Barely Conscious

For me, my first semester here at VCU has changed me into a far more independent person. Before coming to college, I’m almost embarrassed to say my parents did most of the work. I almost never did laundry, I never learned how to cook because my parents already did that for us, and I never bothered to think about money. I’ve never had a job, so it’s still my parent’s money I’m using to buy necessities, but I’m much more aware of what I purchase than I previously was (mostly because I could just ask my parents “can you buy me such and such?” and they normally would). So being away at college has given me the opportunity to become more independent. I think the most surprising part is that it wasn’t a difficult transition at all. I really enjoy living on my own away from my parents, so maybe that made the switch easier for me.

Like many other people, my high school English teachers always drilled into my mind never to use the “I” pronoun in any research paper ever. In fact, most of them discouraged using “you” or “we” or “they”, etc. etc. Point blank, personal pronouns are bad, and you’re wrong if you use them. In my mind, this caused a certain sort of distance between myself and whatever topic I was researching. It was hard to actually get invested in the topic because I felt as though I wasn’t allowed to incorporate my own opinion into it. So most of the research papers I wrote during my high school career, I found incredibly difficult to actually care about.

Our readings this week make us question just how much the decisions we make are actually influenced by outside sources. Personally I think the argument about all of our choices already having been decided for us is mostly just crazy talk. The thought that our future is already set in stone, there’s no way we’ll ever change it, and even if we think we’re changing something, that change was already decided for us? I don’t know, that just doesn’t make any legitimate sense to me. Not to mention, we’ll probably never be able to prove it anyways, so how will we ever know (granted, that also means we won’t be able to disprove it either. It’s mostly just a matter of opinion at this point. And, in my opinion, that’s just an excuse made up to get people out of bad situations.)

            It’s difficult to say whether or not we will ever be able to have a complete understanding of what other people are thinking. Because even if we have known them for practically all out life, they’re still different people than we are. We’re never going to have the same experiences as them, and even if we did, even if our lives completely mirrored each other, it doesn’t change the fact that our mindsets about each of those events might be completely different. I think if you know someone long enough you can make a pretty good connection with that person, but we’ll never be able to make ourselves see life through his or her eyes.

Don’t you just hate those awkward conversations that just continuously go in circles, over and over again, with no real meaning? “Hey.”

“Sup?” “Not much, you?” “Same.”

“Cool.” “Yup.” “Nice weather.” “Eh.”

And so on and so forth. Now that is a boring conversation. Every time I find myself in one of those conversations it kind of just makes me want to scream and pull my hair out. Now, I’m not exactly the best when it comes to starting conversations. I usually rely on others to start conversations. But hey, once that conversation really gets rolling, and it’s something I find interesting, and is a conversation that I actually enjoy, I can get pretty talkative. Like today, a girl in my art education project class struck up a conversation as we walked back to campus from the Fox Elementary School, where we had class. I’d never spoken to her, and I honestly don’t even remember her name, sadly (that’s not exactly one of my strong points either; I’m much better at remembering faces). But it was a great conversation. She’s the type of person who’s really easy to talk to, and once an awkward silence even began to think about forming, she would immediately think of a new topic to talk about.

It was an amazing contrast to the “conversation” I had with the girl I ended up walking with (or, more like, walking next to) on the way TO the elementary school. We barely had anything to say. It was awkward and quiet for most of the time, except for the moment when a cat came up to us. We stopped to pet it, and it followed us, so we shared a few words about our pets. But the conversation soon died again, and we were silent until we got to the school.

I feel like I can relate to Diyet’s complicated feelings for Akhmim. The fact that she had such a hard time coming to accept the fact that she was in love with him, but once she did accept that fact, the thought of it took control of her mind and body to the point where, even after she told herself that she had accepted the fact that she’d never see him again, she still found herself pursuing him, showing up outside her old mistress’s house. I’ve been so afraid of doing just that, of accepting love and loving someone back. Human relationships are tricky, fickle things. And it only gets worse once you get thrown into situations that cause you to have terrible, debilitating trust issues, like the ones I’ve found myself having. I can’t even talk to my parents about really personal, serious things without being afraid they’re going to judge or hate me, even though I know they won’t. I hide things from even my closest friends. I don’t really know why, maybe it’s because I don’t want them to worry about me. Or maybe it’s just the fact that I don’t want to have to deal with them trying to tell me what I should be doing, or what would be best for me. I know they’d only be trying to do things for my best interest, but it’s not their problem. There’s always something inside me that will always just itch under my skin, silently telling them that they’re not going to understand, because they don’t think about things the way I do, they haven’t been through all the exact experiences I have that have brought me to think the way I do. I don’t know, this weeks readings have just made me more confused, to be honest. I’m not really sure if I should be making an effort to open up and trust more people, or if I should just be opening up and showing true affection for a select few people who I have come to trust (and people that I trust completely are few and far between). I’m not really sure where I’m going with this. Thinking about how I react with others compared to how all these authors and philosophers say we should be reacting with others just gives me a headache. I try not to think about it.

Maybe I'm just tired.

This weeks reading has taught me a lot about myself. It has forced me to think about the way other people will think and react to my personal beliefs. I identify myself as Agnostic, and in some people’s eyes, that would be considered an “unusual belief”. It makes me wonder what other people would think about any of my thoughts or ideas. I mean, I dye my hair crazy, ridiculous colours fairly regularly. And, while I do get plenty of compliments, I wonder how many people secretly look at me and judge me as someone they would never want to be associated with based solely on that fact.

I think attending such a diverse and open-minded college where most people wouldn’t think twice about another person’s race or sexual orientation is helpful in a lot of ways. If other people aren’t judging everyone else based on their race, it becomes easier to forget that racism is even a thing in our society. But if you look around outside of our warm, fuzzy, accepting community, you start to notice the differences.

For example, when I was a kid, I lived in Culpeper, Virginia and I attended a private Christian school. I didn’t realize it then, but looking back now, I noticed that every single person in that school – children and staff members alike – they were all white. Every single one of them. I was never raised to think of people of different based on their skin tone, but I can see how being in an environment like that might effect a person, and it’s sad. Nobody should be treated differently based on anything; not race, gender, sexual orientation, financial status, nothing.  And yet it happens every day to every single person in our society in all sorts of situations.

It’s also interesting to think about how we react to people who aren’t Americans, as well. Think about our history books; they’re written to put Americans in a good light. They deliberately leave out certain parts of the stories that might paint a bad picture for our nation to the students reading them. And then you compare our history textbooks to the textbooks written for different countries, and find that they’re doing the same as we are. We all have this inherent desire to be the very best (that no one ever was) and we carry this false pride around, because we couldn’t possibly be the bad guys, right? We are never in the wrong. And when our wrongdoings are brought up, we try to separate ourselves from them. Such is the case with slavery. It’s clearly something that we, as whites, used to view as a norm. And now that it’s such a taboo, we distance ourselves. “No no, that was just our ancestors, if I lived in that time period, there’s no way I would have slaves.”

Our assignment for the week was to write a personal narrative essay…  Personally, I have mixed feelings about them. I like the concept of not having to do all that much, if any, research, considering it’s all based on my own experiences and whatnot. On the other hand, I don’t tend to view my own life as all that interesting or exciting. I mean, I’ve done plenty of awesome things, but it’s hard to write about it in a way that catches those little moments and all the emotions they hold inside them. I can create characters and write about their thoughts and emotions, but when it comes to myself, it’s so much more difficult. What if I can’t find the right words? What if it comes out all wrong? Other people might not notice the flaws, since they didn’t experience it themselves, but I will.

I’ve always liked writing. I like getting my thoughts down on the paper. I like creating a story, inventing a new world with new people and interesting ideas. But then I’m asked to write something for class. I’m asked to follow a specific set of rules and regulations. I feel constricted. Trapped. Like an animal in a cage, waiting to be set free, but I’m simply presented with more bland, uninteresting prompts.

I’m so used to writing research papers for class. Papers that I need to go onto the Internet or absorb myself into a book to constantly find and learn new information as I write. I have little to no room to explore, to venture into my inner thoughts, because we are essentially taught that thinking is bad. You just regurgitate the things you read into the same five-paragraph form, over and over again. Every time I write one of those damn research papers, I just want to get it over with as quickly as possible, so I barely even have a “first draft”. I hardly ever give myself room to get all my stupid thoughts out onto the paper, because if I don’t, I’m just going to have to continue to do more researching on things I have absolutely no interest in. I wrote the damn diagnostic essay on microwaves. Microwaves. I don’t care how microwaves work at all; I just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. So I don’t usually have those “shitty first drafts” because I’m constantly trying to make it as perfect as I can as I write. It’s terrible and a major flaw in my writing.