SCHOOL ALMOST DONE AGH YAY

Okay okay okay I am FREAKING OUT WITH JOY! aghghghallalalalala yaaaaaay!

Not ONLY am I done WITH MY ENTIRE BACHELOR'S DEGREE except one harp lesson and one class/its final (!!!) but I've been reviewing my GPA stuff and grad school options! And I THOUGHT MY GPA WAS SO MUCH WORSE THAN IT REALLY IS!!!!!!!!

 In my mind I kept counting my medical withdrawal stuff as 0s, but they just don't count, period. ALSO, I keep basing where I think I'm at by how I felt I was doing at the time I took the course - so I assumed my major-only GPA was way worse because so much panic went into writing the papers and I only remembered the stress and missed deadlines. Also I've been sure all semester that my science class was going to be a C. As it really stands, if I skip the final ENTIRELY I still have a B! Which I of course WILL NOT DO because now I have the shiny golden prospect of an *A* peeking out from among the clouds.

POINT BEING my graduating cumulative GPA is going to be 3.31-3.36 no matter what I do, and though that's not up to my usual standard, it's NOT BAD! And my MAJOR'S GPA is going to be a 3.7 - the only two Bs being because of the post-anxiety-attack stress stuff I was still recovering from. So WOOOOOOOO! I feel GREAT! And, okay, I'm planning on applying to graduate school, of course...but I keep being like "well, I'm not going to get another loan and I don't have money, so I'll just have to work and wait." But it turns out, if I apply for joint MFA/PhD programs, you get all sorts of fellowship nonsense that covers the first two years or so of tuition and pays additionally!

 And I was reviewing the requirements for the creative writing program at Cornell and it's like the application requirements were MADE FOR ME (or at least I feel so now, in my giddy state). They include a creative writing sample of about 10,000 words and a literary critique-y essay of 3,000-5,000 words. I happen to have two things of the appropriate length on hand that just need some sorting through and refining! One, excerpts from the story of my HEART that I've been working on since I was 12, and which received the most positive reviews in workshops that I've EVER gotten, and the other, two papers on Milton's Paradise Lost that my teacher encouraged me to combine and seek critical publication for. I mean obviously it's not like I feel like "awwww yeah, Cornell's gonna love me, I'm so getting in!" but I'm encouraged to know I have stronger things to bring to the table than I ever thought.

 So.

Yay!

 2 days until my last class
3 days until my last harp lesson
7 days until my last final
12 days until my graduation

Another Random Thing I Thought As A Child

I remember when my little sister Lindsay found out that for us girls, our last name changed when we got married. I already knew that, so when Lindsay ran up to me at church all in a tizzy about it and said, "did you know your NAME changes when you get married?!" I thought she was presenting NEW information - that we ALSO get to change our first name!

I was wondering if we got to pick our own. I was thinking Melissa or Rachel. Surprising, because I adored the name Nicole and had been planning since forEVer to name my daughter Nicole and thus named all my favorite (brunette) dolls Nicole. But maybe it was just so fixed in my mind as my daughters name that I couldn't think of it as my own, though that didn't stop 8th grade me from designing an alter-ego named Nicole Booker, a librarian and novelist with curly, medium-dark brown hair who always wore very flattering fitted sweaters and glasses (this was before I wore glasses).

Anyway. It was while I was considering other names that I realized how much I loved Lauren Elise. I asked Mom if I could keep it. I already suspected I was wrong about the first name change anyway, but I don't think Mama pointed it out, just said yes, I could stay Lauren.

:)

BTW my niece Nicole, I think my loving your name so much before you were even born just shows how much I loved you already!

A Hawaiian Break is Before Me!

OUT of school and prepping for my flight out to Hawaii! Finding my phone will help, of course, lol. I look forward to lots and lots of reading/writing time on the beach, lots of relaxation with my brother and sister-in-law, and...well...that's pretty much it!!!! Except I do have to bring some homework :/ Boo.

Hopefully I'll take pictures! If so I'll share them :)

This Post Is Brought to You by the Letter "W"

I made a tumblr!

http://wishiwould.tumblr.com/

Full of reposted geeky pictures, responses to other people's off-kilter geeky thoughts, but also my own story thinking out ness.

And for the description, I kind of accidentally wrote a poem! Thinking about an online screenname I often use, "WishIWould." At the time it was because I wished I would do more drawing, but I think I fulfilled that. So having a tumblr with the same name, I rethought what it meant to me NOW.

*

I wonder...I wander, and wish I really would
Write such wise and witty words that they could weave a wondrous world
Where will o' wisps and winged things can whisper to the wind
Which also carries werewolves' howls and wary yowls within
The wizards watch, and whirl and whir, and work their wily spells
While warriors wield their weapons, and the women wait at wells.
Wild wand'rers wake near waterfalls, and waifs wail out their woes.
And I, their warden, willingly, will walk where'er they go
Wreak war on them, win peace for them, and hold them while they weep.
For I'll love what I have wrought, and as their writer I them keep.

*

No title yet...suggestions?

I'm kind of proud of the fact that, as far as I can tell on scanning through...I didn't repeat any W words! ("will o' wisp" and "will" don't count cuz they're totally different meanings there.)

I was a little sad that I never worked in wyrd/weird (meaning "fate"), wold (moor, unforested rolling plain) or wasteland. Well, whatever!

Wishing you a wonderful evening,

WishIWould! (aka Lauren) :)

The 5 Subconscious Ways I Sabotage My Love Life

...or at least, in my own perception! In all likelihood there's probably some "right place right person right time" business going on as well, but whatevs.

5. Not taking care of myself physically: when I don't take care of myself, I'm low energy, not my energetic self, sleepy and a bit complainy. MOSTLY, this is about sleep schedule. I always want to stay up late and sleep in, but I have a horrible habit of staying up so late that even sleeping in doesn't give me enough sleep. And/or, even enough sleep isn't restful at the wrong time.

4. Not taking care of myself hygienically: to clarify, I don't think I'm gross! But instead of being in the habit of getting ready for the day each morning, I push snooze forever and thus put off showering and face washing, etc for that morning, then get busy all day, then whoops! It's time for institute/fhe/friend time and I'm wearing a dandruffy ponytail!

3. Not taking care of my appearance: all of the above lead directly into make-up and hair, which lead directly into feeling excited about what to wear/how to dress instead of just picking out whatever's easiest (and has probably been worn 4 times in the last week). Being clean and made up and cute always makes me feel happy and - you guessed it - more like myself! And it's how I picture myself living my life in the future (when I'm feeling positive).

2. Fearfulness: I can get SO tied up in silly fears! I'm either worried that someone I'm not interested in thinks I am and I'm afraid to cut loose and just be a proper friend, or I'm worried that I'm being an obnoxious clinger to someone I AM interested. In both cases, the fear either causes itself to come true or results in me going into "detach and distance" mode. Silly me!

1. Being weird about my interests: I love a lot of things (usually historical, cultural, science fiction and fantasy things) and can get a bit obsessive, but besides the surface level, I don't relate on a deep level to other geeks who are really obsessive about their various geekdoms. The super-invested geek is generally not what I'm looking for in a guy. On the other hand, I LOVE random trivia and details and am chock full of them, and once I get started, man, I can just SPOUT off forever on a given subject! And I get very passionate about these things, and relate them to all sorts of deep stuff and wax philosophical about it. Example: I love Legend of Zelda. I've done drawings of the characters, know pretty much every game and how they relate, could probably write a thesis on the lore/timelines/consistencies/inconsistencies and the psychology behind it and how they reflect the qualities real folklore, etc. When I run into another Zelda nerd, it can be REALLY fun to talk about! But I'm so turned off by a guy who sits and plays video games all the time...see? My interests are quirky, and if someone else knows as much about them as I do, they're probably waaay too into it for me. On the other hand...I never know quite what to say to so-called "normal" guys who have a GOOD balance about entertainment vs other worthy pursuits, so I end up pigeon-holing myself as an extreme nerd/geek! And I do this to myself, I really do.

And it's all a cycle...getting into a research/"geek out" zone is usually what leads to improper sleep, which takes us right through the list again.

Ta da! Self-sabotage for the win!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

By the way, I had a GREAT one. I made spinach-stuffed chicken breasts wrapped in bacon and served them to the sister missionaries and some friends for a Valentine's dinner, after which I saw P.S. I Love You for the first time with some other friends, after which I stayed up late talking to a very dear friend I don't get to see often enough. A day full of love! It was perfect.

Hope your Valentine's Day was grand! What did you do/opt not to do?

Oh No!

I missed January! Without planning, I've written at least one thing EVERY month since I started! I was hoping I'd keep up with that...but now it's February. Goodbye, January 2012. So little time we knew ye.

Meanwhile...I'm going to turn in my graduation application on Monday! Ee!

In other news, some stuff is lame :/ For serious. So far this semester, I have to nap or lie down for a couple hours after my classes to make these weird dizzy waves go away. I really really really really need to set up an appointment with the fibromyalgia doctor...like I've been meaning to for years...I'm so awful that way! Making appointments, following my planned homework schedule, going to sleep on time and returning borrowed items. I'm bad at all of those things. Be warned! (though I've done really well returning borrowed items so far in 2012 :D I think...I might still have a VCR I borrowed forever ago that I need to return or replace....ugh I'm so bad!)

Feeling overall cheerful at the moment :) though perhaps with a more steady presence of relative "winter doldrums" than I like to let on.

Next time: the 5 ways I subconsciously sabotage my love life. (number subject to change.) ;)

Love you all!
Lauren

P.S. Oh no! The longest paragraph of all was the complaining one!

...Meh, I forgive myself. :)

How I Cope: NOVELS

My roommate Kim (kimknowsbest.blogspot.com) and I were talking last night about the crazy things we do as finals week approaches. She has been going into an organizational and cleaning frenzy - the bathroom is SPOTless! And the rest of the apartment is in a constant state of fluctuation, but somehow it just FITS for finals week. Me, I've been DEVOURING novels and playing Legend of Zelda. Twilight Princess, for those interested...being third in line after Jared and Lindsay, and not having a tolerance for endless hours of gaming, I never actually finished it even though it came out 5 years ago. I hope to rectify THAT soon...before I play / watch Lindsay play the new Zelda game!!!

But more important is the novel part. I've been tearing through them! Evelina by Fanny Burney (I chose that because it was one of Jane Austen's favorite novels), Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell (why, oh why did she have to die before completing the final chapter!), Jo's Boy's by Louisa May Alcott (the only one of the Little Women books I never finished reading in childhood and now have...poor Dan!), Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, and now Anne of Windy Poplars (soon to be followed by Anne's House of Dreams, Anne of Ingleside, Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside, then Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter and A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett). All within the past two weeks (excepting, obviously, the ones I haven't read yet). Anybody sense a thematic link in all these books?

At first, all this reading was definitely a method of escapism. Now generally, I am not a fan of novels/video games as a means of escaping life. There's a difference, for me, between using fiction to escape and using fiction as a medium through which to broaden your mind/emotions/imagination and gain insight. The former, though enjoyable, is a little more hollow and deadened, like a collapsed drum (the stretched kind, not the metal kind). The latter is open and freeing. Believe it or not, in moderation, playing Zelda often acts as the latter for me...it inspires me to write and puts me in a relaxed and serene place. As Anne (of Green Gables, etc) would say, I find a great deal of "scope for the imagination" in it.

But anyway, somewhere between Jo's Boys and Anne of Green Gables I switched from escapism mode to interactive mode. Louisa May Alcott (with the exception of A Long Fatal Love Chase, lol) and L. M. Montgomery each have a beautiful way of depicting and inspiring imaginative characters, and tucking into their stories the homely little truths that may contradict over-romantic illusions, but they sit inside your soul ever so much more nicely.

And I remembered...I LOVE Anne! UNlike Little Women, I haven't reread the Anne books since childhood. Anne Shirley is super-imaginative, loves to write, gets carried off in flights of fancy, loves to talk, has extreme emotional highs and lows, goes off on wild tangents...sound like anyone we know?

(pssst....it's me! And I'm sure many of you as well :D)

So basically, reading Anne helped me validate my feelings about myself, and understand what dear friends of mine have told me: "we don't love you DESPITE your flaws, we love you BECAUSE of them!" It's so true!

That is all. :) Merry Christmas, all!
Lauren