I'm just sitting around and waiting for my parents to call. They're in town to see Movin' Out, and they're going to stop by, say hi, and go to dinner.

On Monday, I have my abnormal psych final. On Tuesday, my take-home exam for early American literature is due. Then, I am finished--as long as I pass everything, that is. And, believe me, you have no idea how close that's going to be in at least one case. Something that I've discovered about myself while I've been in college is that I really like to play with fire.

I'm ready for it to be over. I'm pretty nervous about moving to California, but I'm excited too. I just feel like I have unfinished business here, whatever that means.

Yeah.

I'll be a little less flaky and ambiguous in a later post.

I e-mailed a professor to express my confusion about a final project and asked if we could meet. I also let him know that I had tried to get in touch with his TA but she never returned my e-mails.

So what did the professor do? He forwarded my e-mail to the TA. Apparently she makes all of his appointments.

Brilliant.

I thought that vivan_shaw's thoughts on fat pride were very interesting so I'm sharing the link.

I have to give a presentation in my Early American Literature class tomorrow and am nervous as hell. Grad students are awfully intimidating.

Leon's sister left today after staying with us the past few nights. I enjoyed her staying here, but I wished I hadn't been so busy. She and Leon went to the zoo , Union Station, the movies, and the arch while I had to stay here and work on a paper and the aforementioned presentation. Life just doesn't seem fair.

My spring break technically begins tomorrow when I get out of class at 2:30, but I'm not terribly excited--not yet. I have all of this nervous energy, and I'm worried about things that need to be done.

The two biggest things on my mind are the paper I'll get back in class tomorrow and my project for Mark Twain (not yet due, finished, or begun). I will feel better tomorrow afternoon after the paper is returned to me.

Still, over break I need to study psychology for my second exam on the 18th, write a news feature for my journalism class, work on that Mark Twain project, and tidy up the apartment for when Leon's family visits the following week.

I also feel incredibly guilty that I'll have to miss my journalism class on the Monday following spring break, because Leon and I had no choice but to make really crappy flight plans.

Basically, my spring break is shaping up to look something like this:

3/4 -- Spend one last evening with Caroline.
3/5 -- Clean up general clutter in the apartment.
3/6 -- Read for psychology.
3/7 -- Write news feature.
3/8 -- Go to the library to work on Mark Twain project.
3/9 -- Take Louis home so my parents can watch him.
3/10 -- Pack and finish cleaning?
3/11 -- Leave for San Francisco.
3/15 -- Arrive home from San Francisco and get back to class.

Stretched out like that, it doesn't seem so bad. But we all know that I'm not going to be so productive. I'm so worried about getting everything done so I can graduate and I fear that I've already begun to look like a slacker to my professors (when they haven't even seen the worst of it). I mean, I've already missed journalism and I'm going to have to miss it again. Plus, I basically need to write to the TA or professor of Mark Twain and say, "Hey! Haven't been in class! What exactly is the deal with this project we're supposed to be working on?" Classic. I'd ask Colin about this but neither of us has seen each other in that class for five weeks now, so I don't even know if he's taking it. Plus he never really gave me much of a response last time. To e-mail him for assignment details would be to humble myself for no reason at all.

I need to get back on the horse and finish this semester properly. I guess that spring break is as good a time as any to realize this.

Work, work, work!

I have to write my "autobiography" in 500 words for my feature writing class. I don't think I'll have trouble being concise; I just need to decide what is the most interesting thing I've ever done. I'll probably take the easy route and use my sister.

This feature writing professor impresses me a lot. She used to write for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Now she writes about classical music for The Post-Dispatch. Naturally, I want her to love me and my work.

During our first class, we wrote query letters, and I sat next to a guy who works at the Career Center. Man, was his query letter pretty! I felt intimidated for not knowing my way around Microsoft Works half as well as he. Damn, that was one pretty letter.

At some point while we were working, my professor dismissed a young man for not having the proper writing skills necessary for a 300-level course. Even though she spoke directly to him, I'm sure that everyone knew what she was saying. After he left, she made an announcement to the rest of the room about how she isn't going to teach anyone the basics of writing--it's assumed that we already know them.

I felt so bad for that guy. God, that would be embarrassing. Hopefully, my professor will be a little more tactful in the future.

Anyway, I guess I'll do some reading until I magically figure out what the point of my life is.

Attention: The reading of this short but incredibly dull entry may result in drowsiness, brow furrowing, and a desire to scream at your monitor for the two minutes you lose while reading this. Proceed with caution.

I actually just began a journal entry, lost interest in it, and decided to save it in Microsoft Word, so that I can write it later. I used to go through that process a lot when I kept a web site, but this is the first time I've bothered to save anything unfinished for here. I thought the idea of my entry was good enough for me to return to it but not worth my time when I have two final exams tomorrow in addition to a take-home exam. Livejournal cannot be a priority.

Even so, I thought it was remarkable that I'm showing signs of caring more and more about the quality of content in my journal. Then again, I'm writing this load of crap, so it must all even out.

I talked to Leon this morning, and it is snowing in Toronto. He and I are both concerned that this could delay his flight. I don't even know if he has any exams tomorrow that could be affected by his staying in Toronto an extra day due to potential weather. What I do know is that I want him home with me so that we can watch the end of Survivor together. Yep, I'm definitely doing a fine job of prioritizing.

I'm going to click the "post" button now, but it's anyone's guess as to why I feel this is worthwhile. I apologize to anyone who bothered to read this.

I'm currently downloading the drivers for Leon's scanner and pretending that I actually know what that means. If it means what I think, I may be able to get his scanner working on my computer. Of course, I'll try hard not to flood your friends pages with snapshots.

Last night, in my picture posting frenzy, I discovered Photo Bucket, and I think it's just darling. My family could tell you that I'm slightly obsessed with photo albums and the organization of them, so having one online rocks my socks. Again, I'll try to restrict the photo craze to that site, but be warned! You may again see my face and the faces of my loved ones.

Caroline called and invited me to go to a wine bar and to spend the evening at her apartment with Tessa. Part of me wants to go and part of me wants to stay in, be a sloth, and pretend to work on my final projects. In journalism, I'm already one Elizabeth Taylor e-mail closer to completion.

Two more returned e-mails, but one person is willing to do a phone or e-mail interview.

That means, I have something confirmed on Elvis, no current inquiries about James Dean, and some question marks over Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe. I think I need a break.

I will be disappointed if I can find nothing on James Dean, because he's a personal fascination. Last year, he was the basis for the short story I wrote in fiction. I remember that in one of my workshops, some girl complained that she didn't even know who James Dean was. The rest of the class just ignored her.

Leon's that way, too, though. I think I've quadrupled his pop culture knowledge in the two and a half years that we've dated. It's something that matters a lot more to me than to the average person. That's why this article could be so fulfilling if I can find people to talk to me, dammit.

Oh man. This is priceless. Thanks to mock_the_stupid for the link!

I assume that it's a joke, i.e., the seller is joking and doesn't actually believe it, but you can never be sure.

Earlier on ebay, a girl was attempting to sell herself for a month's duty as a pretend girlfriend. The bidding was over $60 with five days to go. The auction has been erased, but I'm not sure what rules she had violated. She was essentially selling a few photographs, letters, and a secret gift--not herself.

Anyway, I have decided to spend my Friday evening sending e-mails to potential sources for my final journalism article. So far, I've sent four e-mails. One has been returned and another has no chance of being answered in time. I knew I'd regret not selecting my other topic idea, which basically wrote itself. Oh well.

LiveJournal Haiku!
Your name:	squeakywheel
Your haiku:	would be willing to purchase one for him to walk from the fulfillment
Username:
Created by Grahame

You would think that my lack of pointless posts would mean that I've been productive. No! I've been reading for fun and wishing that The Sims won't crash again if I take the time to load it. Hmm.

I was so unbelievably tired earlier. Then I decided to wait until tomorrow to write my jazz paper and all my sleepiness melted away--but not until I attempted to convince myself that I still would have no problem falling asleep. I'm still trying to convince myself of that.

So, I lie in bed; I read; I play games on the computer. Nothing helps.

It's too late to take anything to help me fall asleep, and I want to believe that it's not worthwhile to start my paper. Still, that's probably the best way to force myself to sleep: work or sleep.

I spent the last few days of my life extremely exhausted and tired. I kept thinking that I wanted to snap out of it; insomnia had to be better than sleeping sixteen hours a night. On a night like this, I'm not so sure of that.

Tonight, I'm going to the screening of the very last movie for my film class. We are watching Hannah and Her Sisters, which I have never seen. I'll ask Leon if he wants to join me, but he's probably seen it before. Besides, he is super busy. His grad school applications are due in about a week and he needs to finish. Also, he usually uses Tuesday evenings to spend time with his former suitemates and friends. They watch Crank Yankers and have a charming social hour of (mostly) male bonding.

I need to e-mail my journalism professor my proposal for my final paper. I'm stuck between two ideas, but the more I think about it, the more I'm driven toward the more difficult option. I've been toying with e-mailing her to tell her how I'm straddling the two options. I want to do the ambitious one, but if I have trouble with sources, I may have to fall back on the lesser choice.

Thursday is my last jazz class, during which I will have an exam and turn in my final paper. This paper has yet to be written. I should do that this evening, because I'm going to a play with my journalism class tomorrow. I could write my paper tonight after my film screening.

Oy.

It's the final week of classes, and I can feel the end of the semester work begin to pile up around me. The past few days, I've been too depressed to tackle anything. Now I have to dig myself out of the hole in which I've planted myself these past few days.

There is always too much and too little time between Thanksgiving and the end of my fall semester.

Every year since I have been at college, I have said to myself, "Gee, what amazing luck! Thanksgiving falls at the perfect time. I could really use a break!" And then I smile eerily as I continue to go to class and do my assignments and be a good Kate.

Frankly, though, the timing of Thanksgiving stinks. Of course I'm extremely pleased that I'm about to have a few days off from class, but I refuse to say that this is the "perfect time" for a break. My current workload is rather light, and I could've used the Thanksgiving break two weeks ago when I was fretting about my English presentation. Since we really don't have a fall break or any break in classes during the fall semester (until Thanksgiving), the holiday would be much more welcomed if it fell at the end of October.

When I return from my Thanksgiving break, then, I'll only have a week of classes left. So many people here find this absolutely ridiculous that they have ceased going home for Thanksgiving. And those who are at home can feel final exams approaching and spend those days either studying or regretting that they aren't studying. It sucks.

On the other hand, finals still somehow manage to stretch into the third week of December. I don't think that I'm finished until the 18th and, by the time that I finish my Christmas shopping and pack all of my goodies, this scarcely seems like adequate time before the holiday. Not to mention that I'd like to leave here early this year for my journey to Tennessee so that I can get to my family and Christmas as soon as I can.

Essentially, the only solution to my petty dilemma is to adopt Canadian Thanksgiving. Then there will be a month between our return from turkey day and our departure for winter break. But since there's very little chance of that happening, I'll just accept this as an opportunity to complain. I do that so well.

I'm about to write my 136th paper since I've been at college. Don't ask me why I suddenly had the urge to count all relevant word documents.

No wonder it seems that I write a paper every other day.

I completely forgot that I have a paper due tomorrow in my film studies class. I was thinking it was due Wednesday (a day that I don't even have class), because my papers in this class have always been due on Wednesdays. I told myself that I'd work on it tomorrow evening after going to the library.

What a strange realization that I actually have to be productive today! I had been reading with great interest a copy of John Updike's Too Far to Go, my first book for pleasure reading in nearly a month. Naturally I learn that I have to set it down and go to the library today.

What's most cruel of all is that it's a terrifically dreary day--perfect for curling up under a blanket and watching a movie or reading a book. Now I have to leave the warmth and comfort of my apartment for the cold, impersonal library.

I never wrote about my first experience as a restaurant critic, so now is as good a time as any.

A couple of weeks ago, my class went to a Persian restaurant, called Cafe Natasha, on the Loop. It was a small establishment that was painted in pastels and trimmed with Middle Eastern designs. The lighting was dim; the music was subtle; and the servers were friendly. The owner was even there to answer all of our amateur questions.

We ordered six appetizers on a sampler platter, tried the soup and salad, ordered individual entrees that were passed around, and finished the meal with three desserts. The cost of the meal was $21 a person.

I enjoyed most of the food, especially the lamb chops ordered by the guy who sat across from me. They were served medium rare and perfectly marinated in a teriyaki-style sauce. Yum! My entree was chicken that was served in a pomegranate and walnut sauce, which received mixed reviews. I actually liked it but probably wouldn't order it again. The dish that I disliked the most was one of the appetizers: a spinach souffle called KooKoo. Our professor ordered it as her entree, though, so I tried not to say anything too negative about it.

In order to do this assignment, I had to get past my inability to write about food and my anxiety over reviewing ethnic food about which I knew nothing. I figured that I had as much knowledge as the average reader of restaurant reviews and it was my duty to tell them whether or not it was worth eating there.

Still, I had a tremendously difficult time coming up with a lead, a hook and a point for my review and didn't write it until about 90 minutes before my class began. I ended up using a most mediocre introductory paragraph just to have one. This introductory paragraph was about the restaurant's location among other restaurants that specialize in ethnic cuisine, such as Thai and Ethiopian. It was pretty lame, but the only thing that screamed out to me about this restaurant was that the food was really good (but I didn't want to gush and seem like an amateur) and that it was Persian. So I took the Persian approach.

The assignment was handed back to me, graded, on Wednesday. I received a B+, which I didn't let upset me, because this professor has yet to give an A. She, much like my film studies professor, believes that an extraordinary paper is a rarity and doesn't feel like handing out As to the next best thing. I have received the occasional A-, and that's good enough for me.

Anyway, I only have a theater review (my specialty!) and a final paper on a trend in entertainment to turn in before the end of the semester in just a few weeks. I really want to use these opportunities to impress my professor, as she is the entertainment editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I have these silly fantasies of her printing my final paper in the Post-Dispatch if she deems it credible.

...Of course, this fantasy may not be so silly, after all. Last spring, I took another journalism class, in which one of our assignments was to write a news story on something that we investigated. The goal was essentially to find something worthy of a few short paragraphs and make an intelligent judgment about what should be in those paragraphs.

One of my classmates interviewed workers at the Science Center, where they were cleaning and preparing for display a beautiful dinosaur specimen. She told the class that she had stumbled upon something much bigger than the average blurb, and, a few weeks later, her story was printed on the front of the entertainment section. I was incredibly envious but slightly pleased in that it made careers in journalism and freelance writing seem all the more attainable.

Nevertheless, I know journalism will seem at my fingertips if my professor would consider my final project for publication. After all, I'm a semester away from graduation and hopefully my writing is polished enough to catch her eye. I should have a decent shot at this, just as long as I don't write my final paper on food.

Prepare yourself for a really boring entry in which I complain about school work.

I'm currently in the middle of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, on which I have to give a presentation tomorrow afternoon. I have roughly a hundred pages left to read, which will take me more time than it should because not only am I a slow reader but I'm having trouble staying focused. I need a better work ethic.

Once I finish, I basically need to come up with some kind of thesis and analyze what I've read. The difference between this and an essay is that this will be shorter (yippee!) but I'll care a lot more about content, because it's going to be scrutinized by 25 of my peers (boo!). Then I have to make copies to distribute, and then I'll take a deep breath and stand in front of my class.

I can't even begin to explain how apprehensive I am about tomorrow. My dependence on Paxil, a tremendous social anxiety pill, might say something of this. Of course, considering my extreme fears, it makes no sense that I am waiting until the last minute to do all of this. I am so self-defeating. Seriously.

If I'm lucky, I'll be a very happy girl in about 20 hours. If I'm unlucky, I might still be happy from relief but certainly not as jubilant as a winning performance would make me. But that's to be expected.

So I breathe in and out slowly and return to my book.

One of life's tough questions: Do I wake up Leon (who's only asleep on the couch, not in bed) and cry on his shoulder because I feel depressed or do I swallow my feelings and get some homework done? Both have the potential to make me feel better but for very different reasons.

I need to finish A Sicilian Romance by 1:00 tomorrow, but I don't think I can concentrate until I have some sort of emotional epiphany. Unfortunately, I don't know what I'd say to Leon. I mean, what do I expect him to do?

It sounds like he might be waking up, so I guess I'll try.

I have two papers due tomorrow that I have barely started. One is a review of Love Actually that shouldn't take too long, and the other is an essay for my film class on cinematography in Strangers on a Train.

In addition, I have a film screening tonight, after which we always have a written assignment. If I'm lucky, this will only take me from 6:45-9:45. And then I'll probably come home and sit on my ass for an hour before I am actually productive.

Right now, I'm fixing dinner. I love how cleverly Leon put that duty on me for tonight and didn't make it an option at such a busy time for me.

He said, "Just so you know, there's no more chicken for when you make dinner tomorrow."

Okay!

I was going to slack off even more from my duties by watching a Netflix movie, but there doesn't seem to be time for that. Instead I'll just tidy up and play around on the computer so that I can still be working on homework at the crack of dawn.

But that's okay. With my recent insomnia, it's not as if I would have fallen asleep by then, anyway.

Along with two other people, Leon has been working on a project in his Artificial Intelligence class for the past few weeks. They've been making a program that can generate poetry. To me, this doesn't sound like a terribly hard task, but it has stumped my clever beau.

Indeed, Leon has had to put many hours into this project. Leon has put in these hours.

One of his group members seems completely incompetent and has contributed nothing. Today, Leon found out that his other group member, who had planned to contribute his fair share, just doesn't have the time for it. Neither of these fine gentlemen will be at the presentation tomorrow. That will also be Leon's task.

Tonight, when Leon began to tell me about this situation, my first reaction was my usual: That's not fair! Let the professor know that you've done more work! Don't work with them again!

But I had to stop myself, because I know Leon. Yes, I know Leon, and I know that he'll tolerate being treated like crap. So, rather than get myself worked up about shitty people in a shitty world (as circumstances like this tend to have a very extreme effect on me), I told him that I didn't want to hear it.

I said, "Listen, I know you're not going to do anything about this, and if I hear any more, it's going to severely piss me off. So don't tell me. I don't want to know."

And that was that.

It's just so weird. Normally, I love throwing pity parties, but it finally didn't seem worthwhile. I didn't want to go to the trouble of being so empathetic that I upset myself. It was unnecessary. Yes, I think I'm becoming an adult.