Surprised!! ...again!

Friday, January 08, 2010 11:51 PM

Yeah, that’s right. I’m in on a Friday night, but do you know what? I’m actually just having an outstanding Friday night. If you looked at this week from Monday or even from Wednesday, you would have expected that things would be much different. I got back on Sunday from Moshi and not only had a paper due on Tuesday, but at least one more test on Thursday. Not only that, I was just disappointed with the lot that I came back to. I kept thinking “at least we’ll be gone to Zanzibar on the weekend… I have something to look forward to,” but even that changed. On Sunday I learn that my paper isn’t due until a week later. On Monday, I learn that we’re not actually going to Zanzibar until the weekend after, but that’s cool because I’ve got my paper due on Monday now anyway so I have the weekend to work on it here (and the weather was awful today anyway for going to an island known for its beaches.) I think it was Monday afternoon or maybe it was Tuesday now that I look back at the last blog that I typed up that I realize something else that really should be devastating me right now but for some reason isn’t. I’m not sure that I’m ready to share on that but I will eventually. It’s something that I’m still trying to figure out really and I do like to post the whole thought process on here so that it’s clear to me and to you how change is going on in my mind and in my mind but it’s just too soon right now. I think you’ll be able to tell that there’s been some change though and I’ll probably talk about it later so don’t fret.

Tuesday I also found out that my major paper for my DS 615 (Gender and Socioeconomic Development… yeah it’s a grad course… I don’t know what I was thinking…) is actually due one week from that day. Not only that, but it’s supposed to be like 20-25 pages which seems impossible at this university because it has the worst system for researching you can imagine. At this point I started to feel a little dizzy and it was all just a little much. I was supposed to have maybe 30 pages to write by next Tuesday as well as two tests (I found out about another one on Monday) to do on Thursday and Friday of the current week which would prevent me from even starting those papers for a little bit of time. I was lucky that it was too much to handle and I passed the panic mode going straight into resignation to the impossibility of it all. Wednesday, I study and Thursday comes test time #1. The teacher shows up almost 15 minutes late, says the test will be next Thursday; we all laugh thinking it’s a joke; he starts lecturing about conflicts in Africa. I had to just laugh about this because where else does this kind of thing happen. I was peeved because I was actually prepared and I did so at the expense of being well-prepared for my huge Swahili in-class essay the next day but I’m trying not to complain this year so I just had to shake my head and keep on trucking.

One notable while we’re on the topic of New Year’s resolutions is that I have made progress on one of them. My friend Elise here actually told me that I am a good friend on Wednesday… (I’m only getting better.)

Thursday comes and we have our DS 615 discussion hour where we find out that apparently it’s just standard practice to hand out a paper with the topics on it here and then the students just know that they have two weeks to write 20+ pages about one of them. No big, right? Fortunately they extended it another week so I have one more week to stress about this thing and hopefully turn in something decent. I’ll be honest, I can’t recall the last time I had to write a paper this long.

Friday morning is our Kiswahili assignment. I think it’s like 30% of our grade which is pretty major, especially when you were as unprepared as I was. I’ve been so confused about how all of the grading is here and the different expectations that my goal really is just to pass. I’m sorry if that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s true. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to try as hard as I can, but this is just incredibly challenging and I’ll be satisfied so long as I get a D or above in all my classes. I got a little lucky in the way that the topic was drawn in our class though and I wrote what probably wasn’t enough, but was plenty of space to embarrass myself. Whatever. It’s over and done. Dylan and I went to get a beer just to put a cap on the week. It was necessary. It was only one. I won’t tell you what time of the day it was.

I’m just happy right now because I’m actually getting things done around here and I’m able to appreciate the little things like I should have been this whole time. Maybe I’ve just been too distracted but I think a lot of those are gone now. It doesn’t seem like everything’s going my way right now and usually I might not feel great about a lot of these things, but I am just in a good place and I’m very happy about the things that are going well. I appreciate that we can cram six people into one cab so long as we’re willing to pay him more for risking the potential police trouble. I appreciate that even after that, the 45 minute ride that was mostly just a traffic jam still only cost us about $15 USD that was split between the six of us. I like that I’m living in a country where they drive on the left side of the road. I don’t know why I haven’t been more fascinated by that yet but it’s actually just really cool to be here right now. I want to stay for a long time.

On that note, I also have to say that I like that now that I’ve finally got my internship application filled out, scanned and ready to email back home, it was completely awesome to open my email and see that I have an email from the guy who’s trying to set me up saying that he has the green light from the organization. They are ready and willing to have an intern with them in spring term so all that has to happen now is that all of my application things clear. I think I may have found myself some more time to stay here. I feel very fortunate to have such luck here (though this isn’t sealed yet) and different opportunities. I’ve made my mistakes with this program and it’s too bad to have to cut my losses and leave but I think it’s only prepared me more for this internship where I will not falter like I did before. I don’t want to write too much about this because I still have about two weeks before I’ll know if I get it or not, but if I get this second-chance then I can guarantee that I will make the most of it.

I’m incredibly busy lately and I’m surprised I was able to type this out tonight. Sorry it’s so scatterbrained but I just feel like there are some things I’d like to get out there while they’re still fresh and share some good news on here for once. I’m still moving, now more than ever. I don’t always know what I’m doing, but I know that I am doing something. It looks like things are starting to fall into place right now and it’s about damn time. I’ve worked too hard and I’m ready for things to start going right. Even now when it seems like a lot things are not how I would have wanted them to be one week ago, I can’t deny that I feel happy and just in a better state mentally than before.

Cheers.

(EDIT: I forgot to mention that while I was in on a Friday night, I actually knocked out two pages of one of my papers which will probably rank as one of my most productive Friday nights ever, academically speaking. I also realized last night that John Lennon is my favorite sociologist. Also, I realized that lately my blog has been mostly just a collection of random things that I just start writing instead of actual thought-out stories or something and I’m not totally sure why this is but I hope it’s alright.)