that I’ve never had a boyfriend? Come on now!

 

————————————————————————————

Well, another event that has occured to me in my very vivid life is that  I realized that I may have developed a crush on my tutor. Ok, correction. I know I developed a crush on my tutor. Although he’s hot, funny, and smart, this crush makes it hard for me to concentrate on him teaching me physics.  How can I concentrate on him explaining me the various velocities and accelerations of moving objects when all I can think about is how my heart accelerates whenever I’m near him?

Not to mention the fact that he has a girlfriend.  Total buzzkill. And signififcantly older than me (only about three to four years). That shoudl throw my little crush straight off the ledge.

But weeks later, its still present. And all I can think about is how I just wanna kiss him. And run my fingers through his brown curly hair. And drown in his chocolate colored eyes.

 

ugh.  Sometimes, I hate being a girl.

peace,love

<3 ash

Two things that I’ve learned at school today:

A) Many girls follow what other girls do.  I heard one girl say she wanted to go on a 1,000 calarie a day diet because her friend did and she lost 15 pounds in two-three weeks

(Okay, I’m not a doctor, but isn’t that a trip to anorexia lane? and 15 pounds in three weeks…doesn’t that seems a bit unhealthy)

B) Some girls have bachelors degrees in the art of deception.

(I’m through with the whole high school thing, now)

 

I always told myself that I wouldn’t blog about the whole Twilight series.  But right now, I can’t help to blog about it because I’m annoyed.

Before you read any further, don’t belive that this is a hate blog against Twilight.  I generally like the series.  I had truly enjoyed it when I first read it (back when there werent 10 million people reading it).

Despite my likeing of the series, I can’t help but grow annoyed at the way people treat it.  My annoyance steadily grew over time until I’m basically sick of seeing Twilight advertisements all over the place (school, internet, etc.)

Let me clarrify a few examples for you.

Person #1: Hey, did you hear about this new sereies?!?

Person#2: No….what’s it called???

Person#1: Twilight! It’s really good!

Person#2: Gotta check it out!

That was cool

Another scenario:

Person#1 Hey, did you hear about Twilight?

Person#2: Yes! It’ an absolutely amazing serires!

Person#1: Hell Yeah! Say, let’s hit the mall for twilight t-shirts

Person#2: All right!!!!

And that was cool

But when this scenario, happened, I had enough:

Person #1: OMG!!!!!! HAVE YOU READ TWILIGHT!!!!!????!!

Person#2: OMG, YES!!!! IT”S THE BEST SERIES IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD.

Person#1: I KNOW!!! NOTHING COMPARES TO TWILIGHT. I WANT TO MARRY EDWARD!

Person#2: NO WAY!!!! I’M GONNA MARRY EDWARD

Persson#1: NO I WILL!!!!!!

etc.

Now, before you go like huh? what I’m ticked off about, let me explain.  Number one, I cannot help but grow annoyed when people-well teenyboppers and teenagers-exclaim that Twilight is the best  book in the entire world.  I’m not annoyed when they say that it’s the best book that they’ve ever read (maybe they didn’t read much before).  But I cannot help to grow annoyed by these little jabs they make, which implies that many authors in the world lack in comparison to Stephanie Meyer.

I applaud Stephanie Meyer for writing a book that has captured the attention of many, but I don’t belive she’s the greatest author that has ever lived. I jus tdon’t. Her writting is bad.  I belive some 12 year olds write better.

Number two….I look back at at the characters, and now I can’t help but think that the movie is a bit like those historical novels where the heroine depends on the hero to save her. In a way, I kind of relate the relationship between Bella and Edward as that.  She’s drawn to the fact that he’s a vampire (yeah, that fact has been established), but I can’t help but believe that Edward is a bit masochistic (I wonder if I spelled that right). He refuses for her to see Jacob at first.  Now if that had been my boyfriend, I would have decked him, vampire or not. Nobody prevents me from seeing anyone. Edward seems to dominate the relation ship, and honestly, I don’t belive Bella to be a strong feminie character reflecting today’s modern woman.  She seems a bit too needy (ie…wanting to kill herself because Edward left her).

Number three….I get sick of people talking about Edward as though he were a real person, to the point as thought they were fighting about it. And everytime I see a Twilight  poster (I see it everyday at school–I want to tear it down), I get creeped out every time I see Rohert Pattison’s (is that his name?) face.  I’ve had a lot of crushes on guys during my time of all races and ages (celeberties included) ever since I hit puberty.  But whenever I keep seeing Robert Pattison’s face, I can’t help but think:

Man.  He looks like a pedophile.

LOL. I’m sorry, I can’t help but laugh at what I wrote.  In a nutshell, I just didn’t enjoy the movie. It seemed like a teenybopper movie…nothing that resembled the passion for Twilight when I first read it.  Maybe it was just 4 years too late.

Again, I don’t hate the series. I am just annoyed by theway people keep treating it as thought it is the Bible itself.

Although, I bet the publishing house is applauding the marketing that the book is going.  Lotta revenue for them

Hopefully next time I blog, I’ll be in a less pissy modd.

Until then.

Peace.

I am very emotional right now (emotional in a good way, though). Today at my high school we had a challenge day from 7:15 this morning to 2:15 in th evening. For those of you who have not heard of Challenge Day, Challenge Day is a program that helps to earase clique lines, sterotypes, and to get students from different peer groups reunite under different relations.

Now before you say that this sounds lie a cheesy campifire moment and everyone is going to burst out singing Kumbaya, The program had many revelations and numerous interesting points of views.  I am not going to go into great detail about the things revealed there by students, but I must say that I will never look at the same person that I may see in the hall in passing the same way again.

I have always prided myself for respecting other people and treating others how I would want to be treated (I have not ALWAYS been this way, but we all have our shameful pasts), being friendly to others, and geniunely being a person that many people could look up to.  But today broke down my emotional barriers and had me take a full scope outlook on my life.  Things that I would have never admited outloud to myself, I admitted to a room of 135 students, parents, and teachers alike.

I would be lying to say that it makes me feel better to know that I know what other people are going through the same things that I am.  Because it doesn’t make me feel good.  It makes me feel sad that other people are subjected to the same pain, discrimination, and depression that I am subjected to.  In this day and age, we should be imporiving in our relations in our lives but intstead, it seems like more and more people are failing, most specifically in the personal family life.

I admit that I broke down and cried during the most stressful and emotional parts, and I tried to shy my face from other people so they wouldn’t see me cry.  But I wasn’t alone.  And I was not ashamed of my tears afterward. I’m glad to know that I have other people that I can talk to that are going through the same things that I am, and together we can pull through the rough times.

All I want to do to wrap up this blog is to say that love the people dearly that are currently in your life.  Do not dwell on things in the past that you cannot change, but instead, shape your future.  Correct wrongs that still go unresolved and don’t ever assume judgement on people-whether they are strangers or they are you best friends-because you will be wrong.  I learned that today.

I hope that the people that attended Challenge day today keep the memories and revelations of the day in their hearts and their minds, and use today’s experiences to influence the shaping of their future.

 

I love you all,

<3ash