My voice is gone now...i sound like a mouse

If you've been wondering if I dropped off the face of the earth this week, I pretty much did. I had to be back at school two weeks early for sorority rush school, which has been pretty much running my entire life the last few weeks. The first week of school is sorority recruitment time so I got super busy. It’s kind of a strange thing to explain. This year, we had 750 girls rushing…the biggest year ever. So for two weeks before school, I spent 12 hours everyday at the house working on getting everything together. Lots of it was fun though. I wasn’t allowed to move into my apartment until the 17th so for 5 days I ended up sleeping on my friend’s floor who was in RA training. All the football players were staying on our floor and some of those guys are so big. This one football play, who looked like a linebacker, picked up my bike for me and put it in the elevator with one hand. I can’t even convey what a strange thing this whole week is, but through this process it somehow magically works out that girls end up in the houses best suited for them. Unfortunately, I was working on it for so many hours a day that I got a really bad cold and ended up being sick throughout the actual rush week. I also completely lost my voice from all the screaming. We ended up with about 60 new girls who joined....we have an insanely big house now.I was assigned a little sis, one of the girls I had during the preference ceremony (you’re paired one on one with girls). Big sisters in the house are assigned to kinda make the new girl feel comfortable and let her know how things go in the house so it’s less overwhelming. Unfortunately, she didn’t show up to Bid Night. so now I don’t have one so I was kinda depressed all throughout bid night. But the party was still fun. We had a pirate theme! And we had casino games set up with dealers, music blaring from big speakers, a place where we could actually make hologram keychains from pictures we could take, and food and sodas.The new girls seem really cool and nice and it’s a great feeling to know that all the screaming you did during rush school paid off with an awesome new pledge class. But yeah, that definitely took over my life this month. Now that it’s all over, it’s kind of nice to have my life back.



I got very little sleep during the process, so I have been spending the past two days trying to catch up on all my schoolwork and sleep. I’m taking 18 units, which is 5 classes. My classes seem pretty interesting this semester. My favorites so far are my design class and typography class because they are for my major. I’m taking my science class, Humans and their Environment, for pass/fail credit because we are allowed to do that for one class, so I think that’ll make it pretty easy. French class is hard this semester. I have an Irish teacher and I’m having a hard time understanding what he’s saying with his accent, but it’s getting better now that I have more time to focus on it. I’m also taking Advertising Copy write, but as long as I don’t have to spend the entire semester redesigning the Snapple campaign like I had to do in my last advertising class, then I’m happy. Junior year, I can already tell, is going to be very hectic.

I'm looking forward to being home this weekend and relaxing.

Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and as sweet as love

Real quick update since it's after midnight on a rush school night and I'm falling asleep as I type. I'm back at school for recruitment things, so if i missed seeing you in Valencia, I'm sorry and I hope that we can visit soon. Come and visit me after the 27th if you are around. Rush school is a strange time. I feel like I'm living in a vortex where I don't really keep track of days or times. Like today, I had no idea that it was saturday until I talked to my dad on the phone tonight. I don't really talk to anyone either, not because I don't want to. I just don't have any free time. Brigitte called to ask if I wanted to go clubbing and images of me falling asleep on the dancefloor came to mind. I'm having fun being back and seeing everyone, though I wish I could live in my apartment. We're allowed to move in on the 17th so until then I'm homeless. Luckily, my suitemate from freshman year, Angie, is in RA training in one of the dorms and she's nice enough to let me crash in her room until I can go to my apartment. I can't believe she's an RA already, it feels like we were just moving into Parkside as freshmen. I hate this feeling of being unsettled and living out of a suitcase. I've pretty much taken over her room. Rush things usually run from 9am to 9pm each day and there's a lot involved. I'm not going to go into detail right now, but I'm very busy during the day and come home exhausted. I miss my multiple cups of really delicious coffee a day and caffeine in general because I could definitely use some. Today, I resorted to drinking the instant coffee at the house that had some coffee grinds floating in it and then i poured a shitload of that dry creamer on top. I've hit a new low which is probably a sign that I should never try any form of drugs because I'd be addicted in a heartbeat. I think my voice will be gone before the time actual rush starts in a week.

I'm looking forward to the time a few weeks into the semester when you get into the swing of your classes but you're not so burned out as you are at the end of the semester. I just noticed that I have to buy about $200 worth of books which is depressing. I know some people get charged in the $400 range, but $200 is still a lot to swallow for books that I probably will realize later that I never needed to purchase.

Our sorority president just announced that she got engaged last night! She had been with her boyfriend for a long time, but I can't imagine being a senior in college and being engaged. By the same time frame, that would be next year for me. But that's probably because I don't date very much. Personally I probably will get married on the older side, but I was so happy for her that I almost started crying and I think she'll be really happy.

I think there was something else I was going to say, but my blowup mattress bed is about a foot away and I'm going to roll off my chair and onto it now, so goodnight.

HarvardYou're the best -- you know it, as does everyone
else (except for US News and World Report every
few years). You might not be hip, you might not
be pretty, but you're smart as a whip and you
never need to do another impressive thing in
your life.

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Thursday, August 04, 2005

What the fuck?

I just had the strangest dream and I know I'll forget it if I don't write it down. The first part of the dream was where my mom, brother, Dad (who was Dennis Quaid. Why werent any other family members turned into random celebrities?) and I were walking through the park near my house. We stopped at the public restroom and my mom got the sense that something was hidden in the grate in the ceiling so she climbs up there to look and found a set of keys. We leave the bathroom kind of puzzled, but a few seconds later, an enraged gorilla burst from the bushes, barreled across the lawn towards us, and told us that they were his keys and demanded them back. He had committed a bank robbery and the keys were to a locker at the airport where the gorilla had stashed the money. Suddenly, a whole fleet of cops burst from the bushes as well with their riot shields and guns and surrounded us and the gorilla. We all started to fight. We wanted to cops to get the gorilla before he could hurt us. The gorilla got out a box cutting knife and attacked my dad/Dennis Quaid. The cops ended up winning in the end though and we were all pretty much unhurt.

Then I went off to college, which was not at USC but was set in the backwoods of what looked like Oregon or Washington. I met up with some people I actually knew from USC including this attractive guy in my advertising class, the Rock, Jack White from the White Stripes. We are on a quest to go and chop down a large tree. We waded through a river and my oceanography professor shows up just standing in the middle of the river with those large boots you wear when youre fishing. He was waving at us all friendly-like. Then a giant wave comes out of nowhere and washes everyone away except me, my oceanography professor, Jack White and the gorilla from the beginning of the dream. We had all been smart enough to grab onto rocks. In the end, Jack White and I get married in the woods and my professor resides over the ceremony as priest. The gorilla has disappeared again and this is when I wake up.

Go analyze that one...

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

I've been really attracted to these all-black webpages lately which for a graphic designer is probably not a good thing. They look very sleek and elegant though, dont they? I suppose I should be more creative. I still don't know html as well as I'd like, but once I do, I'll change the header colors and maybe the font color. Does anybody know how to do that? Kris? Dreamweaver has spoiled me and saved me the effort of learning html for myself.

Tomorrow is my last day of oceanography and amidst studying for my final, I'm in the process of packing everything back up into bins to move to Valencia for about a week. Maybe it's because of this physical upheaval and maybe not, but the last few days I've had a growing feeling of anxiety. I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin. I have a to-do list about a mile long and it seems like nothing is being crossed off and time is going too fast and not fast enough at the same time. I feel like I've been frittering. I forgot to wish 3 friends happy birthday this month until a few days after the fact. There are about a million changes I'd like to make to the ADPi website before rush, but it's only two weeks away so I can't possibly get it all done and I'm feeling kind of guilty about that. Lots of people look at it and they get a judgement of it and if it's not good then it's my fault but I don't have time to fix it. I'm letting down everyone in the house if it's not perfect. I can't compete with the other houses who hired professional designers and it's putting extra pressure on me. And in the meantime, I'm focusing so much of my efforts on this project that any other projects have pretty much been put on hold which makes me feel worse. My week in Valencia will be spent seeing friends who are there, working on graphic design for adpi and for my own art webpage, and sorting through the 20 or so boxes that are piled high in our family's living room trying to consolidate the things I'm bringing for fall term into about 5 boxes. Simplicity seems like the way to go. I think this week off will be good for me.

I think my family senses that I'm about to lose it and have a mental breakdown because on Monday my dad came out to USC and took me to dinner in Santa Monica because he thought I was having a "bad day" and today my mom came out and we went to lunch at this little cafe I never knew existed on 29th street. As much as I'd like to crawl under my covers and not come out until Spring, fall semester is inevitably approaching. But with it comes friends, football games, dinners, cooler weather, and new experiences. I think the skin crawling thing will stop soon.