Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Uggggh day

Woke up in plenty of time to go to a tutorial for Sustainable Development I wanted to...knew the building but not the room, but thought, "what the hell, small school, I'll follow the people or just ask". There were no people, and the secretary of the building didn't know. That'll teach me. Frustrated, went home and back to bed, conveniently forgetting that I had said I would go into the psychology lab to be experimented on. I'll go in Friday instead, but dammit, I hate forgetting.

My producer had promised to find a space for more auditions this week over the weekend and send out notices on Monday, but since I still hadn't heard from her today (sent a couple messages and finally got an "I'm alive but busy--wait" back), I went ahead and booked my own room and came to some internal peace, which, when I told her what I had done, she suddenly asked if we could do more auditions Friday, just after I was planning my workshop (as a pre-rehearsal semi-audition which would have taken the place of more auditions).

Talked to Katie about the disillusionment we feel right now with the work and people here--me coming from the US "college is where you finally work and meet interesting people" perspective and her from having a boyfriend at Oxford who has to write 1-2 essays a week. Everyone says it's just first year, but, dammit, it doesn't feel like we have enough to do--like we are being taken seriously and given serious work--but rather just being given baby-step lectures. This would be okay if there was a drive within the student body to do independent work--to go to the library and read further on topics of interest--but there doesn't seem to be, at least not with our crew. Everyone is smart, everyone obviously loves their subject and cares, but when we get together all we end up with is being a bit drunk and a bit silly. Nothing more.

So those are my three points of frustration/rage/rant for today. The last one is what worries me the most, although I suppose it shouldn't. It's not like last semester I had any free time, really, but now that I feel settled in there is an aching for MORE, and I even begin to see a point to broad curriculum requirements or three year degrees...but the grass is always greener, I suppose.

In good news, and an effort to make this post stupidly long, I went on Couchsurfing.com last night and sent off a few messages trying to find a place to stay in Spain over break. I looked at Barcelona last night and will probably look at Madrid tonight...any suggestions where to go? Or maybe...since it is two weeks...both? I'll keep investigating.

2 comments:

swallace said...

Sounds like you haven't quite found your niche yet. Keep looking... there are bound to be clubs that are more interested in talking about ideas than (just) drinking. And maybe ask a professor about volunteering like we talked about earlier. Is there a school newspaper you can volunteer at? That can be an interesting place to meet people who are interested in ideas.

Unknown said...

I came to college last year expecting everyone to sit around in circles contemplating complex concepts, discussing politics and what not. Of course, I should have realized that this would not be the case since I had been forewarned that USC is a party school. Even so, it was upsetting that people didn't seem to care about the same things that my friends from home cared about. Like your dad said, just keep looking--you'll find those people.

First year's inevitably going to be rocky, and I would definitely have to agree with you that the grass is greener on the other side.