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CusackQueen
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Name: Sara
Interests: I recycle, I paint, I am literate. Other things: scouts, IB, lifguarding, and being generally cuddly.
Expertise: comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.
Occupation: Research and development
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  AQuietDomino
Member Since:
4/12/2003
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| "It's what you like, not what you are like"
~ Rob Fleming, Nick Hornby's High Fidelity
I never really got that. I mean, I've had my fair share of lunches and evenings ruined by people obsessing over celebrities, musicals, or various television shows and leaving me completely out of the conversation. Should I care that I don't care about certain things? Trying harder wouldn't hurt me, but it takes enough time just keeping up with the things I am interested in. Honestly, developments in the field of psychology, what people in my life are doing, and worldwide injustices just aren't good party conversation. I think visiting cuteoverload.com daily and my usual run of webcomics is superficial enough (also not good conversation starters), why waste more time on stuff I only vaguely care about?
All signs point to writing more comics. This summer has been a depressing one for a number of reasons, including not needing to write a comic for the UDK. I have been in a bit of a rut for jokes lately, and Mike starting law school has not helped. I love drawing, and being able to post fun comics to my [don't laugh] deviantart page is something i used to look forward to, not to mention the $80 every two months or so as nice padding to my expenses.
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On an unrelated note, I find that my attitudes towards things in life are determined by my first impressions of them. When we practice the ceremony for the preference round of recruitment, I find myself longing for those words to be spoken to me as a freshman entering ADPi. I think my entire perception of my sorority would have been changed if I had just had a pref. ceremony before I got my bid card. As it was, I felt strangely dejected when I joined the group. I joined late, so no one knew my name, and I missed the bid day party for all of the new members. I have never been personally recognized in my sorority, and I suspect this is why I have always felt a bit "under the radar" here. I feel like someone who was simply included to reach a quota. I was a girl who slipped in because they needed all the women they could get. I disobey countless rules and have talked my way out of several penalty fines for absenteeism. I know very few names--I depend on our policy of changing roommates every semester to get to know people here, because I tend to skip dinners and eat alone in my room. See? Isn't that sad? I can't even bring myself to have that awkward who-can-I-sit-by cafeteria moment. Not now, not at age 21. So much for building connections and leadership skills.
I take out the recycling every other week. In my letters for scholarships I play up this role as best I can, but I must constantly acknowledge my lack of love for this whole establishment. If anything, it has solidified my suspicion that many of the girls in this house are lazy, if not plain stupid. Admittedly, viewing any group of people through their refuse is enough to make even a great person lose faith, which underscores my sheer lack of involvement. How can I love this house? How can I say that I have benefitted myself and others if my best description of sorority life is "the house is a nice place to eat and sleep"? Why is it that I have been urged by the president to select an heir for my recycling job when it is not even a recognized role in the sorority? Mallory, our previous president, sent me a card for my hard work, and talked to me about my comic. My rejection of the sorority as a whole kept me from developing any meaningful relationship with her, despite her going out of her way to be kind to me.
And this brings me to the heart of it. I cannot force myself to care about meaningless greek competitions, meaningless alpha-female drama, meaningless sorority offices, and meaningless mixers and social functions. But I absolutely crave companionship in this house. The decision to join a sorority has made me more lonely than any other decision I have made in my life. My old friends fear the house and think differently of me for having joined. I have seen disdain in the eyes of two of my closest female friends because of the immanence my sorority must now take. I can say now, as a senior in college, that I have no idea what greek life is or how to make myself close to these women who I call my sisters. I cannot choose my favorite ADPi memory because I do not have any. This is my own damn fault.
This year, I am living in my sorority. This year, I will be a sorority girl. I will figure this out. I will stop complaining and start doing shit that I care about. I want to give this sorority an environmental initiative. I have tried to get other girls signed up to help with recycling, but it bore no fruit. This time I will ahve announcements at chapter and posters and information and tips and maybe even an event (like a conservation week or group bike ride). Maybe I can get a water filter in the kitchen and get some cool videos in the weekly emails. I could even get my own little group going. We could have a t-shirt reconstruction night and take out the recycling together and find new uses for everything old. I am getting excited. We may not have an organic garden like the Obamas, but this could actually go somewhere.
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| sometimes i want to be married with a family and a job and a yard. sometimes i want to be single and seducing, well not really seducing, but having a rather flirtatious time with men my age.
most of the time, though, i want to hang out with mike, even though his favorite days are he cloudy ones and my favorite days are the sunny ones.
I have a job in my lab this summer. I will be taking two sociology classes and a musicology class. whatever. i need them to graduate.
I should take the GRE next year. I'm already getting nervous. I'mma gonna buy me a study book in two weeks. I'mma gonna check out some books for readin' in two weeks. I'mma gonna see my man graduate and take him out for some din in two weeks. I have to move out of my house and onto an 8x11 piece of carpet. i have to finish that online course. i have to bike around lawrence, but before i do that, i will need a new bike lock.
It's Tuesday already.
I need 10-15 pages sooner than I think, and most of it will be heresay and meaningless research quotes. I am no historian.
I am a scientist. Give me something I can support by randomized testing and rigorous analysis and some happy statistics. I am a psychologist. Give me someone to talk to. I am a student. Give me money! I am a woman. Give me menfolk.
need some free time and new batteries for my reading light.
this is almost over but the hard part is nearing very rapidly.
i will probably get a 4.0 this semester.
oops, i just jinxed it.
goodnight.
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| I am trying to figure out how to change my major, my second major that is, without fucking myself over. advice? I wish I had decided all of this earlier, and I wish I had discussed it with someone. Apparently I still have no idea where I will be going. Maybe I'll just do autism research until I die. I would rather do language and cognitive development. Maybe I can make it all tie in. Maybe I should go another semester. Dammit. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I AM A GENIUS without even realizing it. I have 19 hours left to graduate with honors and a BS in cognitive psychology I have 24 hours left to graduate with a BA in Human Biology (concentration: Biology) This means:
I will have a 9-hour summer
I will take 18 hours my first semester of senior year
I will take 16 hours my second semester of senior year Then I will take a year off, conduct my own research, study for and take the GRE in peace, and earn dolla$ for graduate school. I heard once at a Psi Chi meeting that taking a year off is common practice now, and graduate schools really want to see independent research in that year off. WHAMMY!
Undergraduate Victory = Planned to a T | | |
| I was caught talking to the rabbits at the pet store by a boy (man?) on whom i had had a huge crush my sophomore year.
He remembered my name, which is strange because i had always considered our interactions to be brief and insignificant (to him, at least). This is part of the reason i still feel so strange about having had a crush on him--the fact that aside from one class together and a few run-ins at the computer lab (which i creepily frequented after i found out that he would be there sometimes), he was a stranger to me. So i've always been impressed when he notices me and attempts smalltalk whenever we see each other out and about in Lawrence, especially because he graduated and moved to Colorado last year.
That being said, the funny part about this story is me seeing this man and his current girlfriend at the pet store and trying to fumble for an explanation for why i was chatting up the rabbits. He simply assumed that i forgot his name, and re-introduced himself. Ironic, of course, because i will probably remember his name for many years after he has forgotten mine.
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So, this semester I am only taking 15 hours, but two of those hours actually represent 6 hours worth of work i have to do during the week for independent study. I am also working 10.5 hours a week at the Writing Center, and if i can, I would like to pick up a 4-hour weekly shift at WTCS again. That still doesn't add up to very much. I may take another course in biology, because I miss neurobiology already...
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apparently "real" star wars fans hate ewoks and gungans.
i am glad i am a fake star wars fan.
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On the bright side, now I can catch up on my reading. I'm very glad I learned how to study last summer. I learned last week that the manuscripts collection at the Spencer Research Library has a ton of old papers from professors who have worked at KU. That's cool, but kind of unfair--i mean, it's fine to want your documents preserved "just in case" you become famous later on, but if anyone wants to look up professors at KU, or the history of KU and the like, they will only have the papers of those who were so worried about fading away that they donated their documents to the library. I guess that is how knowledge has always been transferred... i mean, when monastaries were burned down, I'm sure it was only the books that had particular importance to the individual monks that were secretly saved. So really, the winners write the history, but the librarians and library contributors have at least a small part in it.
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| i want to marry this guy if i ever do get married, but i hate how it feels like we're married now. in a few years! if ever!
most of all, i want to adopt children. children with brown eyes. i heard once that international adoption was colonialism, because it's like saying "oh all the children of the world would be happier and better off in America" but i think children are just better of with, oh i dunno, parents. so it's a good thing, always a good thing as long as the parents have willingly and legally severed their rights. don't want no child trafficking.
so that's that. as far as the rest of my life plan goes, i need an 88.1% on the next test to get an A in my neurobiology class. totally doable. i still have to decide whether i want to work with second language acquisition (and other speech issues) or if i want to work with developmental disorders. maybe i want to work with old people after all? i am taking a class next semester that is an honors seminar having to do with psyc tests and children. i get the opportunity to publish at the end of the year!
which reminds me, i have got to turn in my application to be a reviewer for the undergraduate research journal. what fun!
aaaannnnndddddd don't let me forget when i turn 21 that i must (not only drink, not only see drag shows, but also) apply to volunteer with CASA so i can help to make the foster care system better, one kid at a time.
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