Anne's Corner

It’s a bit early for these (I think) but I’m going to write them up anyways.  I almost never make New Year’s Resolutions any more, because I always forget about them.  But I’ll try harder this year, and maybe posting them here will help me remember (since other people will see them and bug me about it).  Therefore:  10 resolutions for 2010.

1)  I will write 500 words a day every day, no matter what.  They can be five hundred words of absolute crud, but I’ll get them down anyways.

2)  In addition, I will write one chapter of a novel a week in the new notebooks I got for Christmas.  I got a dozen of them, and I’m not going to let my bad habit of ripping the pages out of composition books get the best of me this year.  One chapter should be about 2000 words (unless it needs to be shorter or longer for impact) and that means about 20 pages in one of the notebooks.  If I write 30 chapters in a novel, this means that I can finish 2 rough drafts of 2 novels (assuming I do a NaNoWriMo as well) in a year. So that’s another goal:

3)  Write 2 novels (rough draft only) from start to finish over the course of the year.

4)  Finish my current second draft of my Beauty and the Beast story, which is half done right now.  I know where I want it to go.  Now I just need to make it get there.

5)  Blog at least once a week on this blog and the knitting one (On Pens and Needles), including pictures if appropriate. (I usually don’t put pictures on this blog, but I put them on the knitting blog.)

6)  Apply for student teaching and get that all taken care of.  I’m supposed to do student teaching next spring, so I need to get it all ready this spring.(I guess this is a goal just for spring semester, but I’ll have to do a lot of stuff and I’ll have to take classes and stuff to be ready for it, so I’m counting it as a goal for the whole year.

7)  Knit at least half an hour a day.  I’m not going to time myself or anything, but I think at least half an hour a day will get me somewhere.

Finish projects I’ve promised to people.  This means Robyn’s socks (which I promised to her last year, actually, and currently have half done.)

9)  Become a good driver.  I have to anyways, to do practicums, but this connects back to the student teaching thing.  I’ll need to drive to and from school every day for that, and probably to Meijer or Walmart or Target or whatever to get supplies for lesson and such, so I need to be comfortable driving.

10)  Create a budget for myself based on the money I get for my allowance and money from my job.  Decide how much I need to give to church for tithe each month, how much I’ll spend each month for gas and how much I can spend on teaching supplies, yarn, food,  and fun.  Try to also save money for big things that I want (like a new iPod or camera). I might ask Daddy to help me with this one. I need to learn to do this so that when I’m on my own in a couple of years (I have one and a half years left at school, but we’ll call this two years since I don’t know how long it’ll take me to get a job, etc.) and I’d better start now.

That’s all I can think of for resolutions.  Now I just have to remember them all…

The house is almost clean (meaning that the kitchen was swept, the hall and the stairs were vacuumed, the living room was picked up enough that we can fit six people and a bunch of presents in there in two days, the cat boxes were cleaned out, and half the counters in the kitchen were wiped down, leaving the rest of the mess for another time).  The presents are wrapped and sitting in small mountains in my parents’ room, since if we put them downstairs they’d be opened (either by curious people or by kitties who like shredding stuff).  The tree has been up since Thanksgiving, and we’re making more ornaments for it (as soon as we get aluminum foil).  My parents are fixing the door, and we sing Christmas carols (off-key and without key verses) in the car.  People say things like, “Don’t come in!  I didn’t wrap your present yet!” and “Do you want to know what I got you?”  I finished up the last of the Christmas knitting yesterday, and a box from Joann.com tells me that I got some sort of knitting stuff as a present.  Clearly, the big day is almost here.

I hope we go to the Christmas Eve service at church tomorrow night, and that they have candles, and that we can remember in the midst of presents and cookies and ornaments that we wouldn’t even have this celebration if it wasn’t for a very special baby.  Some people say that Christmas is from a pagan celebration.  Some remind us that Jesus was probably really born in March.  But thinking about it, I think December is the best time to celebrate this.  December is dark and cold and it can be really ugly with all the snow and the ice and the cold.  Christmas is about the light that came into the world when it was dark and cold, like it is in December.  In the middle of the darkest days of the year, we have one day where we celebrate the Light of the World, the God who came down to Earth to be with us and to bring us to Heaven to be with Him one day.

I didn’t mean to preach when I started this blog entry, but somehow I got there.  That’s all I’m going to say on this for now.  I’m going to try to remember that Christmas is not just about the presents or even the family togetherness.  It’s a celebration of the Light, and of God’s love.  I hope we can all remember that this Christmas.

Most published authors get asked at some point, “Do you have any advice for young people who want to be writers?” All of the answers I’ve read to that question have said about the same thing: Read a lot, and write a lot. Read every book you can get your hands on, and write something every day–even if it’s just one word. (Although, if you wrote one word a day every day, you’d finish your novel in around 136 years, which would be ridiculous and probably impossible.)

I have taken this advice casually for a while now. I have the reading thing down–I read all the time. I have to. If I don’t bring a book to Baldwin when I go for lunch or dinner, I go nuts. Reading is not a problem. The writing thing, on the other hand, I don’t take seriously. I write when I have inspiration or when I have to write for a class. I usually don’t write every day (at least, not writing that I keep). I’ll plan out stories, make outlines, draw pictures and family trees, and “work” on my stories, but I don’t actually sit down and write a piece of fiction every day. (Blog entries and other non-fiction things don’t count, though I suppose if you added them all up along with my Facebook statuses you might get a substansial amount of words every day.)

I have decided that that has to change. I need to write some piece of fiction every day. I need to do this for practice. Athletes practice their sports every day. Musicians take hours and hours to work on pieces and scales before performing. Why should it be different for writing? Also, I have story ideas and characters that pop into my head at the most random times, and the only way to stop them from bugging me is to write them down. Finally, I need to get into the habit of writing something every day if I’m ever going to finish anything.

Therefore, I have proposed a challenge for myself. I am going to write 500 words of something every day. It might be a character sketch or a short story. It might be a bit of a novel I want to write someday. But I’m going to get 500 words written every day. I started two days ago, and plan to continue through to September of next year, around when school starts again. I guess we’ll see if I can do it. Wish me luck!

I have had some good time with my family now. We watched movies together, put up the Christmas tree, went on a trip, ate turkey twice, and had fun. I am ready to go back to school. We’re going to church this morning and then Daddy will take me back and Mommy will take Debbie back to Ball State. Then I have approximately 3.5 weeks before I can come home again. One week includes finals.

In this remaining time, I have to:

* get my chapel skip made up (I only skipped because I couldn’t find my ID. It was in my room in my purse because I’m a dummy.)

* get Dr. McCracken to approve my schedule for next semester.

* register for next semester’s classes

* get my schedule for working at the Writing Center set up

* study for and pass my finals (obviously); this should not be too terribly hard as I only have three.

Gotta go now! Bye!

This is what I repeat pretty much every time I go home. I really do love my family. We have great times together, and I wouldn’t go anywhere else if I had a choice to go home. At home, I get a break from schoolwork (except when I have a paper to write over break, which I will do when I manage to kidnap my computer from David for a good amount of time. (I have it right now but he’s in the room, so if I go away there is a good chance he’ll decide he wants to play with it and take it.)) I get a break from being around all the people at IWU.  I love them a lot, but sometimes I need to get away.  At home, I can see my kitties, and I don’t have to worry about going to classes or waking up on time for things.  Sometimes when I’m home I go places with my friends, like the yarn shop and the tea shop, or Chelsea’s house to watch Bones or The Big Bang Theory.

At the same time, there are things that I don’t like about being home.  I don’t like walking through a room and finding out I have a Starbucks cup stuck to my shoe.  I don’t like being taunted by my brother.  When I’m home, I miss things at school, like the thingy in Baldwin that makes it really easy to make a grilled cheese sandwich, or how no one ever leaves the toilet seat up because boys don’t come into my room to use the bathroom.  My room is bigger, I have my books there instead of Debbie’s, and people have learned not to ask me what I’m knitting or why; they figure it’s just part of what I do.   Going to the store is easier at IWU too.  I don’t have to cram into the backseat with my brothers or worry about making sure that Matt has something to eat if I get stuff to make dinner that he won’t like (which is pretty much every dinner I make).  I don’t have to ask if I want to get candy.  (On the other hand, I do have to pay for my own candy at school.)

Sometimes when I’m home, I have to work really hard to remind myself that I love my family.  Other times it’s not so bad.  I do love them, and I love coming home.  And I guess it’s a good thing that I can’t stand being around them all the time every single day, because eventually I’m going to move out permanently and only come home for visits.

I can’t believe I’ve already gotten to the place in my life where my friends are getting married and having babies. Angel had her wedding this summer, and she’s going to have her baby really soon. Megan has her baby and she’s engaged. Now Nicole is getting married and expecting a little one of her own. For the first time, I’m going to a friend’s wedding. I haven’t been to a wedding since I was little. The last one I remember was one of my aunt’s weddings. It was a lot of fun and really pretty. I’m hoping Nicole’s will be the same way. At the same time, though, I just can’t believe that I’m old enough to have friends who are getting married and having babies. It makes me feel very grown up and too old and too young at the same time. It also kind of makes me wish I had a boyfriend. I’m trying to ignore that feeling, though.

I’m really happy for Nicole. I’m going to go and have loads of fun tomorrow and take tons of pictures, and I’ll post some here when I get back. Right now I have to pack: clothes, various gadgets (like an alarm clock and my camera), and some knitting. (You didn’t think I would go to my best friend’s wedding without a knitting project, did you? Of course not! I’ve got a sock all planned out.)

I’ve been trying to get this out in its entirety since last night. It’s been coming out in bits and pieces, but I’m finally ready to write it all out.

I made a hard choice last night. I decided, for the first time in my entire academic life, to drop a class. I am dropping American Lit Survey. I realized last night that I had to drop it or fail. There’s no choice in between. There are no alternatives. It’s either get my first F in college or get out of there. It’s like being in a room with a bomb and realizing you don’t have time to defuse it. You’ve wasted so much time dilly-dallying around it, trying everything you can think of, and now you realize you can’t do it and it’s too late to try anything else. You have the choice: stay there and keep tinkering hopelessly until you blow up, or get out as fast as you possibly can and take the backlash. I’m taking the backlash.

I know I will fail the course if I stay in it, because I just plain don’t care. I don’t like the subject matter. American literature is my least favorite kind of literature, mostly because a lot of what we call “great” is depressing and ugly and I don’t like reading it. I don’t like the professor much, at least as a professor in the class. As a person, he’s a nice guy. He’s exceptionally smart–like over my level, and I like to think I’m a very intelligent person. He can be a little sarcastic, and he assigns insane amounts of work for a 200 level class (I’ve never taken a 200 level class with this amount of reading and paper writing before), but he’s a nice person. He said in class today that Pride and Prejudice is one of his favorite books, which raised him a bit in my estimation. I don’t like his teaching style, though, and I don’t like what we’re studying. Because I don’t like that, I haven’t been doing all the work. From the beginning of the semester, I have blown off the reading (mostly because it was always like 50 pages in the big stupid anthology that I hate). I’ve skipped two papers now (three if you count the one I decided not to write last night when I made this decision), which lost me 200 points. I have a C in the class right now. Not doing this paper I skipped last night would lose me more points. I might have also missed another paper deadline (mostly because he is horrible about sticking to the schedule and what’s due when, because he crams too much into each session and then we don’t get to it), which lost me more points, and I missed something else. The fact that I’m failing (or almost failing; I have a C right not but he hasn’t put in a bunch of grades yet) the class is entirely my own fault, and I don’t have the time to raise my grade. There are four weeks left of school. That’s not long enough. Plus, I don’t care about the subject matter, so I won’t try all that hard. It’s better to drop it.

I talked to my prof. today after class because I had to get him to sign the withdrawal sheet. He gave me the standard “I think you can do okay in here, please don’t drop the class” speech, but he signed the sheet. I think it might have had something to do with the fact that I was nearly in tears when I told him. Then I went to the Education office to get my advisor to sign the sheet. He was in class at the moment, though, so I emailed him and asked if I could pretty please meet with him tomorrow morning or afternoon to get him to sign the sheet. Hopefully he’ll email me back in an hour or so. His class goes to 5:15.

When I called Daddy about this last night, he said that I’m doing the same thing with this that I did with driving–I’m quitting because it’s too hard and I don’t want to try anymore. I don’t think it’s the same at all. I quit driving temporarily, because I had about five accidents in a row, but I’ve recognized that I need to learn to drive and drive well in order to be a teacher, which is what I want, so I am trying to get back to it. I expect to practice over Thanksgiving and Christmas so I’m good enough to come back here in the spring and drive to practicums (which I will hopefully get into; I talked to Mrs. Brady while I was in the Ed. office today and she said she was accepting my eFolio, so that’s the first step in the right direction for that). Dropping this class is different, and I’ll tell you why:

1) I can replace this class. It’s not required for my major or my minor. I just have to pick another 3 hour class in the English department to replace it in a coming semester (either May term or in my last semester before graduation). I can’t replace driving. There’s no easy alternative to it. The only way to get places in this modern era is in a car (unless there’s easy public transportation or you own a jet plane or a chauffeur; I have none of these things available, so the easiest way for me to get to where I need to go for practicums and then student teaching is to have a car).

2) I don’t plan on picking this class up again. I have learned–belatedly–that I hate American literature and don’t ever want to deal with it again in bulk if I can help it. I am going to take up driving again, because I have to (see points above). I might even learn to like driving (or at least not be scared out of my wits about it).

To continue with the list trend, let’s do pros and cons of this dropping a class thing (I’m already in the process of it, but I want to make sure that my readers understand that I understand the consequences here):

Pros:

–More time to work on other things. I have a big research paper due for Dr. Bressler on the Monday before Thanksgiving break. I haven’t started it yet, but I need to find fifteen sources, write the paper, and take it to the Writing Center (for a tutor class requirement, not Dr. Bressler), and then polish it up before then. Having an extra hour on Monday-Wednesday-Fridays gives me the time to go to the library and get all of this done (and I will).

–My GPA won’t go down because of this class. It shouldn’t go down because of any of my other classes either, and I’m hoping it’ll go up, but at least I’ll know if it does go down that it wasn’t because I failed my first class ever.

–I won’t have to try to motivate myself to do work for a class I hate.

Cons (with justification of the decision in spite of the point):

–It will take my credits for the semester down to 11, because I was only taking 14 to begin with. According to the school site, this could affect my financial aid. However, since Daddy is the primary source of my aid, I am counting on him–and this should be taken in a “oh, I’m so glad she trusts me like that” way, not a “what, am I made of money?” kind of way–to get me through the rest of college.

–It will be on my transcript that I dropped a class. It might even say that I dropped it 2/3 of the way through the semester. That’s not the best thing to have on there. But it’s better than an F.

I think there’s others on both sides, but I don’t remember them. I’m sure I came up with all of them at some point or another. In any case, the decision is made, and so unless Dr. McCracken tells me that I absolutely cannot quit this class and gives me an exceptionally good reason why not, or if I don’t get him to sign the form by Friday, I am dropping this class. Otherwise I will find another way to drop it or fail spectactularly and let the chips fall where they may. I am done with American lit, except in small doses and/or for my own pleasure reading.

I have read your book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn twice now, over the course of my life. I read it once in high school and now I have read it once for a college class. I want to tell you that I think it is a stupid book and I wish you’d never written it. The major reason for this sentiment is, at the moment, the stupid paper looming over my head about your book. However, I have a few other complaints as well. First of all, the last part of the book is really irking me. I’m going to channel that irkedness into a research paper about why you made Tom Sawyer act the way you did in this book, when the other book about him paints him in a more positive light, and then I am going to scream, bash my head into the keyboard, burn your novel, and read Jane Austen. Also–and this is not your fault, but it adds to my irritation–I do not enjoy picking apart the whole damn thing word by word to try and get extra meaning out of it. It’s like squeezing a tea bag so hard you squish the little tea leaves out and they go in your mug. It’s disgusting and hard and I don’t like it.

I don’t know why people call your book the quintessential American novel, Mr. Twain, or why they like it. But then, you didn’t like Jane Austen’s books at all. I guess that’s the reason why I hate Huck Finn–I love Elizabeth Bennett, and you just can’t love both of them.

I’m going to go back to writing my stupid crappy paper now and leave you to lie in peace in your grave. I just thought I’d let you know that I hate your book and will never read it again if I can help it. I’m going to sell my Norton Critical Edition to the bookstore, or a poor English major, and be done with it and with you. I made the mistake of studying American lit this semester. I won’t make it again. From now on, I am strictly a British Lit person.

Thank you for your time, Mr. Twain. Good night.

Sincerely,

Anne

P.S. If you could make my outline turn into a decent paper about your stupid book, I might decide I like you a bit better.

* tired. It has been a long, strange day.

* ready to skip to the end of the semester.

* busy this weekend. Oy!

* applicated for the Teacher Ed program here. I finished up my application in all its time-sucking glory earlier this afternoon and turned it in to the office. Now I just have to hope that it’s all done correctly. Otherwise, I’m toast.

Can’t IWU add a Knitting major? I’d be good at that…

I’m at work. No one is supposed to be coming in for the 12:30 appointment, so I don’t feel bad blogging here. Besides, I need to write about the last session I had, if only because I’ll have a paper to write about something like this at the end of the semester and having this will help me remember.

Normally when people come in here, I feel like I can help them. Even if I don’t know anything about the topic in question, I can usually help with the basics of writing a paper. Today, however, I am either off my game, losing my touch, or just going mental because I felt like I wasn’t helping this poor kid at all. He had a paper critiquing a video game and the first paragraph was good. He had a strong introduction and a good thesis. The next few parts, though, didn’t support that thesis at all. He kept reading and I kept thinking and finally I stopped him after a huge paragraph and told him that I thought he might want to change his thesis. We talked about it a little and I tried to convince him to write an outline, but he just sat there and let me struggle to come up with one for him. It wasn’t all his fault–I think I kind of blew up his world with the “change your thesis” thing, plus I’m fairly sure I look nuts today–but it bothered me. He left and I wrote the report, still bothered. I’m sitting here waiting to see if anyone walks in, and still I’m bothered by this. I don’t know if I did something wrong or if I was perfectly fine or what.

I really and truly believe that I am slowly losing my mind. It probably started ages ago but it’s just showing real signs this semester. I’m going nuts. I’m going to end up in the asylum. I just know it…And I’ll never make it as an editor…(not that I really want to be one…)Oy.