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In four days, I am departing to China for one week of frivolous fun followed by four weeks of "school," which, according to the tentative agenda, seems a lot more like the former anyway. But I'm not complaining. What I am currently not looking forward to, however, is packing. My mother and I finally went yesterday to buy travel luggage--which is shockingly expensive even at Ross but is a bit cheaper at Target--and none of the three of us have yet to start packing. I sense trouble and panic looming.

Right now, I am feeling resentfully unsettled. This morning, I woke up before 10 to go to 24-hour Fitness in Monterey Park (got a 7-day pass since I'm leaving the country soon anyway), and I had expected my first workout in three weeks (aside from the 6-mile run last Tuesday) to be fun, but it obviously wasn't. At least I know I got an effective workout because my arms are nearly numb from benching (a weak 45 pounds...) and dead-lifting (60 pounds, but apparently shamefully incorrectly). And lunch came right afterward.
Fast forward two hours, and I was aimlessly and bitterly walking around Chinatown by myself in 80-degree weather because as it turns out, the library isn't open on Mondays. WHO CLOSES ON MONDAYS? And I wasn't welcome to wait at the dentist's office for somebody because it would have been "weird." Waiting is what you're supposed to do in the waiting room anyway. Whatever. After some wandering during which I must have looked extremely pissed off, I walked into the shopping center and browsed with extreme disinterest. Then I decided to go check out Quickly, and got a small tapioca milk tea for $1.42, which is surprisingly inexpensive considering that everything else in the world is so darn expensive nowadays. If I was still angry and bitter before then, the cheap but good-quality drink completely calmed my nerves.
And then I got home and started thinking about the underlying cause of my negative mood: the feeling of being under-appreciated, if not unappreciated. It wouldn't kill to show some appreciation for what somebody is constantly willing to do for you every once in a while. Or just some appreciation for the person overall. Even if a gesture seems too grand or too difficult to do, a simple "thank you" would be just as good.

And then I had to pay yet another stupid fee that UCLA housing charged my roommates and me for damage that we didn't even cause. They are so shady, and it seriously sometimes seems like the school does everything possible to suck all the money out of its students. Why can't they just understand that some of us are not nearly as wealthy as its patrons and will never get the chance to be if they keep unreasonably shoving these fees at us? Why would you make innocent people pay $75 for damage they clearly say they did not cause, especially since the damage will not take nearly that much to repair anyway? I feel so framed. While I have learned a lot from my first year of college, I also feel that it is a scam. Maybe it's just the UC system and its ever increasing tuition and fee hikes. Maybe it's just me being bitter again. Maybe it's just the damage fee I feel wrongfully charged for but have to pay because the manager refuses to reverse the charges despite my extremely courteous, well-written email. In the end, most people are not made of money, and I really just wish the school and government would just understand that and increase fees elsewhere, especially considering that in the United States of America, education is supposed to be free. Tens of thousands of dollars a year is light years from free. Light years. I remember when I didn't have to pay thousands of dollars per 10 weeks to learn what a light year is.

Aside from that, I have no idea what to take in the fall. It's probably bad that I haven't invested more than half an hour into looking up classes I could be taking, but I know one is for sure, and that's English 10C, for which I already have books because my friend from Daily Bruin generously passed them on to me, for which I am grateful, because that saves me some money. Maybe economics. Right now, I don't even know about math anymore, because I only recently (i.e. an hour ago) remembered that mathematics/ engineering/ science students take math in the fall, which means that the curve will probably be negligible to nonexistent. That is a bit unnerving for me.

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