Erasers Are Evil

Actually, I am not yet in bed, but I will soon be, after I blog while eating a Nature Valley granola bar and taking vitamins, blow dry my just-washed hair, brush my teeth, take off my contact lenses, and all that good stuff. So, maybe "soon" denotes about an hour from now.

Everybody at home is still sick. Needless to say, I don't like it. One person got sick, spread it to another, and spread it to another, then spread it to me. I think I got well. Then I return to find out that the nobody is well yet because the germs just keep circulating! I feel so bad avoiding even my mother because she has been coughing so incessantly, but I can't help it... I just HAVE to turn away from sick germs, whether or not I myself am sick. How do I do this in my own home? Basically, I try to stay out as long as possible. Otherwise, I stay in my room until I really have to go downstairs to get something (most likely water) or to eat (just meals). Sad? Paranoid? I know.

In any case, I have a test on Monday, and I hadn't planned to come home this weekend, but SOMEbody told me to, so here I am, about to embark on my weekend of wasted time. I do hope to get some an adequate amount of studying in tomorrow night and Sunday afternoon, though. Linguistics is not as easy as anybody would think! Roots, allomorphy, rules, parsing, and glossing abound, it can get quite horrendous. Um, I think it already has. That last test was murderous (figuratively, at the very least), and I can't imagine that this next one will be any simpler...

And like I mentioned last time I blogged, chem is murderous, too. This week, it has killed my appetite. I no longer like ice cream, banana, or potato chips! And to think that prior to this week, I would eat up to three or four bananas in a day and crave potato chips once in a while. Oh, heck, I don't even like LUCKY CHARMS anymore. That, I must declare, is a huge deal, considering that I used to try to figure out which dining hall the cereal might be located in every day. Now, I don't even care anymore. How crazy is that? It may not seem like a big deal to you, but it definitely is a tremendous matter to me! I blame chemistry 14A and have decisively told myself that I will not voluntarily put myself in South Campus again if not for a GE class. In the end, though, I suppose the important thing is that I still eat. Haha.

English is still wonderful, despite the demoralizing B I got on my first paper. The second one was due today. I hope I get at least a B+... I miss high school days, when I knew that I was writing good essays. Without having to ask the teacher anything or revise or even reread at all. Nowadays, I work on it for days as opposed to like, two hours, and come out with a B and realize I needed to do so much more to get that A I really think I should be getting. Regardless, English all the way, man. Today in discussion, my T.A. mentioned apostrophe (the literary device), and somebody else mentioned didactic tone, and then somebody asked about connotation. I WAS SO EXCITED. And that was when I remembered yet again my love for English and these types of discussions.

Speaking of discussions, today I had an epiphany. Erasers and white-out are evil! They lead children to think that mistakes aren't okay and therefore must be wiped away. Coloring outside of the line, misspelling a word, copying the wrong number... Unquestionably, they are errors, but they aren't necessarily bad. So why erase or white-out when you can simply cross it out? Are we so afraid to face our mistakes that we have to remove them and conceal them from our own selves? Crossing them out reminds us that we are prone to err, and to err, ironically enough, is not to do wrong. The cross-out or strike-through, as unappealing as it may turn out in contrast to the rest of whatever you're doing, can also be a reminder of something that needs review and reevaluation. Now, how are you going to remember to review or reevaluate something that no longer exists? The next time you look at whatever you have done, you'll be misguided in thinking that you did a perfect job, when really, you just denied the imperfections and falsely deemed perfection--at least in that aspect--unto yourself. Hence, to err is good. Erasing and whiting-out is denial. Denial of error. Why would you do that? To erase or to white-out is to deny the beauty and significance of error. EMBRACE YOUR MISTAKES, PEOPLE.

That was my random rant of the day. Occurred to me while I was walking back to the dorm from chem. I'm telling you, the most significantly meaningful, momentous ideas and thoughts occur to me while I'm walking to and from campus. They make the trek much more bearable, not that I can't handle walking twenty minutes. I can't, however, handle twenty minutes without thinking. I don't know why. Is it even natural for people not to think? Or to think nothing? Because there is almost always something on my mind. Always words flowing like a river, most of which make it out into conversation, text message, or instant message. Or here. If not all of the above... ha.

Oh, another semi-but-probably-more-sensible rant! Boy, what a treat! Since I started college, I have acknowledged time and again how terrible I am at remembering what people tell me. And I think I now know why, thanks to another epiphany from a few days ago. In middle and high school, I was acutely good at remembering what my friends told me about themselves, their plans, their lives, whatever they had to say. And then at some point toward the middle or end of high school, I got tired of remembering what everybody told me but nobody remembering what I told them. Discouraged, I guess I just gave up and started tuning people out, if not, in a way, emotionally shutting them out to some extent. Now that I have succeeded at that, I keep encountering people who remember almost absolutely everything I say. And I can't remember even half of what they say. I feel terrible about it every single time. Sometimes even guilty. What happened to me?! Why can't I remember what people tell me anymore? I think my mind has perversely developed an affinity to "bad-talk", and I remember all the bad things that other people tell me about other people. And to think that that drama ends in high school. Trust me, it doesn't. Although, one thing that does dramatically change, as probably apparent from this rant, is people's intellect. It's true what they say, you know. That when you get to college, almost everybody is at the same intellectual level as you, so don't expect any less from the guy sitting in the back and falling asleep than from the girl sitting in the front and asking questions. Do expect, however, that people will remember what you say once they get to remember who you are after those several weeks of meet-and-greet. Rant over.

It is now 1:18 a.m. I should start getting ready for bed by doing all the things I listed at the top of this post...

Farewell, all.