久しぶり~

.....anyone there?
It's been a while.

I've been rereading my blog lately, and my fingers were itching to write. Why haven't I written anything in the past six months? (And only one post in the past year?)
1. I wasn't in the mood
2. I switched my email (I might try to switch this blog over to that one, but google tends to be obnoxious with those kinds of things)
3. I was going through a transition period
4. I was busy
5. I was lazy

So much has changed since I wrote here. I'm used to change. I just read about how I was adjusting to losing my middle school friends halfway through TJ. My LeakyCon friends came in and changed everything for maybe a year or so. But looking back, I'm seeing insecurities and issues that were ever so slight in the background, that would slowly grow larger and more prominent until I just dropped it all. I didn't let it hurt me too much; I left before it could have enough of an effect on me. Well, most of it. Was I hurt in this past year? Hell yeah. "Losing" my friends before just meant I lost contact with them. This year involved pain on a completely different level, but I don't regret any of it. These people were available, and they were good, but I always knew it could be better. And while it was tough at the time, I feel like I grew from all of it.

I'm currently writing this in the lovely state of Connecticut. It's finals week at Conn and I've already taken two of my three: Idea of God and Psych 101. I got my last Human Development exam out of the way Monday and my presentation for that class Wednesday, and then since Thursday I've been camped out in the library studying.
College is really good. It's hard to say whether or not it met my expectations, because I think they were too high to begin with. It's not the perfect fantasy world I imagined where I'd be studying the most fascinating subjects, living in a beautiful dorm building, and killing "extra" time between classes with dramas. The most surprising part of college is how busy I've been. Even though I have half the number of classes, somehow I feel like my hours are similar to high school. I really enjoyed three of my four classes, which is more than most people. My fourth, my freshman seminar, was a philosophy class called the Idea of God, and while I found it difficult and didn't enjoy it much, I learned I wouldn't be pursuing philosophy, and I definitely gained something from it. The class pushed my thinking in a way it has never before, and when my friend and I would discuss stuff from the class, we always ended up sounding rather impressive, even if we didn't know what we were talking about.
Psych was good. [These get past tenses because I have taken their finals and I'm done! I love semester classes in college- it's so satisfying to enter into winter break with all academics wrapped up neatly without worrying about work over the break.] I could definitely be a psych nerd some day. I can sit here and rattle on about how we remember emotionally charged memories better because the amygdala is tied to the hippocampus, which is the memory center of the brain, both of which are located in the temporal lobe, which I could locate on the brain of a sheep we dissected in psych lab. But I'll stop. While the class in itself was a bit boring in it being one of the only large lecture classes at my college (lab would have been better had it not been three extra hours tacked onto my Mondays), I'll probably really enjoy the upper levels better.
Human Development was wonderful. I started to get a better picture of what I want to do with the world. I outlined a few passages in my book that supported my ideas for education reform, and I plan on researching it when I have the chance, possibly over the break. It all sounds vague, but maybe I'll describe in more detail later if I start writing here again. We had to do service learning with this class, and I spent my Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons this semester at an after-school center helping a group of fourth graders with their homework. It was an incredible experience, and will definitely take up an entire blog post of its own.
And now I have saved the best for last. Japanese.
hooooly shit
My scariest, hardest, and absolute favorite class.
The class format is different than anything I'm used to. There are eight of us, and we sit around a table while my Japanese teacher just talks to us. She'll ask questions and call on you and you have to answer. You can fumble around if you want, but the entire class is discussion based, so it's really best to try and come up with something at least. This in itself is terrifying for me, but so beneficial. I'm trying to speak Japanese even when I don't fully understand the grammar concepts, because it's a safe classroom environment and she'll correct me. I'll then say it correctly, and from then on I always use it correctly. I'm understanding things about the language I always thought I knew but didn't. I'm understanding song lyrics I've always loved, I'm understanding the things Chiben kids write on facebook. I'm slowly breaking down this wall and I'm getting closer to my goal of effortless communication in this secret code known as the Japanese language.
I'm the only freshman in the class, which was terrifying at first. Everyone else had a year of the class, so they knew the structure and I had to flail around a bit at first, but I've worked it out.

I haven't really had a place to say this, really, but I'm doing well in college. My exam average for Human Development was 96.5 (without the last one, which I don't know what I got on) and he drops the lowest test score. Granted, my paper, service learning journals, and presentation will also be factored into that, but he's one of the most chill guys I've ever met and I can't imagine that will affect my grade. As long as nothing weird happened with my psych lab grade, that should be an A as well. Idea of God will probably be a B+ because I had a little mishap with quizzes early on in the year (I didn't realize you could submit answers multiple times on the online quiz), but I don't really care. After each paper, he sent out an email with the breakdown of grades in the class, and both times I was in the top 1/3 of the class. Japanese is an A- without daily scores (I have no idea what mine are, but I do well in class most of the time, so I'm not too worried) and the final. Which is Monday. But I think I'm one of the stronger students in the class. I got A-s on my two interviews, and I know my classmates tend to be satisfied with Bs on these. She gave us a short lecture after our midterms on how we didn't do as well as she expected on our listening comprehension, but I got an A on it. Later, she told me in private that I did really well on my exam, and that everyone else needs to work harder.
We don't talk about grades in college like we did at TJ, though, so I don't say any of this. But I want to so badly.

Everything is so different now.
And I mean everything. I listen to different music than I did when I wrote my old blog posts. I watch different television shows. I have a different view for the future. That's life, of course, but it was so consistent for so long, that the change feels profound. But there is not a single doubt in my heart that this is how I want it to be. As I was reading my posts from junior year, I was insane, all over the place, furious at the world one moment and then bouncing off the walls from euphoria the next. Now, I feel like I've been able to focus that energy into a more positive way. I worked really hard this semester, and I think my grades show. I've given my friends a grand total of ONE rant this semester (and it was a funny one, as well). The friends I'm in contact with give me the greatest sense of satisfaction. And the ones I'm not? Good riddance. I don't need them.

I'm realizing now how much there really is to write. I'm tired now, and I think my roommate is sleeping so I should turn off the light. But tomorrow, I'll take breaks from studying Japanese to write. This feels nice. I miss this.