The Misadventures of a Native New Yorker

I'm officially, 100% in and accepted to NYU's paralegal program. Orientation is the night before I leave for Provincetown. (OF COURSE).

Classes are Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, 6-9:45 PM, and start the day after Labor Day (Labor Day being the day I come BACK from Provincetown).

Now I just have to figure out the whole financial aid thingie. ::frets::

ETA: I kind of feel like I'm gonna barf.

In general? AAHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Rather than do one giant dump, I'm going to try inserting topic headings in this post, borrowing a page from fragbert.

Health

Who's got two thumbs and an upper respiratory/sinus infection? *sigh* you guessed it.

So, infections with gross features I'd rather not discuss in polite company mean antibiotics, which I'm fine with, as they've done me solid in the past. (Try getting over bronchitis without them. No, really, I dare you. Herbal tea and yoga don't work in this case.) The only downside of this is that my stomach is getting pissy about all the attention being paid to my sinuses, and has decided to pitch a tantrum of its very own. The last day or two have not been fun by any slice. And, due to varied and assorted work things, calling in sick is not in the cards. So I'm trying to tough it out. *sigh*

School:

For those of you following along with my ongoing saga, I am happy to report that my application was placed in the hands of a bored-looking receptionist at the Administration office on Friday afternoon. Now it's simply a matter of crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. And figuring out the whole paying-for-the-part-I'm-not-being-reimbursed-for thing. (Thanks to redesigner for some of his suggestions and information this afternoon, though.)

Jealousy

j_bkl is going to tomorrow's Yankee game. I am not. I'm FINE with this, really. Hmph.

Budgeting

Since the news came down that Microsoft is no longer supporting its money software, I've been searching for a replacement. redesigner sent this list, which I'm pretty sure grabs every option out there, free or otherwise. I'm open to suggestions and/or testimonials, if anyone uses these budgeting tools.

Music
On Sunday evening, J and I traveled out to Williamsburg to see his sister perform. She had completed something called Willie Mae's Rock Camp for Girls . One of the ways the organization raises money to support their mission of empowering girls between the ages of 8-18 through rock music is having a camp for older women (older meaning 19 and up). The women go through a three-day program where they are put into bands, taught to play instruments, write songs, make t-shirts, and perform. (The girls's camp does the same over a longer period of time). I was happy to go out in support of this, and three hundred varieties of jealous that this didn't exist when I was 15. Then again, there's nothing saying I couldn't do this some year, too. The show had a raffle for a rather sweet Gretsch electric guitar, cherry red and goregous. I (stupidly) did not enter the raffle, as I'm slightly cash poor until payday, but it made me start thinking about maybe doing that again, the way I used to.

Suggestion Corner:
J and I are heading up to Provincetown in a little over three weeks. We have restaurant arrangements (Front Street and Edwige, in addition to a great BBQ thrown by the proprietors of our B&B). However, we are in need of a recommendation of a great restaurant for Friday night dinner. We're not so into the Lobster Pot, but anyone familiar with the area is welcome and encouraged to chime in.

And that's it. I'm going to bed.

This article is pissing me off for oh, so many reasons. I saw this kind of thing occurring when I was in high school - people who would study for 6 hours a night for a week before a test, having nervous breakdowns about highlighters and note cards, and then screaming at a teacher if they got a 94 instead of a 98.

The person I really want to slap in the article is the whiny brat who complains that he deserves an A just for working hard. Talent should be also recognized. If a paper or test is only worthy of a B, it's only worthy of a B - it doesn't matter if you worked for fourteen hours or for four. I have always believed it's a matter of quality over quantity. It doesn't matter how long you worked if your thesis makes no sense or is completely unsupported or, even proven wrong by the contents of your paper. If you worked for weeks on end and lived in the library and you still leave your arguments without support and conclusion, you don't deserve an A. Sorry. It's just the way it is. It's not just about working hard, it's a matter of picking your head up and thinking - yes, thinking! - about what it is you're working on. Quality should be the only judge. Perhaps a kind-hearted professor might be swayed to raise a B to a B+ or a C to a B- if you go during office hours with your notes and beg them to reconsider, but in my experience, the paper, the end product of all that work - has to be of a certain quality to deserve a certain grade.

Or at least that's how we rolled up at SUNY Albany.

So, a friend I'm recently back in touch with sent me a facebook invitation for my high school's 35th anniversary party next November.  Nice. I remember reading about the 20th anniversary they held back in the day, so I looked at the details of the event.

The geniuses in charge of this one want RSVPs at the END OF FEBRUARY.   And that's not even the best part.

It's on a Thursday Night. 
It's $100.
IT'S ON STATEN ISLAND.

Now, I grew up in Brooklyn, and my high school was in Brooklyn.  And I'm not the only one who balked at the choice of venue.  The organizers said something about it being because it'd be "the best bang for the buck," and how it's not that inconvenient to get to, and that it'll be "totally worth it" because of all the old friends you'll see.

SURVEY SAYS!

[X]

I guess when you hit a certain age, you assume that everyone owns a car.   I am happy to say that I don't.  I am also proud of the fact that I literally can not remember the last time I was on Staten Island for any reason, and this is not a trend that I intend to break anytime soon.   Also, I sincerely doubt that these people looked hard enough or long enough, if the best that they believed that they could do was the Staten Island Hilton Garden Inn.  This is about a dumb as a midnight boat cruise.  Staten Island.  STATEN ISLAND.  They're high.   (But knowing my high school, that's almost fitting.)  

In a completely incomprehensible move, it appears that my class reunion has changed the time for the event, with three days to go.

Now, instead of being 8pm-11pm, it will now be held from 12am-4am.

Yes, you read that right.

Let's see...hardly anyone I know is going. It will be cold. It will be held during the wee hours of the morning. It will be on a boat. And oh, yeah.

CASH BAR.

Survey Says!


[x]


I think I may send out an email to some HS folks I've reconnected with through Facebook and see if anyone wants to get together for drinks. But there is no fucking way I'm participating in that farce. Oh, HELLS no. OH JOHN RINGO NO, even. I would have been happy to go if it was in a bar or a restaurant. I even considered the boat for a minute. I wasn't sure I made the right decision about passing on the whole thing until the email about the time change arrived in my inbox. Now, I am sure.

Too bad The Caraville isn't still open. That would have made for an excellent reuinion right there.

Remember that Information Session that I was all circumspect about? I've made a few more decisions regarding it, so I can at least talk about it now.

After a lot of thought and soul-searching, I've decided to go to NYU to complete their certificate in Paralegal Studies. Considering that I describe my job as being "a glorified paralegal" anyway, I decided to do some research into the programs I had available to me in the area. What I found was that, yes, I'm a natural at most of it (writing? research? yes.) and am at least somewhat experienced in the rest of it. Many were eliminated because they required me to get another bachelor's degree or an associate's degree. Considering that I already have a shiny Magna Cum Laude B.A., I decided to pass on those. A few were eliminated because of the distance from my house (St. John's? Queens College? Too far by subway.) Eventually I had narrowed it down to two, but the other (L.I.U: Brooklyn) was eliminated because I wasn't crazy about their program. Their certificate program was cheaper, but it was also four days a week for a solid year. Plus, the woman I spoke to on the phone about the program really didn't do that much to get me excited about it. The infomercial (as I've been calling it) at the other school really did get me excited. I know it's designed to, but I like that they go through the trouble of getting you excited about the program AND the career path of a paralegal.

All of those factors combined left me with just one option: NYU. So, provided all falls into line the way that I'm expecting it to, I'll start in the Spring semester. Thankfully, I will have BIP to pay the nice fat tuition bill (or reimburse me for it, rather). I also get to mock NYU as hard as I want to now, considering that I'll be a student there. Hee! (Student Center Chik-fil-A, here I come!)

It's still going to be tough - I'll have two semesters (Basic Concepts and Advanced Concepts), and I'll have class three nights a week, plus homework. And I'll have to stagger the semesters so I can fully avail myself of the reimbursement. And yanno, preserve my sanity. But my inner Hermione remembers that I used to be really fucking good at this. And I liked this. I liked school. And heaven knows that I need stimulation, and something to get excited about. Plus, this is entirely useful to my current job. I don't plan to leave anytime soon, but this way, I'm also far less limited career-wise. I've heard that there are industries out there that pay a lot more money than publishing! (Could just be a rumor, though.) The deck is stacked - there's really more of a chance that this will be a positive experience for me than a negative one.

There is still plenty to be done. I have to request a transcript from good ol' UA, and there are endless forms and applications to be filled out. I have to call my student loan people (who once complimented me on never missing or being late on a payment) and see if they can do something for me. Part of me wishes that I could be starting sooner, rather than later, but I know that it's a bad idea, and will be even worse come December, when I'll have not only finals to contend with, but year-end crap at work, AND the Christmas holidays. All I'll have to deal with in the spring is my birthday, which hopefully my classes won't conflict with (and even if they do, I'll deal.)

I'm pretty confident about this. I've never wanted to be a lawyer but I enjoy the law. I've gotten a taste of so many parts of it, and almost all of them (short of litigation) really interest me. And, as I've proven over the years, I'm a kick-ass assistant. I'm good at helping other people. I'm organized, and good at keeping things organized (mostly). So I know that this is a good fit. What's more, is that I waited to go back to school until I had something that I knew that I wanted to do and until I could actually entertain the thought without shuddering. So it's time. I'm nervous, don't get me wrong. But I really think this is a good thing for me.

I didn't get to post about it previously, but my novel class on Saturday was awesome. I really feel like I got a lot out of it, and that it will really help me in the long run. The professor was engaging and prepared, but mostly, I appreciated the way that she claimed to not be the God on High when it came to writing. Often, she would make declarations of "you know, this is just something that has worked for me and other writers I know. You might find it more beneficial to approach this differently." She gave us tons of practical tools to move novels along at any and every stage, and I really liked her and the course. I would totally take a class with her again. The four hours flew by like nothing.

My class last night, couldn't have been more different.

The first problem was that it was held at the "Norman Thomas Center," which was just fancy NYU code for "Norman Thomas High School." As one girl I was talking to put it, "It's sort of a combination of hospital and prison, isn't it?" As high schools go, this one is particularly dismal, and my alma matter isn't about to win any design awards anytime soon. But I was willing to put that aside.

I don't know how you can take a class in a subject as rich as comedy and humor and make it as boring as paint-drying techniques, and dry as the Sahara. The professor may be a working writer, but he had no idea how to teach what he was teaching. He handed out some papers, and in talking about the course, suggested that the class would be critiquing one another. I was one of 3 people in the entire course with any writing experience at all, and I don't need to drop a few bills just so that they can tell me my piece had "good flow." The prof clearly knew what he thought was funny, but had no idea how to break down the structure and mechanics in such a way as to convey them in a lesson. Hell, I learned more from Steve Martin's amazing memoir Born Standing Up and observing funny people in my life.

This is this guy's advice on how to be funny:
1. Observe life. Life provide things to write about that are funny.
2. Wacky relatives are funny, you can write about them.
3. Pain is what makes things funny. All levels of pain are where comedy comes from.
4. Sometimes, the media often writes about stories that can be funny if you think about them. The news can be a great resource of funny.
5. Often, funny essays have things like repetition and rhythm. That makes them funny!

All of these amazing revelations in one place! By jove, I don't know how we could have done it without him! Wacky relatives are funny? Life is funny? Pain causes humor? He's a genius. No one has ever thought of these things before! And the news being funny? Wow. Never would have thought of that on my own. It's not like Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and every other comedy writer since the dawn of the ages ever thought of that one before.

I'm going to get out while the getting's good, and take my 75% refund while I'm at it. Will Hunting long ago made a point about wasting $150,000 on an education you could get for $1.50 in late charges at the public library, and I think I'm going to take his advice here. I don't need to overpay someone to tell me to understand what I think is funny and model my writing after that style when I want to be funny. I mean, I appreciate the advice and all, but I've learned more about timing, rhythm, language, pacing, and otherwise how to cause people to snort beverages up their nose by watching antheia and ginpalace converse. Ugh.

Oh well. It was an experiment, anyway. I'm still going to go after that paralegal program, though.

Honestly? This has been the kind of week that's best ended with a good amount of drinking. Lucky for me, that's on deck for tonight. And eating, because rumor has it those two go well together. Who knew?

Work has been 10 pounds of crazy in a five-pound bag, and there are plenty of other things stressing me out, and I'm of the opinion right now that talking about them will only make it worse, not better. (Except my hair, but that's a conversation I plan to have with alcestis very soon.)

I'm going to try to focus on other things and work on being relaxed and HAPPY, because today is FRIDAY. The most wonderful day of the week. It's also not just a Friday, but a Friday before a great and glorious THREE DAY WEEKEND. Which includes a Torchwood marathon this Sunday on BBC America, so I'll be all caught up in time for the premiere of Season 2. I also will be watching Doctor Who via Netflix, so I should be fully steeped into that universe in no time. Which is good, as what's left in the TV stores is bound to run out soon, and I'm going to need some brain candy.

T-minus 22 days until my classes start! I'm so excited. I got my registration packet two days ago, and yesterday I got an ENORMOUS course bulletin for the School of Continuing and Professional studies at NYU. No, really. It's FUGE. I have no idea why it was necessary to do it in an 11 x 14 trim size, but it's in NYU's very nature to spread out all over everything, so there you have it.

Other good things about today include that the NYPL has delivered three more of my requested items:

Camera Obscura - Underachievers Please Try Harder (I'm not sure how I happened upon this band, but they've been really growing on me.)
Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous (The album that everyone insists is their best one. We shall see. I did like Under the Blacklight.)

The Cabinet of Curiosities - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs - Words can not express how very excited I am to read this. Since I finished The Dresden Files series (until the new book, anyway), I have a vacancy in my book schedule for another series, so I can continue reading about FBI Special Agent Pendergast, whom I first met in Relic and Reliquary. He's bizarre, he's wicked smart, unnaturally pale, and always wears the same, black, expensive suit. (Naturally, I have a crush on him.) I just finished the book for my book club (another rant for another time - suffice to say I didn't care for it) this morning, so the timing is impeccable.

And now, I'm going to enjoy the fact that it's 2:36, I'll be out of here very soon, and enjoying my weekend. As I hope you all will be.

Happy Birthday infinitehippo!!

My cubemate is playing the Juno soundtrack. Blech.

I didn't post all that much last year, and I hope to change that this year. I'm going to see if I can post at least a real paragraph every day, if I can. (Let's see how long this lasts).

So, as I've been teasing the last couple of days, I'm embarking on something of an adventure in the first half of 2008. As many of you know, 2007 wasn't my favorite year by any stretch of the imagination. I was preoccupied by a lot of things, none of them worth really too much thought. I was borderline obsessed with finding a boyfriend before a certain date, and I spent thousands of hours worrying about things that were not improved by worrying. All I succeeded in doing was driving myself (and several people around me) crazy.

I was on the phone with my mom on Sunday night, and in a moment of mild exasperation, she suggested that I "take a class or something." To her, all of this panic and worry stemmed from boredom, and it was high time I got off my brain and give it something to do instead of waste away. She's suggested this a couple of times before, but I wrote it off. I never found anything that I really connected with. Until now, obviously.

February is going to be a big month for me. In addition to two very exciting concerts, I will be going back to school! I have a one-day seminar called "Jump Start Your Novel," on the 9th. The following Tuesday I will begin a class in Humor and Comedy Writing that lasts for 10 sessions. I'm pretty jazzed about both. I stumbled across the comedy class by accident, and the course description made me laugh, so I thought about it for a day or two, then signed up for both of them (with redesigner holding my hand via IM). I took deep breaths and reminded myself that if this guy sucks, I can withdraw and get most of my money back after 1-2 classes. (I was always good at picking up on a professor's potential suckitude, so hopefully that little bit of school-fu is still present in me.)

The best part? These are both at NYU. And since I will be a student there, I can mock the place to my heart's content. There is no downside.

These are going to be a test. If I acclimate well to the whole school thing, I am almost certainly going to pursue some sort of paralegal certificate starting in the fall. I basically like what I do, and that is largely what I do, plus some other extremely useful skills. And, when your company does tuition reimbursement, it's stupid not to at least try to take advantage of it. I always planned to, but I never had a plan to before now.

In some way, I'm glad I waited. I wasn't ready before now. The idea of taking classes and being back in a school environment used to give me hives, now it's really exciting me. I enrolled yesterday, now I just have to wait for my course kit to arrive in the mail. I needed something new - I see now that I was stagnating and I needed something radically different to be excited about and involved in. The prospect of taking these classes was more exciting to me than taking a trip anywhere, so I took that as a sign that I should do this. There will be plenty of time to travel later this year or next.
Every time I think about doing this, I smile, and that's all I really need to know.

I've been reading The Bell Jar this week, for the first time. I'm very nearly done, and if I really give it 100%, I'll be done with it by the end of today. Not sure if that'll happen, but I want to be done by the time I see Carly tomorrow. She's read it a couple of times, and I love it when I can discuss books with her. (It's also a freebie I got at work, a very heavy large print edition that I'd be very happy to be done carrying around).

( a few musings on the book, some spoilerish )

I've also been on a major Tori kick lately. Tori, and Ben Folds and Joe Jackson. Now, resident Joe Jackson expert quodlibetic may either agree or come after me with an axe for this, but I've been amazed after re-listening to Night and Day and then Whatever and Ever, Amen and Rockin' the Suburbs again how similar Ben and Joe are stylistically - they have similar senses of humor and can write equally strong melodies. Plus, sometimes I think their voices sound somewhat alike at times. I'd LOVE to hear them duet on something. Like "Real Men," or "Breaking Us in Two" or something.

But yeah, Tori Tori Tori. I was listening to Little Earthquakes on my way to meet mom & quasisonic last night and it felt fresh. Not new, since I still know every word of every song (I think), but it felt exciting to listen to again, which is nice. I always loved that album.

Most disturbingly, I keep having flashes of odd moments of Albany. Like walking up that stretch of gravel parking lot near the humanities building facing the campus center, in early spring, just after the rain. I smelled that place the other day somehow, and when I closed my eyes I could picture it, plain as day. Also the bus stop at the new library and Collins Circle, same time of year, on a foggy day with damp air and a light grey sky, the air permeated with a wet grass smell.

Two days ago right before I went to sleep I sat on my bed and had a very potent memory of it being finals week or reading day, and being at Kurver Kreme on Central avenue, and how the trees looked and the air smelled. How am I remembering how the air smelled? It's so strange. But it's not disturbing, it's almost peaceful.

I wish I could figure out what my brain is trying to tell me, if anything.