DeCals to take before I graduate…

• Archery
• Miyazaki
• Web Design
• Animation

Why is college only four years long? How am I (nearly) already done with three semesters? Time passes too quickly :(

Hurrah: showered and done with my graphic design project! And somehow everything is already packed…so all that’s left to do is to send out a last email, import some photos from the past two days, and go to sleep.

And just a quick shout-out to my big brother—congratulations on your master’s degree! I will never admit this out loud, but since you creep on my Tumblr once in a while and the chances of you seeing this (and I kind of want you to see this, kind of not) is like 5%, I will say it: I am really proud of you, and I look up to you a lot. I’m really blessed to have an older sibling like you. I complain a lot about you being too smart and most days I don’t understand how you think (remember when your friend from Yale came over? You guys were just chatting very colloquially and even then I didn’t understand half the English that was being exchanged), but deep down, I really do love you. I’m glad we all get to go to China and spend some time together before you become a real, working adult (as you say, “contributor to society”).

And Stanford, thank you for treating my brother so well. There have been ups and downs, but today during general commencement, I was really touched by the energy and community and just overall, sheer brightness of everyone in the Stadium. I can’t imagine myself anywhere but Berkeley, but there is no doubt that Palo Alto is a place I love dearly and will miss visiting. Of all the colleges in the nation, you are the one I respect the most. There’s some unattainable quality about you that always strikes me with awe…the people you churn out are not corner-cutters, not second tier in the least. You are not a grade inflator, you don’t have that quintessential ivy background that helped pushed you into acknowledgement; you are hard work and dedication, innovation and cutting-edge in all senses of the word. I don’t admit this often either, but there is a part of me that never wanted, never wants to be a part of your community because it’s something sacred to me and I don’t think I would ever deserve it (nor could I deal with it if it ever happened, haha), but my dad nudged me today and said, “Grad school?”, and all I could think about is what a blessing that would be if it ever came down to it.

And God…you know my thanks. You are the source of all of this. All the blessing I feel, all the goodness in my life. Thank you for leading me thus far, and thank you for that promise of always being there in the future.

Next adventure: China. Laters, friends :)

Major in Economics, double minor in French and Chinese.

It’s perfect—quenches my language thirst, desire to be fluent in Chinese again, practical job criteria, and leaves me with a bit of room for flexibility in scheduling and taking a psych/another philosophy/a religion/another language (hehe)/a history/an English course here or there. And if I could take one more summer course after this year, which is plausible, it would be even more perfect.

Why didn’t I think of this before?

(Then again, I say that every time I figure out a new possible combination. But I feel pretty good about this one. Which I also say every time I decide on a different, slightly modified path; but really.)

Now to see if I can stick with it…which will depend on my performance in Chinese this fall. But if that fails, I can always pick up a linguistics minor or some other language or just play around with more humanities classes and take more Econ electives. And of course, there’s always the option of picking art back up, now that I can basically already declare. And if not, I know I’ll still be doing art, photo, and video projects throughout the next few years, so I won’t lose that aspect of me.

Oh, exciting!! Must call the parents and see what they think. I know they’re not too keen on Chinese, but there’s no way they’d be totally opposed to it, right? After all, it’s my heritage.

And now, time for some sleep. Probably not going to wake up in time to run tomorrow, but that’s okay. I feel a bit more at ease now that I have something tentatively decided on (again). And it finally feels like I’ve done at least one productive thing tonight. Content :).

On this exact day last year, at almost this exact time, on that random Friday afternoon when I was curled up in bed and ready to take a catnap before heading off to youth group…I got my acceptance letter to Cal.

Wow.

Jeremiah 29:11.

Vulgarity is so repulsive. So unattractive.

Majors I have seriously considered (at Cal):

• Economics
• Practice of Art
• French
• Linguistics 

Other majors other people have mistaken/thought of me as:

• English
• Public Policy
• Legal Studies
• History (and Art History)

As a J, and as someone who has planned the courses of my life in various directions, this comes across to me as a particularly uncharacteristic disconnect. Between what people usually think I am and what I actually picture myself as, I lose my mind somewhere in the gap. I don’t know what it suggests, about me or about others’ perception of me or what aura I give off, but I do believe that in this facet, friends and third-party observers generally have my best interest in mind more than I do…mostly since my desires generally stem from wanting to please others (my parents in particular). Not sure what to do at this point—I feel like I was set on a path, but the more I explore, the less sure I am. It’s not such a crisis, but it’s difficult for me to analyze what is plausible and what I want for myself. I wish there was more time.

BUT in the meantime, must focus on econ…

First order of business: my paper is done and was just delivered with love! Nice. My stress levels have dropped by 300%. Time to relax for a few hours…before the next wave of studying commences.

Second order of business: I just witnessed the first college application/early result status on Facebook. I’m really overwhelmed, among other emotions. Has it really been a year already? A year since I was firm that my planned future was the perfect one, a year since everything I had “worked for” was single-handedly crushed?

It’s unfair to judge against experiences you’ve never had. It’s impossible, really. Maybe my current life would be complete crap in comparison to if I had gotten into Brown. But maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe, and in my now-humbled opinion, I didn’t know best. Maybe this has always been best.

It’s time to let go.

Being able to sing whenever I want to.

I never really embraced this freedom, but it’s so true that in college, there is hardly an instance in my normal day-to-day life where suddenly breaking out into song is appropriate—and let me tell you, I have developed a problem where I can’t not sing if I’m listening to music or if I walk by Walgreens and something is playing or if a song just randomly crosses my mind.

If I’m in my dorm room, my roommate is there and I can’t disturb her (and when she isn’t, she always happens to walk in while I’m belting something…and the neighbors can also hear). If I’m in the bathroom, there are other people showering and shaving and going about their own business, which likewise makes it inappropriate. If I’m walking? Well, I have yet to experience a moment when I’m not surrounded by at least a few of the 35,000+ Berkeley students, and I am more than positive that none of them would appreciate my voice intruding their trek to/fro class. And if I’m in the library singing, that has never been acceptable in the first place. Sad.

I don’t even particularly like hearing myself sing, I just want to. Thus this tops my list of things I’m going to take full advantage of this during winter break (hugging Abu is up there, too) and when I move into an apartment.

Oh, vocal chords, we never got very far in technique, but I do miss you so.

And Anna Molly by Incubus is currently playing…it hurts my gut to restrain the inner Little Mermaid that lives within me. Crying on the inside, really.

This is probably my first time feeling (relatively) homesick since entering college. I just went through a year’s worth of photos on Facebook and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I sort of miss wearing a polo every day and being a senior and knowing exactly how the whole high school thing worked; not worrying about unfamiliarity but basking in comfort.

I’m also starting to grasp how lavished I am at home—not necessarily only with material things, but just the area I grew up in. Berkeley has suburbs, sure, but the homes here are tiny tiny tiny…yet probably cost more than ours…and the whole lifestyle is different. Public transport is nonexistent back at home, and going out to eat/snack constantly as a means of hanging out is fairly unheard of. I don’t think I prefer either, but it makes me think about Delaware, a lot.

And I miss my dog, likely more than anything else. It’s weird and slightly wrong that I miss him more than my parents, but I am in contact with my parents and not with him, if that justifies anything? Whenever I’m sitting on the floor at the seniors’ apartments, I almost expect Abu to come running out from the next room and charge into my right arm, aggressively pushing it around until I let him have his way and scratch his head.

And the people. I miss my lovely little youth group children, who are growing up so quick—when did H and K and everyone start high school?!! I still feel like a mommy to them, which is so random and doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but I miss all the younger faces. Miss knowing how to give them advice and knowing how to handle all the messy situations. Here, I’m just starting to learn the fastest routes to class and still forget the time that my architecture seminar starts…heh.

But I guess I do love the varying schedule I have here. Mondays, I have decided, are the most calm/lethargic. I wake up an hour earlier than normal days, run to my History of Art discussion, run to French, take a lunch break, run to my Art lecture and sleep through it (or, as of late, run home and take a nap), and then run to my Art studio, where we sit and watch ready-made films and share ideas for projects and fall asleep while Warhol’s The Kiss plays for eight minutes and then go back to the dorm. Talk a bit, nap a bit, skip dinner, and browse Facebook for hours. Literally nothing gets done, but since it’s the beginning of the week, it all seems okay.

But now it’s 11:50pm and I still haven’t done any work and I’m nervous as heck for tomorrow, when I have to shoot my first sports feature for the newspaper, and have to sit through another grueling History of Art lecture and pretend to attentively take notes…

It helps to take things a day at a time. If I didn’t, I think I’d be utterly swept away by Berkeley. Still, I feel lucky to be here every day. Hopefully I can make the best of it.