Una vida imaginaria

This week's PostSecret makes me wonder if it wasn't an enraged parent after all:
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Also, now I really wonder who it was, because odds are I know them!

My blog ADD has gotten worse.

On the plus side, I think I'll actually stick with this one for awhile:

http://scripts.mit.edu/~lnicks/blog/

I hate checking for your grades in college, because you never even know if they're going to be there. In high school, grades were due when they were due and even in the rare cases that you didn't have a pretty good idea of what you were getting, you knew that you'd open the envelope and see them all there, process it, and then move on with your life. Getting your grades in college is like this week-long adventure with WebSIS where you never know when a grade will be posted and what's going to pop out at you next.

Given the sheer hideousness of this semester, I was more anxious than usual to check my grades. I remember navigating through the pages ("for students," "academic record," and pausing with the cursor hovering over "grade report"), thinking, "Do I really want to look at this now?" Then I figured that if I looked now I'd be disappointed even if I knew what was coming, but if I didn't I'd just be antsy all day wondering if my grade had been posted and would waste a bunch of time logging into and out of WebSIS without ever acquiring the courage to actually look at my grades. So I opened my grade report and scrolled down, and there it was- a big, fat D next to 2.004.

I ran around the floor screaming in sheer joy for the next 15 minutes. It was *awesome.* I was so, so sure that I had failed. And I would have been okay with that, except that it would have screwed up like my whole schedule from here on out because 004 is a prereq for like everything else. So when I found out that I'd managed to pull a (barely) passing grade out of God Knows Where, I immediately ran across the floor, barged into David's room where Ruth and Adelaide were studying (don't ask, I don't know) and breathlessly told them the news. They both gave me congratulatory hugs. =)

None of my other grades have been posted, but I know I'll do fine in 24.900 and if I get below a C in 2.007 I will be quite unpleasantly shocked. I already got an email from my advisor asking to meet me before the faculty "who should we send to the CAP this semester?" meeting, which was actually awesome. I love my advisor- I was skeptical about him at first, but here's the email he sent me:

Laura,

It seems to me that your 2.004 grade is not good. So, there is a possibility
that I have to defend you at the department grades meeting to avoid a
warning situation.

Can we meet tomorrow or Friday? If it does not work for you, Tuesday and
Wednesday will be OK to me.

In case you have already left for your home town or somewhere nice place,
please e-mail me detail information as to your academic performance, why it
did not go well, and any other issues that I need to know.

We sometimes face a tough situation, but we can work out. Let's get
together.

(If you're wondering about the sometimes odd sentence constructions, he's Japanese.) In other words, "Hey, I'm on your side!"

I'm just glad this semester is finally over. It took me like three whole days to get over it, too. I figured that once I finished the 2.004 final it would be like immediate relief, but it wasn't. It took quite awhile to wind down from all the stress. I felt bad having to continually explain and apologize for my crankiness to my friends, even after I was completely done with the term.

Then I came home on Thursday and went to the church fair, where I helped my high school youth group run the face painting booth.

Then the very first thing to happen in my first full day at home was that we had to put the family dog to sleep. On Thursday night my mom told me how he'd been getting worse and worse and it would probably be the last time I'd see him. Then Friday morning my sister woke me up around about 7 and told me to get up to say goodbye because my mom was calling the vet right then because he couldn't even get up anymore. It turns out the vet wasn't able to make it over until around noon, so my mom and sister (who stayed home from work and school) and I just sat around the kitchen all morning crying.

I mean, the dog was pretty old (13 years, in fact), had lived a good long life, and was in a lot of pain and all that. He was half deaf and very arthritic in his hind legs and kept falling trying to get into and out of the house lately (there are three steps between the kitchen and the backyard). It was definitely time for him to go, but saying goodbye to the family pet you've had since you were seven years old isn't exactly easy. I mean, that's more than half my life.

I went back to sleep mid-afternoon and was woken up about an hour later by my sister again, telling me that I needed to get up and go to the fair. I sleepily told her that we'd just be late and no one would care, until she finally somehow made me understand through my sleepiness that my youth group leader was on the way to the hospital to have labor induced, so they called my house to ask me to go run the damn thing. (My youth group leaders, Mike and Sue, are awesome. I love them both to pieces, and I love that they called me to take over for them. Youth group, while never very religious thanks to the dysfunctional nature of the high school drop-outs, teenage parents, and drug addicts that managed to wander into our weekly meetings and make themselves prominent members of the group, was my saving grace in high school. We were the oddest collection of people who somehow managed to get along really well together, and I honestly don't know what I would have done without it.)

I remember thinking dryly as I tried to wake myself up that I was at least glad that everyone waited for me to come home for this one week before doing the really important things, like dying and being born.

At the fair, my friend Jane and I had an interesting conversation about all the people our age who'd gotten pregnant over the last year. I also saw Regina, who I was pretty close with in high school thanks to youth group, and who, by virtue of being two years older than me, has just graduated college and is now trying to start her real life. Then I remembered to ask my mom to look for some boxes, since my parents basically told me that they're kicking me out of my room. While I've been looking forward to this for a very, very, very long time (no, really) this means that the effective wallpaper of pictures, posters, and newspaper clippings of the Mets that I've built up over the years will have to be taken down, and this makes me very sad. Also, the 4 bookcases in my room will have to be emptied, and the 80-some-odd Babysitter's Club collection I've accumulated will have to be donated away to someone, and the stacks and stacks of books I still actually love and read will have to be stored away in boxes in the attic until...I...move into a real house or apartment and start my real life, or something.

I'm really not liking this growing up thing.

Why do I still post on that site? Below is a sampling of some of the more amusing posts in the wake of the whole Marilee Jones issue. My thoughts to come later.

It was merely a (rather bold) hypothesis. I think it's a fair hypothesis, though, if you really consider it. Is it not? Is it not strange that Marilee Jones was made out to be a perfect applicant? My hispanic friend who had perfect scores (SATs, APs) got denied. I was puzzled about this (as I've spoken about it on other threads), but now I know why. He was too perfect... MIT would rather have a hispanic person who has lower SAT/AP scores because that's how Marilee Jones is: without objective merit.
It amazingly all makes sense now.

and it was what sleeping for 27 years? Selective in action? Don't kill but commit fraud? I don't understand your statement. [yeah really, we should all just lynch her, no sympathy at all]

I don't understand the sympathy here. A warm and caring individual? Hard time moving forward? Bad choices? A mistake? Excuse me, but some of the reactions here are amazing. It's next to impossible to find a decent role model for kids today. And we wonder why so many of them have, to put it lightly, a few problems here and there? Everyday I come to believe more and more that we, as a generation, have failed our kids. What she did and lived with for so many years is despicable. Period.

Think of how many individuals were rejected/accepted under reign: 10 years at 10-12 thousand per year, or more. Each and every one of them deserves a personal apology from MIT. I hope the school has the guts to do it.

Moreover, we now know why MIT relied so much upon subjective criteria opposed to objective criteria in admissions, and (this is controversial) why MIT so warmly welcomes women, and has a 30% female admissions rate compared to a 10% male admissions rate.

Of course she shouts that [it's not important to take the heaviest course load, which by the way is completely NOT TRUE anyway]; she was probably a slacker who didn't take the heaviest course loads or extracurriculars. That's why she had to falsify her credentials. Someone like her having a say on who is admitted to MIT or not contaminates the whole admissions process because she has no idea what a scholar is. Her flawed leadership probably influenced the rejection of many qualified applicants. I hope she gets sued for fraud and has to go to prison or is fined heavily.

The point is that we should all sue her, a class-action lawsuit or something like that.

I never understand people like you. You'd cheat a deserving male out of a spot just so that you could have a undeserving female around that you could have fun with. Great policy... it sounds really fair! I'm ****ing sick of the male being discriminated against because of **** like this. In any case, call me crazy, but I'm writing a rebuttal to my rejection from MIT. I have a number of people who I'll be representing with a single e-mail to the new dean of admissions. It will be polite and it will be a request to reevaluate the rejected applications of everyone who wants to be represented by the e-mail. Anyone who wants to be represented drop me a PM.


Oh, and then there was the girl who posted incredibly detailed information about her "friend's" personal troubles (enough that I think I could reasonably determine the exact identity of this person), explaining how the girl was so underqualified, MIT made a mistake in admitting her just for the sake of a gender balanced class, she can't handle the work, and has now turned to [detailed list of] drugs. Yeah, some friend, well to tell the entire fucking Internet that your friend is a druggie. People suck.

Apparently this was the cover of last Sunday's Boston Globe.

Quote: "One MIT blogger posted pictures of herself in a short skirt and halter top she made out of duct tape for a party with an "Anything But Clothes" theme." At least there were no pictures. Because you know, more people read the newspaper than browse the Internet. Right. And that skirt isn't that short, is it?

Speaking of the Internet, this video is like a year old, but I just found it the other day and it's totally worth watching. Basically Julie Banderas interviews Shirley Phelps, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. They're the crazies that pickets soldier's funerals because "God Loves AIDS." Yeah, makes sense to me too. Anyway, the point is, Julie totally loses her cool and basically rips the woman a new one and then ends the interview with the angriest "thank you for coming on the show" I've ever seen. Hilarious.