011: Patterns and progressions

Consider this the text equivalent of soberly looking into a camera on a reality show. My eyes don't exactly know where to focus, my voice is a low, nervous rumble. Lots of sighing.

Really, no different from your average SWP post. I never really come here unless I'm in a bad mood. Truthfully though I'm not in that bad a mood. Things aren't bad. Work is going well. Still really like my new manager. School this summer has gone better than it has any right to.

I finished my Brit Lit course two weeks ago. Well, that's complicated. Yeah, the last class was two Mondays ago. The final test was the Monday before that. I liked that test. The format was that you bring your books, select any random passage out of all three, and analyze the shit out of them. I got an A in the class after reading only 3.5 of the 6 books... I barely participated in the last two lectures, and was dismayed to find that the girl I'd been talking to every week in that class saw fit to skip them. Made me wish I'd chatted up the chipper opinionated girl sitting across from me instead.

So that was over with, and then on the following weekend, I learned my paper in my CanLit class was due two days earlier than I thought. And I was already leaving it to the last minute, so imagine my despair when I learn I'm AT the last minute, all of a sudden. I had a miniature emotional meltdown.

I did manage to get the paper done. It was agonizing. Considering the piece clocked in at 8 pages on a book I wasn't sure I comprehended (The Double Hook by Sheila Watson, written in terse, stark, obscure modernist language) it's a wonder I was only two days late (and thus, perhaps appropriately, handed in exactly when I thought I was supposed to.) It was a mess. I had to compose it in my few spare moments between classes and work and commuting and generally being a slacker.

It was a rambling, shambling mess of a paper with a few vaguely inspired points mushed together by awful linking verbs. I hated it. I renounced it. Well that's not true, I handed it in with a chastised "Here's my paper, deduct four marks." Truthfully, four marks off for two days late isn't bad. So instead of a 65, I'd get a 61. I'd learn a valuable lesson about budgeting my time and try harder. This is, after all, my last go at University. I'd like to try being a model student.

Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, once that paper was out of my life, I had a midterm the next week. This one was passage identification. All I had to know was what to talk about and the mark came back a solid B, even though I could be said to have read, in whole or significant part, only two of the books in question. To this day I have managed to avoid giving As For Me And My House more than a cursory glance.

Hurm.

The mark for that bad boy came back today as a solid B, my usual expectation for myself. The real surprise was when I got my essay back, and it wasn't the comeuppance I was expecting. It was a fucking A. Well, A-, even after the lateness subtraction.

The paper, I should note, is marked to hell with reference to my awful formatting and rambling essay style, but I haven't given the remarks more than a glance because cripes, I hammered that fucker out in under 48 hours -- LATE -- between a 6 hour school day and an 8 hour shift... largely the morning of -- and somehow it still turned out cogent and intelligible enough to warrant a goddamned A-.

I mean, what can I do? I thought I had reached the upper limits of my slacking ability when I got an 83 on a paper banged out in 4 hours on a book I hadn't read. I am somehow charmed. I am one of the all-time great procrastinators because it just comes so easy for me. This is not a great precedent to set for the rest of my life. That natural ability gets rewarded and hard work isn't worth the time and effort. But I guess that ship has long since sailed. I guess I was looking to be called out on my shit at least once more (I was maybe once or twice before) as I end my University experience. But I guess none of what happens here matters anyway. It certainly won't soon.

My last thought is that I'm lonely this summer. All the people I want to be with are far away. There's nobody to meet. Like a stupid fool I keep scouring the internet looking for I guess a diamond in the rough. But that's why they call it the rough. Because there's a shitload of it to sift through, and there's not a lot of diamonds in it. It's rough.

These women I keep finding... it's either their interests or their approaches or their general attitudes or expectations are out of line with mine. That's the appeal of romance. You don't set out your criteria. You don't bring your shit to the table. You just let life happen. But fuckin... life never ends up happening here. I just don't know how to make it happen. It's a lot like that essay thing, except I'm actually getting as little as I deserve for my efforts.

I stopped by the HMV at Yonge-Dundas. It'd been a while since I could feel like a customer. A number of pretty girls work there, but I was just talking to this one dude. I admitted I worked at one. Nice guy.

I'm tired and played out, but thanks for hearing me.