Back to the Grind

Well, it's that time again. It's time to get back to the routine of early mornings, rushed meals, late night studying, and perpetual exhaustion. I packed my backpack for the morning like a loser. I had the binder versus notebook debate for all of classes. I'm more of a notebook fan, but I have all these loose leaf textbooks that go into binders. I hate loose leaf books by the way. They have their merits because I can take section in and out, but there is no resale value and I always end up ripping half the pages. I paid almost $200 for two textbooks that can fit into one inch binders. Maybe I should make my calling the textbook business. They're probably raking it in.

So, another year, another major. My indecisiveness is showing. I am technically still a biology major on paper, and I just laugh when someone asks me what I am majoring in. I don't even really know right now.

I'm giving the commuter life a try this semester. Like the actual commuter life where I have to drive 30 minutes back home to my parents house. I am already dreading it. I know I shouldn't complain, and I do love my family, but it is sort of bumming me out. Watching all of my friends move into their new apartments while I return home make me feel like I am regressing, but then again, I don't have to pay rent, so there is something positive about my predicament.
I think my biggest fear for this semester is being forgotten. I know it's stupid, but with everyone close to campus and me going back home, I worry that I am going to be cut out of the loop. I suppose I should also worried about sucking at another major, but I have a good feeling about this one. It's too early to tell, but after this summer, I know leaving biology was the right decision. So far I've learned two fields I don't want to be in. Sometimes you have to know what you don't like to know what you do. Or at least that's what I tell myself to justify my mess of a college career.
Welcome to a first day like all other first days. The struggle of falling asleep the night before, wondering who is in your classes, hoping you have the same lunch as your friends, and praying you won't get lost finding your way is the same from kindergarten to college.

Happy 1st day of school!

Noelle

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Late Night Summer Rambles

I originally tried to write a funny post, but this semester turned my this writing space into a contemplate life, the world, and other things deeply, or as deeply as a suburban middle class teenager can, blog so I gave up. The post wasn't very funny and it was really scattered. I've found it is hard to find things to write about in the summer. Life seems to get simpler when we enter these three months. Maybe that isn't true for everyone, and trust me my summer is nothing like the lazy days I experienced before I was expected to be an adult, but it's been simpler. Wake up, do school work, pack lunch, drive to campus, eat lunch, go to class, go to work, go to class, do homework, rinse and repeat. A two class workload moves at a quicker pace, but still is less to worry about than the semester course load. I do miss the days when summer meant playing outside with the kids from the neighborhood, swimming, and reading books I actually wanted to read.

We have passed the midpoint of summer, or what is supposed to be summer. I've had some pretty great times though. I've spent a lot of time hanging out in the apartments of friends and there have been a fair amount of birthday celebrations. I also went to my first MLS game, which was then canceled when someone got stuck by lightning, so I instead got to see my first movie in Columbus. 22 Jump Street, funny flick. It was a weird group but those are always the best one's. No one is mad at anyone else.

I've been thinking a little about happiness after an impromptu bench conversation. My mentality has always been do what makes you happy, but maybe it isn't about what will make us happy, or maybe happiness is temporary, or selfish. Happiness is still of importance, and love, and commitment, and a million other things. But, what makes you happy, or what you think will make you happy, maybe isn't the plan. Maybe there is more to it, but we don't get to know. So all I can say is stick to your guns, laugh often, make great friends, experience everything you can, learn from your mistakes, and do what you feel in your heart is right. You can't anticipate the plan because it writes itself, and life just happens.

Speaking of plans writing themselves (like that segue..) here is my summer, so far, in pictures.

I've spent most of the summer at this place, or in class. 

Shirali sticky noted her entire house to plan her party.

Same party. It was past Madison's bedtime

I spent a night with my Dad. We wandered around Kent State and he told me about May 4,
 and the many connections my family has.
If I remember correctly, a bullet struck though this metal sculpture.

Balloon Fest, an annual thing here in Canton, Ohio.
These firework's sucked. They were all hidden behind clouds

Well, hope everyone's summer is going smoothly. Enjoy the month left to come.

Noelle

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Goodbye and Good Luck

"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay."

When I was in ninth grade, we had to write a class poem. I thought it was dumb, and I still sort of think it's dumb. My teacher was a first year who had to be explained by a room of 14-year-olds that Georgia was indeed a country and the New York Times was a newspaper. She presented us with a poem by Robert Frost, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and had us write a poem, "There Had to Be a Last Time," and even though I found the assignment a little juvenile, it holds a bit of truth, there is always a last time, nothing gold can stay.

I write to you for the last time from the Honors Complex here at the University of Akron. I am sitting here in my empty echoey room blasting music for the last time. I spent my last night on the floor of my friends room sleeping in my jeans. We all didn't want to go back to rooms with half of the belongings gone. So we slept like sardines on a mattress on the floor.

I've spent this whole week a little sad, and mad, and everything in between. It's weird, because I usually don't do feelings openly, but lately I've wanted to. I had a bit of a freak out. Like hysterical laughing, monotone talking, pouring out feelings breakdown, and honestly I don't remember half of it. I feel a little bad about it because I vented on someone who was sort of studying, but she was there, and she was an incredibly good listener. I never do this, but sometimes things happen, and they're aren't as mind wrecking as a singular problem, but they just keep spiraling into everything else and they just won't stop. I don't think I've ever been like that, ever. But I've learned I need to face my problems, and a very wise friend told me if you find someone you want to keep around, you don't let them go. These people that I've met here, I have to work at it, because I can't let them go.

So sometimes you have to feel. I'm not used to these manic, overwhelming feelings. I don't really do them and and I feel like I have been on overload. I walk around carrying these thoughts, and worrying about things, and thinking they don't matter, but I care because they do matter, because I am lucky enough to have something to lose.

I feel sort of stupid getting sentimental about this. I'm not graduating, I'm not leaving, I will still be at the same school with the same people, but something about this feels final. I know that I will still see everyone, but I won't be living with them. I can't walk down the hall and ask a question or hang out whenever. I won't be able to run into someone's room to rant about something completely unimportant, and they won't be able to do that to me. I won't walk the campus at night or fall asleep to the mumbles of my sleep talking roommate. We will all separate and see each other in passing, because everyone is always so busy. So although nothing is changing, everything is.

I feel like I don't tell people how I feel enough. Like I need to tell people I love them, that I appreciate them because there is only so much time to do it. And like I said before, no one is dying, we will all still exist, but the way things are now will never be the same again. I started off the year thinking I was the greenest most logic driven person ever, and now I just want to hug everyone.

I've always found it funny that every year when my birthday comes around I get the question, "Feel any different being [blank] age?", and every year I answer with a no, because change doesn't happen all at once, it happens gradually, and before you know it everything is different. My little sister is graduating high school this year. It feels like a lifetime since that was me, but in reality we are only 2 years apart. The person I was at seventeen was radically different than who I am now. But, me, I'm not anything original, I am a sum of everyone I've known. My differences now were shaped by all of the people I've spent the last 2 years with, for good and for bad.

But here's to the future. We are here now, and everything that changes will quickly become the norm and these memories will just be pictures inside our heads, and sounds we can't quite remember. But we can look back one day and tell these stories to our grandchildren. We can look with love.

I wish you all the luck in your future endeavors, and although the possibility of losing touch looms in the air, I hope to be there for every single one of them.

Noelle

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Detachment

There is this thing called detachment. It is talked about in preparation for a big change. They always say when kids leave for college they spend the summer fighting with their families to make it easier to leave them. And its also when you lose personal investment and emotion, when you quit caring. Detachment has multiple definitions, and two of them describe this week to a T.

de·tach·ment

noun \di-ˈtach-mənt, dē-\

:lack of emotion or of personal interest

This seems to happen every semester. The end comes just as motivation starts to dwindle. Here I am piled high with tests, projects, and finals, and I can't seem to make myself care. I know that I need A's on everything, as usual. I know that my grades aren't where they should be, as usual. I know that I can work as hard as I want and all the effort could be for nothing. I know that I just want to be done with school and that this has been a very long 15 weeks. I know that I have to keep going for two more weeks, but I'm starting to lack emotion and personal interest. Sometimes I don't know if I ever had it.

de·tach·ment

noun \di-ˈtach-mənt, dē-\

: the act or process of separating something from a larger thing

The act of separating yourself from the people you've spent the last two years of your life living with, the act of separating yourself from the building you've lived in for the last two years, the act of becoming the first definition to cope with the second one. Yesterday I spent the whole day thinking someone was mad at me. I couldn't figure out why, and I spent the whole day stewing over what I was going to say, and do, and then when it came down to it nothing happened. She wasn't mad, and everything was fine. I feel like I'm more quick to anger lately. I feel like everyone is. We're all on edge from the workload and thought of change, and with everyone leaving, it's easier to be mad. It's hard to miss someone you are mad at. So maybe I'm okay with anger directed at me. Then I can be mad without it being my fault, and it makes it a little easier to leave.

We're hitting the homestretch with only two weeks left. We can do this. We have to.

Good Luck This Week and Next,

Noelle

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The Future is Out There

I've started a post with this title a few times this week and then started ranting and gave up on it being a publishable post. Since I've got nothing due tomorrow, and my roommate is asleep, I'm currently sitting in the dark not sure what to do with this thing called free time. I promised Shirali I would post something, so here goes nothing.

Through all the time I have spent trying to figure out the career path I wish to take the hardest question for me has alway been, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" The question that people feel like is the key to knowing what to do now, but I can never seem to wrap my head around the concept of the future. I can't imagine me in five years. In my mind the future doesn't exist. I used to think maybe it was because I was going to die before I got to this major five years from now, but that idea is probably stupid. Just because I can't imagine it, doesn't mean it isn't going to happen.

I find that I am looking for another major change. I don't know why I can't seem to find something that makes me "happy." What is happiness anyway? Maybe happiness is just a myth we're all grasping to get a hold of. It has been pointed out that maybe I'm just looking for a quick fix for my current unhappiness. For some reason that has been a sticking point. I can't wrap my head around this future of mine, so maybe I'm just looking to fix what is wrong now. They say a degree is just the ways to an end but spending 4 years and a ton of money to discover the end game is just as bad as getting there is not my idea of a good plan.

I've also been told I'm not in tune with my spiritual future so I don't have a clue about my professional one. Another sticking point. Maybe its true. I don't know if knowing exactly what I want out of religion or what religion wants out of me is going to be the solution to my future. It might be one day, but I'm thinking of my more immediate one. But then I think about how I could die tomorrow, and that maybe I should get things straight with the man upstairs. Recently at a Psych research thing they asked me if I was a Christian and I wasn't sure how to answer, and then when I said no I felt ridiculously uneasy after leaving. I don't know if that means anything or not. Actually, I do know what it means, but I'm not one those people to want to make a big deal out of it. The whole "getting saved" thing and "finding Jesus" seems a little bit showy.

I'm always torn between the two mentalities of "Pick a career you love and you'll never work a day in your life" and "A job is a way to pay for all the things that make you happy outside of it" Can you have both? If you do it right I like to think you can. I suppose its all a matter of prospective.

I did a swear jar with my roommate this year for lent. We actually completed it this year with a sad, sad amount of money. Let's say I had to put $5 in after studying for one Organic Chemistry test.

 I also colored eggs for Easter. They were a little sad as well. Not remembering to buy vinegar was a mistake. Lemon juice does not work as a substitute for anyone that wanted to know. 

An open letter to my friends. I thought it was funny. I hope they did too. 

Two weeks of school left, and then finals, let the countdown begin,

Noelle

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Universal Feelings

Sometimes I meet people and they seem intimidating. For whatever reason they give off a vibe of I am better than you or I'm not interested in interacting with you, or they're just plain weird. Some people are just like that, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. The people that seem to be the most intimidating, seem to be the people who know how to look like they have it all together. They're passionate, and driven and confident, all incredibly important traits, but those desirable traits are also ridiculously scary to an outsider. This feeling of intimidation seems to follow the same pattern every time. I get to know the person, and with their quirks and flaws, the intimidation goes away. I can't be intimidated by someone I've seen freak out in front of me, or do something hilariously embarrassing. It ruins the illusion that they are perfect people. So those qualities I see as an outside observer, that appearance they possess of having it all together, it seems to disappear when they become a human being.

Lately I've been thinking about endings. We just finished Spring Break and the semester is in its later weeks. I finally got closure to a television show I've been watching in a social lounge most of my college career, but I won't spoil it for anyone that wants to see it. Here is the thing about endings, they are inevitable. Everything ends. So at the end of the school year I'm going to leave the dorm I've lived in for the past two years and go home. The people that I see daily will be people I see weekly and then maybe monthly and then maybe for an awkward ten minute talk while in passing outside of the library. I've seen it happen with the friends I kept in high school. But, this time it seems different. So back to the television show, just as I was thinking about this, a main character quote appeared, "And that's how it goes kids. The friends, neighbors, drinking buddies and partners in crime you love so much when you're young, as the years go by, you just lose touch. You will be shocked, kids, when you discover how easy it is in life to part ways with people forever. That's why, when you find someone you want to keep around, you do something about it."

If there is lesson I've heard about feelings from all the feel-y people I've met the last two years, it's we all seem to have the same ones. We're all afraid of the same things. The future is as daunting to the people that appear to have it all together as it is to the one's that have more visible flaws. We all worry about what people think about us, and if we're doing the right thing with our lives. Fear, anxiety, loneliness, they're universal. But here is the thing, we're all going to be okay, and those intimidating people are scared just as shitless, the people that appear to be important now will come and go, ends will always happen, and life will continue go on.

There's my two cents for the night. And for all who were wondering there is a UAPatelFamily Twitter and the password isn't uberpatel. April (belated) Fools, Mom! Your children love you enough to prank you.

Over and out,

Noelle

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Ordinary People

I have this habit of getting into semi philosophical conversations with my roommate. What makes us the same? What makes us different? I feel like we're all drones just waiting to all do the exact same things. I know we all have differences and obviously everyone isn't identical, but around here it seems like we all have the same goals. Get through school, get a job, have a family, live comfortably.  I don't know, maybe I am wrong. I feel like I spend my entire life in a bubble. I don't really know much beyond where I've grown up. I guess I need the time and experience to grow up, but it's so hard to do when there is the expectation to be like everyone else. Along with the expectation to be like everyone else comes the expectation of being different than everyone too. You have to be the best at being the same. Everyone's goal is to stand out so they can get the things that everyone wants. Wanting to be different makes everyone the same. 

With the nice weather we've had the last couple days, nightwalks have reemerged. One of my favorite things to do is just walk around Akron. It's nice to get out and stretch your legs and enjoy good company. The best talks and decision making happen at 2 am, and the experiences I remember the most are always simple things like car rides and walks around Akron in the middle of night.

Last night I went on a nightwalk where the topics for discussion were how well do we actually know each other, which I talked a bit about in a previous post, and how to socially interact with people with feelings. I've been mentally piecing together a guide to social cues since I've been at college.  I somehow got with a group of people who enjoy both feelings and touching, two things that are not my forte.

So what I have so far:

1. When someone is crying, you are expected to hug them, and apparently back rubbing is key.

2. If they look like they're about to cry, don't hug them yet, because then they will immediately start to cry even if they were holding it in efficiently.

3. When someone tells you they love you, don't say thank you, even awkward staring seems to be less awkward than a thank you.

4. When someone climbs into their bed and glares at you, it means you need to leave, they want to sleep.

5. Don't take insults personally, they're usually said out of love (or they are when I say them)

6. Don't be cocky when you do something well, but don't make people feel bad for being good at something either.

7. When someone puts themselves down, they're fishing for a compliment. (I don't like this one but it's a pretty well followed)

8. Everyone has a different approach to getting them to communicate when they are sad, they're usually not too difficult to figure out though. 

And of course there is always time for an existential crisis. No semester is complete without a test grade to make me question my entire existence. Well, I was already questioning it, because I sort of hit a moment of I need to figure out my life a few weeks ago, but something about grades always seems to mess with my head. I think they do that to everyone though. But yeah, why am I here? The never ending question...

I recently acquired a Polaroid camera. Unbeknownst to me, film is very, very expensive. Each picture is about $3. But it's cool that you get one shot, not like digital photos where I have a bunch retakes. You get what you get, and they all look so very 1970s.

Also another funny story, I may have made a joke about my university's campus food challenge, and dining services wants to give me a free meal and apologize. I may take them up on it. I'm thinking of making a list of grievances, so anyone with complaints, shoot me an email.

~Noelle

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