Big things are made of little things
14 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: optimism, pseudo-philosophising
Earlier, I started writing a blogpost about why I haven’t been blogposting for the past month and a half (short answer: university didn’t only eat my soul, it ate me; additionally, some health problems that may or may not be just inside my head, waiting for results on that one), but it started on a pretty (unintendedly — even though that’s not a word) depressing note, since that’s what my life kind of seems like, at the moment. But then, I realised that that’s something I don’t really want to blog about — sure, the major scale of my life isn’t exactly how I had envisioned it, right now, and there are things that I want to change and that I wish were different, but on a smaller, day-to-day scale, I’m not actually unhappy at all. In fact, I find that I’m feeling very contented (though tired, relatedly to them health problems) and even cheerful, most of the days.
I find that you have to remember that it’s the little things that count; and on that note, I am soooo overdue for a “things I love post.” So now, after having half a bag of popcorn and most of a cider, when I’m all mellow and relaxed, I’m going to write one of those. Behold!
Things that I love
using public transport. I love sitting on a train or a bus, even when I’m too tired to really care about the people around me. Simply listening to my music almost as loud as I can, staring out of the window and at the trees and buildings and people. When I’m inside a moving vehicle, I always get a strangely detached from the world — like I’m an observer, unaffected by life around me. And at the same time, if I’m in a right mood, riding on a bus or catching a train can give me the strongest feeling of belonging; I’m a human being amongst other remarkable, individual, lovely human beings, all living in the same world.
listening to music. Though someone once said that there isn’t a happy song on my iPod (which I suppose is true, if you take the shallowest meaning of ”happy”), there surely is one for every other emotion you can think of. I find that on different days, I feel subtly different, even though the overall emotion might be the same — and I always have a song for each of those subtle feelings. Music gives me strength; it amplifies my own emotions and gives me a way to solidify some smaller feelings that kind of nibble at my soul but never become pronounced. Through music, I can explore feelings that I will never be able to put into words, and that is why the precise music I listen to is very important — a song will always have its own, individual feeling.
writing, in any manner, style or format. I like writing blogposts, because they explore what’s on my rational mind; I like writing in my special, orange diary, because that explores the deeply hidden things that I might find shameful or would want to hide were they exposed to daylight; I like writing fiction, because it gives me an outlet of emotion or a crazy, idealistic concept that I know wouldn’t be well-received in any other medium; I like writing poems, because who doesn’t want to be abstract every now and again; I like writing assignments, purely for the sake of being able to express myself coherently and to be confident in the knowledge that I can.
wearing colourful clothing. It always makes me feel more cheerful, awake and alive than I do if I’m wearing some of the darker, blend-in colours that fashion deems appropriate for autumn and winter (though, don’t get me wrong, if you match those well, it gives exactly the same effect). In fact, I like wearing anything that I think I look hot/beautiful/pretty in, because it boosts my confidence and makes me feel so much better about myself. I like looking at myself in the mirror and saying: ”you’re stunning.” I like wearing what I like, no matter the weird looks I might get for it. The same principle can be extended to my hairdo and other related aspects. Call me superficial, but wearing something nice really makes me feel confident — and it’s not that often that I feel that confident in myself (really. No, really really. I know you don’t believe it, but…!)
feeling accomplished. I admit, I’m more than a bit of a workaholic and a perfectionist, and I set my goals way too high for myself, meaning that I feel disappointed and panicked and guilty during most of my free time, since I expect myself to do something more productive than I’m doing just right then. It comes with a trade-off, though — when I do meet my goals, and when I manage to achieve something I’ve worked hard for, and especially when I’m praised for something like that… There’s just nothing better in the world than receiving thanks for all the hard work you’ve put into something.
nicknames. My first name, Anna, has always been way too short and way too easy to say for anyone to come up with proper nicknames for me as I was a child — my parents and their odd habits of calling me weird names excluded. Oh, and my sister’s attempt to call be ”banana” as an insult. Anyway. Whenever someone sticks a specific nickname to me, and calls me by it consistently, I’m their friend forever. Promise.
Right. I think that’s enough for today, just so that I don’t inundate you with random gushing over things that are way too awesome. There are sooo many more things that I love, and I can’t even guarantee that those are the most important ones (especially not nicknames — but honestly, I have way too few of them). I’m sure, though, that you’ll hear more about the remaining ones later. Now, because I’ve promised to give you illustrations so that there’s not just pure text in my blogposts, have an illustration:
Because big things are made of little things, no matter how badly the big things fuck me over, as long as I have enough little things to love -- I'm going to be just as happy as this little kitteh.
Peace and things to love, you guys.
Survival 101
28 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: enthusiastic rambling, optimism, ponderings, study
Hey guys, guys, I just survived my first day of university! 
… Yeah, I know the title of this post isn’t necessarily the most clever one I’ve ever come up with, but who asked for your opinion anyway?
*cough* Moving on: my survival. Granted, it wasn’t much of a survival, because I only had three lectures and no labs/tutorials/pracs whatsoever. But! Still! Though this is kind of looking to be a sort of “dear diary” entry that I usually loath to publish, I think I’m going to have to share this experience with you. So bear with me while I share my thoughts related to studying and my plans in life.
Before I start delving in detail into how I feel about everything and what I’ve liked so far and what not, I suppose I should provide you with some detail about what I actually study and where. I may have mentioned this before, in passing, but I think a re-iteration should take place, to put all the information in one place. I study at Monash University, Clayton campus, in Melbourne. From what I can gather, this is one of the (if not the) best universities in Australia to study science at. This comes from the testimonies of a couple of acquaintances, recent monetary grants from the government to the university and the claims of the faculty representatives themselves — and from the feeling I get when I listen to any science orientation lecture. And yeah, as you can gather, I study science — but also biomedical sciences, because at the last minute to change applications, I foolishly added a double degree as my first preference, instead of just running with my original plans, which was just to do a single bachelor of science, instead of this double degree that I’m enrolled to at the moment.
Look, I know I’m being judgmental, since I’ve not even fully begun studying, but there’s so much to the whole degree than just the subjects matters of the units I’m enrolled in. There’s the feeling I get when I’m around people doing biomed, and in any contact with the organisational body of my degree, the lecturers of the biomed units… I just don’t feel like I belong there at all. However, I don’t think that the subject matter itself is going to be a problem for me to study — the two biomed units that I’m doing this semester are a biology equivalent (which scares the hell out of me, since I haven’t done any biology since year 9, and I already feel like I’m light-years behind; the fact that my first lab/prac/tute is a lab for this unit really, really, really doesn’t help — I’ll come back to this a bit later) and biochemistry, for which I haven’t even had my introductory lecture yet. They’re a bit out of my depth, true, but that’s exactly the thing I had in mind when I enrolled into a double degree — to expand my horizons and try out as many things as I could. Maybe I’m not as excited about studying these two subjects as I could be, but hey, at least I’m not overly apprehensive — except maybe against my fellow students.
What I am excited about, though, are my two science units: geosciences, and chemistry. Chemistry, as some of you may know/have gathered, is pretty much my thing — the thing I rave about and love and am good at. My lecturer for this unit is great, too, very inspiring and an energetic fellow. He moves pretty fast, though, or at least he did today — I’ll have to work through the same things a bit slower when I’m alone, just to get a good hang of them. Geosciences excites me as well, though I’ve never really done anything of the kind: you can see from the enrollment of about 400 people that it’s one of the popular & exciting units, where we study things like dinosaurs and plate tectonics and volcanos. The lecturer for this unit is pretty damn cool as well — just as excitable as my chemistry lecturer, and very attuned with the present time. She also seems to have a sort of geeky mindset that really, really appeals to me — and as she said earlier today, she believes in teaching in pretty pictures.
Like this.
Hell yeah.
Anyway. Universally, I’m already relatively in love with the whole study system of university. Admittedly, it kind of feels like they’re expecting us to get into the whole system as fast as possible (though they ARE providing us with the appropriate resources & help classes and everything), but I venture forth with an intelligent guess that they won’t really be as hard on us as I’m fearing. So, the good side of having to figure things out is the freedom that I now have. I already adore lectures. I was never worried that I wouldn’t be able to learn in that method — a few of my teachers, in fact, those that I liked the best already used this format in high school. And even better than that, in high school the teachers expected a little proactivity of their students, instead of just sitting & listening & taking notes and learning — and now I’m free to be in my small, private learning bubble as much as I want. Ah! The only problem I MAY come to have with this is how to organise my notes — but as of now, I’m formulating some sort of system where I just jot everything down that I may need, and then later compile them into an electronic form in the manner of revision. A similar method worked out relatively well for me last year in chemistry, so.
The only thing I’m genuinely worried about at this point in time is labs/pracs/tutes, mostly, though, because I’m unfamiliar with the concept of learning through doing. Forever when doing science, I remember I hated pracs, mostly because we were always given the answers as to what the things we were experimenting upon were supposed to do, instead of learning through hands-on activity. It is possible that that will change, so that excites me a little bit… But I’m still a more book-based learner than anything else. Coming out of my study bubble isn’t fun for me. But! Should be brave and venture forth and that sort of thing; wouldn’t be much of a scientist in the future if I didn’t, right? Though, like I mentioned before, it really doesn’t help my fears that upon receiving our unit guide for my biology class, my first lab (which takes place on wednesday, so I only have tomorrow to prepare) was outlined and there was really not much that I understood in this outline. Gotta stay positive and think that it’s the first one, we’ll be fine… Right? *chews on nails*
Ok, I think that’s basically all I came to say. In lots of words. However, feel reassured, because I’ve challenged myself to, from now on, include at least one illustrative picture (that I will very often shamelessly steal off the internets)
Like this one. Here, have a completely pointless diagram. For illustrative purposes, see?
in each of my posts for those of you with short attention spans when it comes to my long (though hopefully vaguely exciting/interesting) drawls about… stuff. Generally.
Soooo, that’s it for me, folks! I’ll go arrange my diary (that’s something that happens a lot) and go read LOTR (almost finished Fellowship!) and play Phoenix Wright (if you don’t know that which I speak of, I both shun you and encourage you to find out right now — they’re possibly the most awesome games made for the ds, and I’m a fan of pokemon) or other videogames. So many videogames, so little time!
Peace and love and awesome videyagames, everyone.
The time has (almost) come! [insert dramatic music here]
24 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: enthusiastic rambling, optimism, suspense
Well, it’s been a while since I even thought about my blog, hasn’t it… So long, in fact, that I can’t really even remember how to do this blogging business! No, just kidding, I’ve always known how to do “random verbal diarrhea,” and practice has obviously perfected this talent above all others, of course. The challenge is to make that verbal diarrhea about something meaningful (or at least funny) so that you’ll not get bored with me, and that it’ll still remain somehow structured, so that you can follow the thread of my thought as it … uh, overflows on this metaphorical paper here.
It’s so hard to blog when you’ve got so much to talk about! It’s kind of ironic, thinking that just a few posts ago — though those posts were obviously posted a loooonger time ago — I was complaining about how blogging is hard when nothing really happens in my life. Well, past me, apparently it’s also hard when you’ve got a lot of fun stuff going on or going to be going on (going going going — it kinda sounds like a gong or something, if you keep on repeating it often enough), mainly because you don’t even know where to start, so instead you write this whole paragraph whinging aimlessly when you try to get your thoughts in some sort of an order.
Ahhhhem.
Really, the point of this blogpost is to inform you that I’ve been a very good girl and been studying for my finals pretty diligently, and as such, I’m feeling pretty good about them — which is a bloody good thing too, considering that my first exam is somewhere around 13:45 tomorrow. Granted, it’s only a 15-minute oral exam in a foreign language (French, sadly, and not Finnish, which would’ve been MUCH a less of a big deal) but anyone who has ever at least attempted to seriously study a foreign language will know exactly how daunting that concept sounds. Now all I have to do is hope that I won’t get a native speaker as an examiner — they have this annoying habit of swallowing their vowels, making their language pretty incomprehensible to me. Not that my French is that comprehensible either, but at least I make an EFFORT, k?
I kinda jumped the trigger there — I was going to do this whole buildup about how we’ve been studying and doing practice exams in school and then how the last day of high school just flew by with its water guns and huge yellow slides and jumping castles (actually, those latter two should be in singular, but that would totally break the flow of that sentence — I’d much rather form over fact, how about you?) and shaving cream and some tears (not mine, though — my expression was pretty much frozen into this huge grin for the entire day, as anyone who has friended me on facebook would, no doubt, know by now) and moving speeches and all that crap that comes with the concept of moving on from one stage of your life to the great unknown.
Is it bad that I just heard my English teacher’s voice in my head, nagging about how that previous statement sounded completely dismissive and wasn’t… I’m not sure what word she used here. Believable? Persuasive? Regardless, dismissive sarcasm isn’t good, children, so let’s not go down that alley.
Double negatives make a positive, right? (haa, pseudo-intellectual humor — or then I’m just a bit tired and verging on stupid)
Ahem. Look, I don’t MEAN to sound so dismissive, and in a way, I’m every bit as sad and as scared of the change as everyone who was tearing up on that last day, and at the valedictory dinner and everything. I’m just not really dealing with that now — it’s not hit me yet. I have this tendency of suspending feeling until the change has already happened; it’ll probably hit me somewhere during the next months, when I’ll be bored over the lack of nothing to do (I know I’ve been excited about not having anything to worry about, but I know me too well — it’s going to happen; either I run out of money or I get really bored at some stage), or at latest during Week O at university, when I’m… going to… [insert joke about being scared and lost here]
Wasn’t that funny? That was really funny, wasn’t it. I thank your imagination for that.
Ok, as you can see I’m kind of nervous and tired and excited at the same time. I’m freaking out a bit inside about tomorrow’s exam, but I don’t think it’s as much tomorrow’s exam as it is the fact that AFTER tomorrow’s exam, it’ll only be six more to go, and then freedom to do all of that stuff my bloody significant other keeps on getting me so excited about. Seriously, you wouldn’t BELIEVE how hard it is to stay in the now and remain calm and work hard toward the best result I can possibly get when all I can think about is videogames and my NOVEL that I haven’t touched for so long and then another novel that I’ve been dying to write and a third one and the feeling of liberty when I won’t have to strive to actively remember all of this stuff that’s now floating around my head and won’t have to worry about forgetting them or getting out of practice or concentrating on one thing too much–
Summary: I’m not worried about the exams, per se (except maybe the English one, just because I know how huge the expectations are on that one, seeing how terrificly I did on the practice exam), I’m just so anxious to have them over and done with so I can go on with my life.
Besides, after tomorrow, I won’t have to speak French ever again, if I so choose.
Booyah.
Now, the next time I write, I’ll most likely be very bored or very anxious or want to pour my heart out at the internet about how some of my exams went — or then it’ll be after the exams, because that’ll feel good: writing a post about how I feel I’ll do, and then writing a post when everything is going to be finished. You’ll remind me to do that, won’t you, darling? Yeah, I’m totally speaking to my significant other over the internet and you’re watching me do it. Don’t you feel special?
Peace, love, and carpe diem, because I need to get my mind off all the awesome stuff that is going to happen and concentrate on the stuff that is happening right now.
Check it out, I can talk about twenty things at the same time!
05 Oct 2010 2 Comments
in Personal Tags: enthusiastic rambling, flow of consciousness, holidays, more awesome than you can handle, optimism, seasons, study
Erm. I don’t know if I widely advertised the fact that I just had a two-week break from school, but if I did and if I boasted something about the fact that I would have had a lot of time to, you know, update my blog and do fun stuff and the such, I obviously meant social stuff that has nothing to do with the internet and me prattling on to a very limited readership (not that I mind my limited readership, mind you, it’s not like I have time to pimp my blog anywhere anyway). Why couldn’t you figure that out by the time I said it, eh, eh? A girl (or, you know, any human being) needs her time off, duh!
If I never did, then hi, I think I’m at least a little back again. I know that the previous sentence made next to no grammatical sense, but that’s ok, because my mind is full of math at the moment, anyway. Honestly speaking, I’m not really in the mood to blog now, either, like I really haven’t been in the past two weeks or so. It’s funny that at the very moment stuff starts actually happening in my life, I fly out of the internet and don’t even miss it, until I’m bored again. Take that, teenaged me — real life wins, after all!
Ok, I’m rambling, I know, and I’m sorry. I’ve just had so much fun and so little blogging in these two weeks that I don’t even know where to start. I could always start talking about my financial state and how having lots of free time makes me want to do things and, of course, want things to do (ha, c wat I did thar) — which oftentimes means “no moar money for you, missy.” I need my job back! I can’t afford seeing three movies in two weeks — not with my addiction to popcorn and the overpriceyness of foodstuffs in cinemas. And, you know, tickets. But the movies were SOO GOOD. And then there was that dvd that I absolutely needed — no, wait, a set of dvds and then a blu-ray disk and lots of clothes, because the weather has become nicer (YES YES YES SUMMER IS COMING I CAN SMELL IT IT’S GREAT until my nose starts running because hay fever) and my wardrobe has become empty at some point in time I wasn’t paying much attention to–
and I have become SO addicted to Avatar: the Last Airbender that it’s not even funny, and then I just finished watching the last episode last night and was heartbroken so now I’m watching it again, because I’m a masochist like that (hey, little kiddies who don’t know what a masochist is — don’t google it — I SAID DON’T). And then, of course, there’s the exams that are coming at me like a freight train (this is a funny reference to a text we’re studying for English, which is one of the first exams, because alongside with being a masochist, I’m also a huge nerd), and I’m simultaneously exhilarated and terrified and stressed and all those other wonderful feelings that come with something that will determine if or not you get into where you want to study next year — ooooh, and then I’m really excited about the place I want to study at next year, because I was reading up on it and it’s absolutely AMAZING and I can’t wait
and I kinda need a hobby… And I wanna start writing again. That’s probably the most annoying thing about having had a very short holiday just now, a majority of which you had to sacrifice for thinking about or actually doing study for the sake of exams. It was kinda like they dangled a treat above our noses and let us lick at it — the treat here being the SWEET, SWEET FREEDOM that will come after exams — and then cruelly snatched it away, saying “you’ll get the rest of it in a month and a bit!” A month and twelve days from today, to be precise — that’s the day of my last exam.
I should probably stop rambling enthusiastically right now, and go back to that cursed math. And then French, I suppose, since I’ve been avoiding it for the past two weeks or so. Sigh!
Here, have pictures of how I motivate myself to study:
That’s right, I totally employ the power of ORANGE CANDY. <3 If anyone ever loves me so much that they will go through lots of places and buy me this sack full of orange lollipops (such as in the illustration on the left), I will totally… love them forever. That sounds kind of like a lame promise in exchange for candy, doesn’t it? Then again, it also implies that my love can be bought with orange candy — which it totally can, so I’m fine with that. ;3
Regardless, I’ll stop babbling right now and go ahead and continue studying math. I might be back later with something more coherent to say, but don’t count on it until after exams! And even then, I might be too awestruck by my freedom or, alternatively, too free to actually write anything here. But I promise, eventually I’ll settle back into blogging a lot more often — I love writing and talking to random people on the internet WAY too much to stop.
Peace and rambly thought-processes to everyone!
