Fear of Failure

I generally don't fear anything. This is what I have lead myself to believe, until recently. There has been an underlying fear that I have chosen to ignore. I have come to realize that in order for me to succeed, I must overcome it.

To be more specific, I only fear failure if I have truly given it my all. I suppose it's a fear of testing my potential. I couldn't imagine how I would feel if all of my efforts yielded meager results. My excuse so far has been the fact that I don't apply myself. I fear what might happen if I actually do. I've been avoiding it so far.

No matter what my limits may be, I need to test them, examine them, experiment with them, and finally embrace them.

Motivation + Inspiration

So here I am sitting on a huge pile of work at two o'clock in the morning carrying out my usual activities of procrastination. I eventually resort to a seemingly endless gaze of my desktop, head in hand, waiting for some inspirational hand to pop out of my notebook screen to smack me in the face. No such luck. Despite my purposeful placement of the drawing I find most inspirational, I remain unmotivated. It seems as though motivation and inspiration are separate entities. If something I admire to the highest degree doesn't motivate me, what will?

Something has to change. I don't know what, but I hope it happens soon.

"College Hoodie" Follow Up

During one day at work this guy walked in wearing a t-shirt sporting the text: "community college". I was halfway in between the back room and the main floor, so one step to my left and I was free to laugh my ass off. I am so going to purchase that shirt. I'm also getting the shirt that just says "college", I think they're hilarious.

Here are a couple random quotes I stumbled over during a random search:

"Are you sick of every Tom, Dick, and Shaniqua with a "College" shirt on? Most of the people we've seen with those on wouldn't be fit to hold John Belushi's vomit bucket. Show'em your sense of humor, and career ambition to become an electrician, with this "Community College" shirt.



How many highschool kids wear Belushi's shirt? Tons ... but where are all the big fat party animals? They're in community college learning to be plumbers, locksmiths, meth engineers and more. With our specialized program, you too can earn a degree in partying down, while showing your thrifty side (in the form of a t-shirt). Throw the shirt on, grab some fellow students and get to the party. Before you know it, you'll be doing tequila shots with that grouchy 50 year-old classmate who got laid off from the plant."

- Source

....and

"A navy blue t-shirt with block lettering that reads "College". Great for college students, and those who don't subscribe to that whole higher education philosophy. 100% cotton."

-Source

Which leads me to the question: what exactly is "higher education"?

I would guestimate that even though my school is geared toward "higher education", as to say: a continuation from high school, only about ten percent of the students are actually enrolled and participating in the effort.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Singin' in the Rain

Actually, I was humming, back and forth from my dorm room to the cafeteria. Humming the song "For Real" by Okkervil River, wishing someone would tackle me from behind, face first into the puddle-blotched sidewalk.

Music video of my new favorite song: Black Sheep Boy by Okkervil River

Don't forget to vote!

I really don't understand why so many people are encouraging everyone to vote. You may be thinking, "well, voting is a good thing! We should take advantage of our democratic privileges". As I see it, most people are ignorant in the area of politics and therefore should not vote. Most people are more interested in who won the last patriots game than how many people just died in Iraq. You shouldn't even be allowed to vote unless you know all or most of the facts. I would guess that fifty percent or more of the folks who voted today did so with very little knowledge. Here's my assumption breakdown: 10% made intelligent decisions based on the facts presented to them, 40-50% just voted with their designated party or with who their parents voted for, 25% voted based on one or more allegations they might have heard (let it be a false promise or statistic), and 15% voted just because they heard Ben Afflec or some other giant figure tell them to vote.

I hate to sound pompous, but I probably know more than most people do and I didn't vote. Shit, I watch c-span all the time and I also read the paper. I even watched two of the debates by Liberman and Lemont. I still had no idea who to vote for.

My mother once said that you should have to take a test before you can give birth. I think you should have to take a test before you're able to a lot of things.

Don't you agree?

College Hoodie

Since I've been living here on campus at CCSU I've noticed that at on any given day, at least thirty to forty percent of the students walking around are wearing a CCSU hoodie or shirt of some sort. Since this is an everyday observation, I would guess that most of the school's population owns at least one piece of clothing imprinted with the ccsu emblem. What I'm trying to figure out is why. Why do students feel the the need to display their school's clothing, especially while on campus? It's almost like a school uniform or something. It's either an issue of pride, sentimental value, fitting in, or a mixture of the three. The reasoning seems to be pretty cut and dry, but the first two reasons have conflicting descriptions: 1) Freshman wear the clothing. What do they have to be proud of? It's not even that hard of a school to get in to. 2) If something has sentimental value, it generally isn't used/worn very often. The third reason however is valid, but is a pretty dumb reason.

Anyway, I'm probably not making much sense; I tend to over think many things. I probably will end up buying a ccsu hoodie, but not until I've established myself here. I want something other than a diploma and degree to remember my years here, something of sentimental value that I will not proudly display every day.

Here's a perfect portrayal of the point I'm trying to get across.

Taken from National Lampoon's Animal House.

"aw, fuck, I'm straight"

I had a good laugh after reading an article my friend gave me to read. As you saw in the title of this blog, the name of it is aw, fuck, I'm straight.

I would recommend reading it all; it's pretty hilarious.

The only small problem I have with it is that it suggests that gay men are "easy". But then again, men are naturally more sexual than women so I suppose that's not very hard to beleive.

Procrastination Induced Excitement

Lately I've been noticing that stressful situations are somehow morphing into the only excitement in my life. E.g. Today I wrote up a two page seminar summary and also a one page lab introduction within thirty five minutes before handing them in. It was a challenge! I suppose I won't really know if I passed the challenge until they are both graded, but I think I did pretty decent. First I had to write them up, send them to myself via email, run to the computer lab, fetch the files from yahoo, print them out, and finally run upstairs to my class. I was pretty surprised I was on time since I left my dorm with only five minutes to spare.

Anway, I pondered the notion while munching on a green pepper at dinner and I thought that perhaps I was procrastinating on purprose just so that I would have to rush to get my work done. In turn, excitement would enter my life in the form of stress. Then again, I was having fun at the same time; so I suppose it all equals out.

The other reason could be that I'm just really freaking lazy.

I think it's probably the latter.

Salad!

Random thought/observation of the day:

If there's no more lettuce in the bowl at the salad bar, everyone bypasses the station completely. I really don't understand the reason for this. I guess I can see how the lettuce is the "main ingredient" to the salad, but by no means is it the most nutritious. I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually the least benificial; especially with the fact that my school serves iceberg lettuce, which is mostly water and has very few nutrients. Besides that, there are mushrooms, carrots, cherry tomoatoes, cucumbers, and onions. Eating even a small amount of one of the other vegetables seperately would be more benificial than eating a whole bowl of the iceburg lettuce.

I should also take into account that most people usually get lettuce only, which is probably the biggest factor. I also don't understand this. I suppose I could just blame it all on ignorance. I wonder if students really believe they are eating healthy by filling their small salad bowl with iceberg lettuce and drowning it in dressing that is high in fat, cholesterol, carbohydrates, sodium, etc.

Anyway, it is unfortunate for the ignorant. That's all for now. Until next time! Learn more about food before consuming it! Of course that's only if you care about yourself.

Organization of Thoughts

First livejournal, then a second livejournal, then blogger; these things don't last forever, but I seem to have fun with them while I have them. Of course the fun lies in the replies I get which I don't get many of, but it's still worth it nonetheless. I just like the organization and easy access of all my random thoughts.

Speaking of random thoughts, I had one during brunch today. There are multiple TV's in my cafeteria at school and I was wondering if I could program a remote control to work on them. I imagined myself changing all the channels in the cafe while everyone else was looking around wondering what the hell was going on. Of course this made me giggle and caused people around me to glance at me strangely, wondering why and how I was laughing by myself. I wonder if many other people randomly make themselves laugh. I've never seen it happen before.

Nuts

Hmm, somehow I created my blog last night and it all got deleted? I really hope that doesn't happen again. Creations are important!