Okay, I know I said that I would not be around as often because I lost my computer (see previous posts). I guess that's not necessarily true. Whereas before, I would sit down at the computer and find it impossible to think of anything worth writing, now that I have to section out time to find a computer to use, I have everything to write about! And the funny thing is, it's not really anything at all that I'm telling you half the time. All I'm telling you is my thoughts, and isn't that why I started a blog in the first place?
I seem to have a hard time just saying these things aloud to people. I don't know why. Partially, what I have to say, no one else I know shares an interest. That was one of the major reasons I started a blog. The people I meet in everyday life, while people in themselves worthy of my time, don't share many of my interests, passions, and points of view. That's okay, but online, there are tons of people who do. Perhaps the people who blog all think the same way and so share similar interests. ...I'm sure there are studies about that I could look up.
The other reason I don't share my thoughts out loud like I do on a blog is that very few people are willing to just listen to you ramble on about one topic. And after a while, even if they're listening to you, you begin to feel foolish with your mouth flapping so much. But writers everywhere know how much fun it is to write on and on about one thing, and if they're good writers, they can make that one thing interesting until they're done talking about it. And if they succeed in making it interesting, readers will read with baited breath and drool over every word because it's just so beautiful, what you've written there about just one thing. But spoken words so rarely have the same effect. I wonder why.
And then you get into the area of sharing words effortlessly through online networks, and you wonder how it's different than any other means of communicating. Because it is, you know. Many people find it tedious and cumbersome to read a lengthy work on a computer. I know I do, and so does my father. We both like to print out long documents -- I know, not "green", but much better for the eyes. I love reading other blogs -- poetic posts, posts about Jane Austen, posts about libraries and books -- but if you type in a nice long poem, do you know what the chances are that I'll read all of it? Even some of it? I'm pretty sure such odds are technically incalculable because it's entirely dependent on unpredictable human behavior; but if you judge by my past record, I'd say you have a very slim chance of getting me to read thick paragraphs and long stories online.
So why is my format so like that which displeases me? Because I'm a writer! Gosh sakes, I have to write like this. Paragraphs are a writer's bread and butter. They are the grammar of literature, as my Communications textbook would say. The format of online works may eventually solidify into a definable form, but right now, it's all over the place; and I still write in standard form much of the time.
There's also the feel of words on a computer. An email someone sends me has a completely different effect on me than the letter they send me (and I've had a lot of recent experience). Perhaps its because we subconsciously know that it took more time and effort to write a letter than to pick up the phone or shoot an email. People say that all the time; but I know that I consider anything handwritten to have much more substance, in my mind, than spoken words, or even typed words. We all act on the assumption that anything written down is worth saying -- look at the pages and pages of comment wars on YouTube. Some people say something in their comment that other people take way too seriously. Is it just the lack of body language? I think it's more than that. And I don't know about other people, but I know that words on a page mean so much more to me than words on the screen. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." I'd rather read it in a book than on a screen, wouldn't you? I think we all have the mentality that anything written down is worth the time taken; but people say just anything. (And besides that, emails and spoken conversations can be as long or short as you need; but books and letters have to fill up pages.)
I think the written word is naked. You can't dress it up with elaborate body language or anything to hide the deep feeling behind them. You don't write anything that could be construed to mean more than it does. And for some reason, the words on a computer screen are hidden, are masked, are dressed up. But words on a piece of paper just aren't. Perhaps it's because the online atmosphere has a kind of "anyone could have written this" kind of feeling. No one has to know it's you. If your relatives and friends read the stuff you write online, it's a little more personal and you're a little more guarded; but generally, the Internet lacks credibility. It isn't taken too seriously. A lot of people sort of expect that the real person behind the words isn't quite like the words themselves (even though a lot of people don't question the content).
But when I get a letter from a relative, even though the content is more personal than anything we'd say aloud, I know that it's the real deal. They aren't just saying that; because they're laying themselves open to me in their writing. (Again, a letter generally has to be more than a greeting and a "hope you're well", unlike an email, which can be just that.)
Sometimes I treat my blog a little bit more like a private journal than I should. But I'm not afraid of what I tell you here because I don't know you. When I hear that someone I know has actually looked at my blog recently, I feverishly go through to see that I didn't write anything I don't want them to know. And why should I? But I don't really expect to be held accountable for what I say online -- not until someone I know starts watching, and then I hold back just a bit, depending on the reputation I have with that person.
So perhaps the reason that spoken words so rarely have the same effect as written words is because the former aren't naked, like words written down on paper. So many written things are the author's soul made bare; so many spoken things are the dressed up outer shells we make for ourselves.
I watched 'The Big Bang Theory' premier last night -- did you?
It was a wonderful moment in my week. Not because it was a wonderful episode from a wonderful TV show (because it wasn't), but because I sat alone in a dimly lit room, curled up in a comfy chair with my Latin vocabulary, and watched a TV show that I would never have been permitted to watch at home (it just couldn't have been permitted given the setting. No one in my family watches modern sitcoms. We don't have the capability, for the most part, and we don't care. Sitcoms are awful exaggerations most of the time, and aren't terribly worth the time wasted. Therefore, in a Christian family with young ones still to worry about, I never could have watched 'The Big Bang Theory' on TV. Oh, but I did last night!).
Would it have been nice to watch it with someone? Well, I don't know about that. Even though I find myself relating to the "nerdiness" at times, it's not that great a show. I've watched countless funny clips of the show on YouTube, and then I watched the half dozen full episodes available on the CBS Big Bang website. They didn't add a whole lot of meat to what I'd already seen. What I saw was what you get. There are a few lines that were left out of each uploaded clip because they weren't punchlines; but otherwise -- the discontinuity, the choppy cutting from one scene to the next and back -- it doesn't improve much by watching the whole. (And the Raj story is getting just a little bit old, and you just can't take his issues seriously anymore.) So do I wish I'd shared the experience with a friend? Not necessarily. I enjoy sharing great works of literature, fantastic movies, hysterical jokes, references we both understand; but a mediocre (albeit, sometimes funny) TV show? Not necessarily.
Even so, the experience was, for a reason I don't understand, the most memorable moment of the week. The close second was getting good grades on all my tests and my paper this week.
And with that, it's Friday! All my classes are over and the weekend is ahead! What will I do? For starters, I might actually join the Student's for Life outside a clinic this Saturday, if after taking a good look at my homework, I determine I have the time.
Forgive me if this entry is a little hard to follow. I'm kind of tired and I feel like I'm not making sense. Not to mention that every time I check a sentence I just wrote, I realize that I left out a word.
A few closing thoughts:
The campus here is beautiful,
C.S. Lewis is awesome,
and learning is the most exciting thing in the world,
One of the worst things about college is having nothing to do but study. That is especially true in Steubenville, Ohio, where, even if I had a car, there is no place to go. I think the nearest big city is Pittsburgh about half-an-hour away. But I'm not talking about plays and operas and sports and amusement parks, because there are plenty of those at most colleges. In fact, in the first few weeks here, I was beginning to worry that I'd fill my time up with too many of the activities around here.
But I can't work in my garden, I can't take the dog for a walk, and can't play with the kitten, I can't snuggle with the rabbit. I can't make dinner, bake big pies, rake leaves, carve pumpkins, or clean the house. Even if I found outlets to do these things, it wouldn't be the same. I'm not with the people who are so dear to me.
Oh, sure, there are plenty of new memories to be made here. The library, for example, is incredible. It's everything I wish our library back home could be. It's modern, and not particularly romantic. Then you climb the stairs and walk through row upon row, column after column of books -- many of them old and hardbound. Oh, how my heart aches to read them all!
There are plenty of nooks on campus to curl up in, and the Piazza dei Sancti is a beautiful place to sit on a sunny day and feel the breeze on your neck as you read. Sitting under the trees is a perk. There are study lounges and comfy couches in common rooms, and even a fireplace in my dormitory, although I don't know the rules about its use.
You know something though? I don't feel like I've suddenly "grown up", like I had expected to. I wasn't sure why, at first, but even though I'm on my own now, here at college, I don't feel like I'm any more an adult than if I had continued to stay home. I don't feel "free", as some people claim to feel. I recently realized why. My life is not in my hands, no more than it has been in a long time -- say, since I got my driver's license, anyway. Here there are advisers and teachers and consultants and directors and food service and restrictions -- and no car. You can't go where you want to go when you want to go how you want to go. At college, you're actually severely limited unless you want to be dropped like a hot potato. There just aren't many options.
Of course, you could choose to act immature and fail to handle yourself like the adult you have supposedly now become, and perhaps that's why some people feel like they're free in college. But I came here from a homeschooling background, and a few years ago, I got a driver's license and was able to drive myself to my dance and music lessons, as well as my grandparents' houses over an hour away, and to my SAT, and to my brother's soccer games, and to daily Mass. I started school when I wanted to, and worked it around other activities as needed. I lived around my interactions with other people. Now my interactions with other people live around when college (studying, class, and other duties) allows.
One thing they really stress here is that our vocation as students here is to be students. We are called to work hard at our education and get good grades. We have to make sacrifices in order to live up to the expectations. That's all well and good, and I agree, but it's such a different way of life than I'm used to. I can get used to sharing a room with a stranger, I can get used to going to events by myself or actively seeking out people to go with, and I can get used to deadlines -- easy. But I can't get used to living my life around the parameters set for me. It wasn't that there aren't expectations to be met in homeschooling, because you ask any parent and they'll tell you they want their kids to learn and do well, but I was the one who ultimately set those expectations, especially in the last couple years of high school. I memorized that poem if I wanted to, I learned definitions either generally or by heart by my decision, and I took tests when I felt I understood the concept. Now I understand the concept when there are tests or else.
I don't object to the standardized format of collective schooling, but I do miss the flexibility of home. The highlight of my week is 'Ministry to Moms' when I go to a home nearby and sort of join their family for the afternoon. I love taking care of the kids and helping out with chores and sitting around the table with a family and sharing the day together. Maybe college life will feel like that eventually, but right now, I wish I was home.
My laptop recently lost its hard drive, I'm sorry to say, which means I have less access to a computer. While there are plenty of public access computers on campus, I don't feel comfortable spending lots of time blogging or surfing YouTube while I'm on them, so please be aware that I will not be on as often. You may have already noticed my extended absence.
That's all I have time for right now, but I hope to give you a more detailed update soon.
I finally have my first English assignment. It's really fun to analyze my writing as I go along, get better, and read material that pertains to my weaknesses, but I know that after all the hard work is done, the quality won't nearly match the time and effort spent on it. Rather, it won't meet my expectations. I'm just not good enough yet.
But that's the whole point of this class! I can't wait to get better. And someday in the future, I'm be able to take the fiction writing course, which will be so much fun! And so informative and helpful. The hard part will be the growing and improving I'll need to do, but I can do it.
You wouldn't know, reading this post, that I'm a decent writer. Let's face it, my grammar is all over the place. But this is what you call "informal writing". Very informal writing. It's like a diary. Sometimes I treat it like it is, which is not wise.
Today I compressed a whole lot of files. With my music videos, photos, and scant collection of music, as well as many word files, I occasionally get "running out of room" messages. Then I delete files that I don't need, move files on to my flash drive, and, now that I understand how to compress files, compress large groups of rarely used files.
But I must go. In five minutes, I'm meeting with a friend to see a sacred music concert. I love sacred music, and I've sung a little of it a couple times. It's so beautiful, mystical, and powerful.
Adults are always telling us, the younger generation, "Don't you ever forget." The day America's security was attacked was one of the worst days in history, no doubt. It wasn't war. It wasn't mob action. It wasn't rebellion, or an underground control system, silently manipulating America. It was a massacre of many, many innocent lives. Innocent because they could not defend themselves and they had not in any way personally threatened their killers. No one saw it coming, and you hear all the time about people who, only through the grace of God, made it out alive, and how some lost their lives going in to save others, but also how many more were killed suddenly and dramatically on that otherwise ordinary day in September. And the older, wiser generation tells us never to forget.
For me, it was first a process of learning. In 2001, I would have been about seven years old. I didn't know at the time that it had happened. Nor, later, when the memorial day came around year after year, I didn't realize that it had occurred during my lifetime. I encourage you not to blame my parents for "over sheltering me", for ironically, it wasn't until after I was home-schooled that I began to see the world beyond my front door. I thought 9/11 was something that had happened years in the past, like WWII. The truth probably didn't occur to me until I was in my teens, and even then, I didn't understand it.
It was history. It had happened. Like war for many people, it's something that happens, and it's too bad, but what can be done about it? 9/11 was another history lesson. It was like the Revolution, the Civil War, and any other event that had happened in history. What did it matter that more men died somewhere than in all the wars in Asia? It had happened so long ago, it had nothing to do with me, I spit back the information on a sheet of paper, and that was that. And this isn't a problem confined to my own sympathies, I know. There are numerous stories, gruesome, that make some people break down in tears while others shake it off their backs. Those sort of things come and go, and to an ignorant child like I was, death didn't mean very much.
Now I know what that means. In a world ravaged with abortion and impending religious restrictions, I face the possibility of terror for my life and the life of those around me. In a few years, I could lose everything and everyone that I love and I need for a feeling of security. And then I remember that this is exactly what is going on all over the world, and has happened, and will happen; and I pray it won't come in my time. "Please, God, don't bring this test before me." I wish I could pray for an hour before the Blessed Sacrament and make everything right, but "so do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that's been given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil." From there, it is only a small step to understanding the horror of 9/11.
I understand all this, but what are adults telling us when they say "never forget"? Some may mean that they want us to take up the pitchforks of revenge, but I have a great respect for the adults who have told me never to forget. They are the kind of people who advocate forgiveness, and they don't promote war or anything like that. So I think they are trying to say "never forget, because it was horrible". Is it just classic worrying about the future generation? For what about Pearl Harbor? What about the Civil War? What about the various persecutions that drove some of our ancestors here? We never hear them mentioned. I think the adults in our lives are trying to express to us their feelings and memories about 9/11. It's the only logical motivation I have come to, and it makes sense. If you tell someone to "never forget" some great event, it's usually something you have deep feelings about. I don't think it's a phrase that means "take action"; I think it means "please don't forget what brought my generation to its knees".
I may have said something like this last year, for it seems that many lessons have to be learned twice, but I think I focused more on the respect-for-life aspect in last year's entry. Last year, Osama bin Laden was killed, and I was disturbed by the national reaction. Looking over it with sympathetic eye, I can understand, but my natural reaction to the man's death was sorrow. It is another soul we cannot not save, another life we could not touch, another man whose life was wasted for evil. It was a relevant topic for 9/11.
Today, I want to once again remind you to remember all the deaths of the world, especially the ones that were most unfair – the persecutions, and attacks on women and children for example – and pray fervently for world peace.
"Say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and the end of the war."
"I want you ... to continue to pray the Rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, because only she can help you."
"You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father."
"Without prayer there is no peace. Therefore, dear children, I urge you to pray for peace before the Cross."
The end of the world, we know, will not come smoothly, but let our prayers, to the best of our ability, combat the evil done and soothe our Savior's bleeding heart. Let us never forget the evil and sorrow of 9/11, and yet it is not the worst atrocity to have ever happened. Let us pray the horrors that have built up in the eastern hemisphere will not come find their home in America.
At what point does a person gain their rights? If a person survives an abortion, at what point were they protected by right? Please click on the link above to watch three videos about the story of an abortion survivor. Even if you think abortion is wrong, seeing and hearing an abortion survivor really hits it home. It's truly incredible. Can you imagine finding out that someone you love tried to kill you?
Lately I've really aspired to the lofty title of "nerd". As "Supplementing Your Summer" should have revealed to you, I tend to admire certain people, become fascinated by them, and then want to be like them. Well.... Anyway, the evidence is not conclusive. I like studying and so on. What's to say that The Big Bang Theory has anything to do with it?
You know, it was the same thing when I was a kid. Unpopular and impressed by boys, I wanted so bad to be a tomboy. I told myself I was. I was heartbroken when my mother told me I wasn't.
Well, so what if I'm a nerd? I'm unsociable and like to read, learn, and work hard. I like knowing tidbits of information about which no one else cares and which would almost certainly rarely come in handy. I could very well be a nerd. A person doesn't have to be a genius to be a nerd, nor unattractive, nor unstylish. I suppose one could say that a nerd is someone who isn't "up to date" on the culture. Certainly, I don't really dress like many of the other freshman, but there are many styles here, so I don't really stand out. I used to be really out of style, but I've learned. Maybe I'm like Sam Sparks.
Listen to me – trying to convince myself that I'm a nerd. The truth is "nerd" isn't really defineddefinitively, and so I could be a nerd as far as the parameters stipulate: "an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person, esp: one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits". Now, I'm not a genius, per se – not yet.... *insertevilcackle*
Okay, well, if I'm going to be a genius, I better get back to studying!
~Meggy
P.S. I'm sorry if I've been boring lately. Since coming to college, things have changed. I may be in a writer's block, or it may be that keeping up a blog for my family has been draining my creative juices. I just don't seem to have it in me to write entries like the ones I used to. Although, if you look back, it has been sometime since I've written like I used to. Perhaps I've grown up. I also have an unforeseen problem, as I try to figure out just how much of my real life I want to share. When I was home schooled and living at home, there were precious few people I could compromise and few important events in my life that I should double think about sharing. I was at a stand still, in a matter of speaking. Nothing was changing very much unless it was intellectual. Temporal changes are a little more delicate. Furthermore, writing about my classes for my family makes it boring to write about for you guys, but I write in a different tone for my family than I do for you so I can't just cut and paste. All the same, I am unwilling to give up on this blog, so don't go away! I'll still be around. Being a nerd, as we have now established, means that I have urges that must be taken care of – such as discussing Star Trek – which just can't be satisfied anywhere else!
