Real Life vs. Fiction

[mood| sick]
[music| "Ulysses" - Franz Ferdinand]

Yes, you read that title correctly. And I have no explanation why. Although I could be phrasing that a bit strongly...

I was in Rio's room for all of ten minutes and when I get back, I open the door to find this girl from down the hall sitting on my roommate, Lauren's bed, asking me to leave the room for a few minutes. I had a feeling that Lauren was upset over some new development with her boyfriend, so I said "Okay" and just walked right back to Rio's room.

I told Rio about it and she's more upset about it than I am, considering how she's been pestering me to go to bed since I'm disease-ridden (again... *sighs*). If I wasn't incredibly congested, then I might actually care, but my reaction time's slow right now and I don't feel up to dealing with Lauren or this other girl.

The only thing about the whole situation that bothered me, though, was that I was in Rio's room for thirty minutes after I was asked to leave and when I came back just now, the door was locked and Lauren was nowhere to be found. I dunno. It just would have been nice to have been notified that it was okay for me to enter again.

(I'm being silly, aren't I? Yes. Yes I am. And it's okay for you to agree with me on how silly I'm being... XD)

xoxox

[mood| busy]
[music| "Daylight" - Matt and Kim]

For those interested, I have posted my exchange fic, Naptime Should Never Last This Long, at Portkey and at FIA. I formatted it the same way that it has been formatted at both the exchange and my LiveJournal, so it's not three separate parts like I wrote it, but just this one ginormous one-shot.

Anyways, this is mostly for myself, but yeah. My latest to-do list:

» Research (RED) for my contemporary social problems class.
» Start writing paper on (RED) for aforementioned class.
» Outline paper for Honors The Self.
» Begin writing paper for Honors The Self.
» Study for my first Stats test.
» Talk to my Honors advisor about my minor (I've decided to minor in English editorial).
» Email my aunt about possibly interning for NBC over the summer.
» Email almost everyone else in the family about college.
» Buy latest Franz Ferdinand album, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, when it comes out tomorrow (the 27th). (This album is SO AMAZING! :D)

And now for fandom:

» Finish chapter 7 of Theories on How Danger Finds Us.
» Finish chapter 6 of The Prince
» Finish chapter 2 of Through a Long and Sleepless Night (This one hasn't gotten very good reception. Hmm. *waffles about it*)
» Start writing chapter 4, Autumn, of Every Season.

Blergh. I need to start going to bed earlier. No matter how amusing my friends are in the the wee hours of the morning (meaning: one of my guy friends regaled me with tales of how he has this girl who totally creeps on/stares at him everywhere he goes. I found it hysterical because he's painfully awkward around other people and, while he is very nice to ogle, he can be a total creeper himself.)

xoxox

[mood| drained]
[music| "Paint It Black" - The Rolling Stones]

I have another creative writing assignment due tomorrow. The prompt was to write a paragraph on a place, trying to be as descriptive as possible.

I went to the beach today with four of my friends in honor of MLK's birthday (I had no classes today), so I brought my notebook with me for creative writing and I got inspired by the little boardwalk/pier that was near my spot on the sand.

And so, I give you the completed assignment:

( The Pier )

Thoughts please? :D

xoxox

[mood| confused]
[music| "Maps" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs]

Chapter 1 at

FIA

and at

Portkey.

Enjoy!

Also, the confusion is due to my waffling over a minor. I'm a Journalism major. Suggestions...?

xoxox

[mood| content]
[music| "Time Warp" - Rocky Horror Picture Show Cast]

First off, thank you so much to adelagia and turkeyish for their birthday wishes! :D It was very much appreciated. For those of you who are curious, I turned 19 yesterday.

Anyways, here's a recap of the events that ensued on my birthday, both the good and the bad. Yes, there were bad moments because people (and by people, I mean one person) like to act like whiny bitches and ruin things for everyone else.

We're having fun in the ( Daytime: Busch Gardens, Tampa )

and chasing stars in the ( Nighttime: Rocky Horror Picture Show, St. Petersburg )


Italicized words are from Mando Diao's "The Wildfire (If It Was True)". The entire lyrics is, "We're having fun in the daytime and chasing stars in the nighttime." Amazing song, great for just driving in your car with the windows down and the stereo on full blast. :D


xoxox

[mood| energetic]
[music| "Modern Swinger" - The Pink Spiders]

It's the second day of classes for second semester! And I actually like my classes, surprisingly. I still have one more class today, but that isn't until 5:00 pm, so I got time. :)

Anyways, here's my schedule:

Monday/Wednesday:

» 11:50 am - 12:40 pm Basic Statistics (My TA from my math class last semester is my professor, so I know that I'll actually learn something in this class. Also, my friend, Nicole, is in this class with me, so I call shenanigans for the entire semester. :D)
» 3:05 pm - 4:20 pm Contemporary Social Problems (This seems like a pretty decent class, but I have a feeling that I might be one of the few people to take it seriously.)

Tuesday/Thursday:

» 11:00 am - 12:15 pm Narrative and Description (My FTW class. I already got my first assignment, which I shall post when it's complete, but I'll also post now what I have thus far. And yes; I've already started writing it. :D)
» 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm The Self (Some Honors psychology class where the instructor has become akin to my high school band director, in terms of mannerisms and the fact that "brief" means "let me drone on for 20-30 more minutes than necessary". The bright side to this is that I get to read Dosoyevsky. :D)
» 5:00 pm - 6:15 pm American National Government (It involves a lot of history, which is fantastic since I own at history. :D)

Friday:

» 11:50 am - 12:40 pm Basic Statistics (Yeah, that's right; I only have one class on Fridays. Annnd, I'm three hours away from home, so driving home will be a breeze. In fact, I'm driving back down in about three weeks with Rio.)

( Assignment: Write two pages, double-spaced, to describe a person )

And that's all I have. I think it sounds a bit awkward at times, but yeah. I'll probably end up editing it before I turn it in. Thoughts?

So I think I ended up partially describing Draco Malfoy... XD

xoxox

[mood| annoyed]
[music| "Boyz (Main)" - M.I.A. & Jay-Z]

So do you guys remember the paper I had to write for my AOK class a while back? Well, I finally got that paper back today. I'm not really complaining too much about that, though, because my professor has been dealing with some hardcore family issues, and I feel for the guy. For serious.

Anyways, there's this one part that I left out: he decided to use that paper as part of that mid-term grade, combined with class participation. Problem I had with that was that he gave us three papers to write for our mid-term (which he has yet to grade), and when he "graded" the first paper, it was "I-just-looked-over-it-because-I-didn't-have-enough-time-to-really-look-it-over-in-depth-so-Mia-got-fucked-over-for-her-mid-term-grade".

Yeah... My mid-term grade was a C. I ended up getting a solid B on that paper. So I proceeded to do that math. The paper was a 16 out of 20. Let's say I got 20 out of 20 points for class participation. That would give me a solid A. A 90. Or, let's say that I got, at minimum, 5 out of 5 points for class participation. I would have gotten an 84. A mid-B.

I sense some major fuckery up in here.

Not cool, man. Not cool at all.

[mood| relieved]
[music| "Fluorescent Adolescent" - Arctic Monkeys]

Whew. *wipes forehead* The three monstrous essays are done. :D

Now to work on my fic for the exchange. But before that, I think a nap is in order. XD

xoxox

[mood| aggravated]
[music| "Pledge of Allegiance" - Louis XIV]

Okay. So I know that I'm not a wiz when it comes to knowing every minute detail about the English language, but I know a fair bit. Where am I going with this? Here's what happened:

Two weeks ago, I was given an assignment in my Acquisition of Knowledge class (it's for the Honors College. Like a philosophy class) that required us to analyze a scholarly article in relation to one of Plato's Five Dialogues. I chose an article that had to do with the Apology, the dialogue I best understood. We had to write an abstract, followed by a rough draft, which would be peer edited, and then, we were to hand in a final copy to the professor today.

And normally, I'm all for peer review. It's a great way to grow as a writer and, in my experience, you can kind of cheer on/support your peers. When I peer review (and I asked several other friends of mine who are either not in my class, or go to a different university, and they all agree with me), I'll make the usual comments regarding punctuation and sentence structure, but I'll also let the person know when I find their argument, or any particular phrase, to be especially good. So when I looked over the two papers I had to edit, I let them know where there needed to be corrections, but I also let them know when I liked something. Because to me, it's always nice to get that affirmation that what you're doing is good/right.

Last Thursday, I get my paper back from the two girls who decided to peer edit it. One of the girls didn't really edit a whole lot. Didn't leave any positive comments, but, well, I can live with that. The other girl who had my paper tore it apart. She made constructive comments, I'll give her that, but she kept on making comments about the fact that I use parallel syntax from time to time. I may be mistaken, but I'm more than positive that there is absolutely nothing wrong with using parallel structure, rather than using several conjunctions to get your point across. There may be times when the parallelism is awkward, but, not to sound pompous, I know how to use parallel syntax without it sounding awkward. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH PARALLELISM!!! And no joke, I texted that to Rio and IM-ed that to Lisa I was so pissed off.

Not only did this girl nag me about my syntactical choices, but she also questioned my interpretations of the text. By that I mean that she asked me the question, "Is that what he's [Socrates] really trying to prove?" in reference to a point that was made in class that we had discussed in great detail that I have notes on. And I wouldn't have been so bothered by that question except for the fact that we're in a freaking philosophy class! The entire class is pretty much based on opinion! It's not a factually-based class! People are going to have different interpretations on the same text(s). That's why you discuss those opinions -- to either verify your opinion, or to determine whether your interpretation is the best interpretation you can come up with; are other interpretations better?

I decided to create my final copy last night, and I'm proud of it. It took a lot of yelling and ranting in front of Rio and Lauren (my roommate), but I got it done. I was seething, though, when I first started editing my paper. It was so bad. It took at least four or five people to calm me down: Rio, Lauren, and Lisa, in addition to my friends, Dan and, to a lesser extent, Leah.

*sighs* I'm loads better now, though. I promise. Last night was just really frustrating for me. But, I have things to look forward to this week: tomorrow Joe Biden is going to be on campus and I'm going with Rio to see him AND I'm going home this weekend!! :D I'm so excited! ^^ Rio's also coming with me and I get to see one of my best friends who's still in high school, Tori, and I'm getting bangs! 0_o I've never had bangs before, so I'm rather excited to see how they'll turn out.

Oh, and I have a new Potterpuffs moodtheme!! ^^

xoxox

[mood| blah]
[music| "C'est La Vie" - B*Witched]

There's nothing to describe how much my head hurts, so I figured "blah" would be my safest bet.

Anyways, I'm back from orientation. It was mad fun (sometimes...). It started off kinda rough since my orientation leader (OTL) was really cool and was trying to get our group into the spirit of being there, but I was pretty much the only one feeling it. I did end up making friends, though, so that's all I can ask for. And I finalized my schedule! I really like the classes I'm taking, so I can't ask for anything better. =D

I took my laptop up with me, so I wrote for Theories more so than Every Season (all of the reviews for it have been wonderful, by the way). I think I wrote about 3 sentences for Every Season. XD Turns out Every Season is a lot harder for me to write than my other fics because there's a certain mood and style that I'm trying to evoke with the story. I just haven't been feeling it lately, but hopefully, I'll get chapter two posted soon enough.

Chapter five of Theories is coming along rather nicely. I have 9 pages typed and I'm still not done with it, so it might be close to 15 pages when all is said and done. I'm trying to get a lot of actions in with each chapter so the fic is not monstrously long in terms of the number of chapters. So far, chapter five has Ginny's first two classes and lunch for that day. I'm not sure what else it's going to have since I'm writing the lunch scene right now. XD

xoxox