woah is me. my life is so hard.

I’ve been experiencing a growing frustration with school lately. Also with myself in relation to school.

While school work has always taken a backseat to…well, just about everything, I honestly love learning. I find great value in education. But, frankly, I just don’t enjoy homework, and rarely find value in it. Don’t get me wrong–I’ve worked hard to get to where I am now, and I don’t think that I will ever regret the way I’ve ignored my academic work for other things (especially in the realm of TV/film production.) People will probably start throwing around the idea of Senioritus, but I can’t say that it’s something that I suffer from; I’ve always been this way.

Now, to shift my problems with school to someone else: some classes are really starting to make me angry. As a TCOM minor, I am required to take a class called “Global Telecommunications Systems.” It’s interesting in theory, however in practice, I have a hard time getting behind this class. I’ve been in class for six weeks now, and we’ve covered three chapters. Now, if we were going in depth and discussing and exploring the concepts presented to us in these chapters, I’d be thrilled. In reality, we have covered the same material over and over again, rarely finishing a chapter in the time we’ve alloted for it, while our professor goes off on tangents about dog fights, internet porn, his favorite tennis players, how to cook plantains, public toilets in Turkey, and bird watching. On the other hand, I have classes that I love so much. I find them engaging and thought-provoking, and I think it’s fantastic. The Female Body & Film Theory is probably my favorite class this semester, and Exploring Cultural Diversity through Performance comes in a close second. All three of the subjects of the above classes are extremely interesting to me, however, I can’t get into Global Tcom.

And then there is Senior Seminar for Theater and Film Majors. The most challenging part of this class is sitting through it quietly. Since I have been with half of the class since my freshmen year, we have become close, and are united in our sarcasm and general hatred for this class. On a regular basis I am shot dirty looks from our teacher when I can’t stop laughing, or responding to questions under my breath. My only assumption as to why I have to take this class is so that the department can’t say that they didn’t at least try to prepare us for our future. We are given assignments that are designed to force us to do some research and be active within our own life decisions. Now, my opinion on these projects is that now that we are all adults and seniors in college, and if we haven’t given thought to things like “Where will I live?” or “What skills do I have?” then chances are, these things are not important to us. We choose the topics that we research, and because I am so fed up with constantly looking at the same information that I am already very familiar with, I am going to research birth. I am going to fake a pregnancy in my Senior Seminar. Yesterday after class, most of the film majors gathered outside of the building to complain about the class. Whereas some of the theater majors seem to think that some great part will land in their laps and they will get their big break, we have been told from day one that we are going to have to work our knuckles to the bone to get anywhere in our field, and the illusion of “that big break” isn’t really something that we believe in. The attitudes between the film majors in the class and the theater majors (particularly the acting majors) are staggering. Oh Department of Theater and (sometimes, when it’s convenient) Film, how I loathe you.

At any rate, I do think that college was the right choice for me, but maybe I should have gone somewhere that I am graded in rainbows and I could make a painting or do an interpretive dance instead of writing papers.

Whatev.