I had a birthday party here at home with local friends, when we saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show for my second time, and against the will of most of my friends, but I didn't turn nineteen until two days after classes started again, and to celebrate that, friends in college ordered takeout and enjoyed it in the common room, and we ate a cake that Mum had made me. I do remember that She Who Must Not Be Named showed up uninvited, and that bugged me a lot. After we ate, only two friends remained to watch The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert with me, hogging the common room TV from anyone that might have wanted to watch the State of the Union address.
I took the Jeopardy! test for the first time. With upsetting results.
During midterms, I wrote a wonderful essay on the nature of dreams for my philosophy class. It was stressful, but it was actually a fun paper to write. Kelsey wrote one in the form of a dialogue between Alex Trebek and Johnny Gilbert. We also spent two and a half hours a week sitting through A History of Modern Philosophy with a very silly professor who is apparently mildly famous within his field. I also took my first college French class with an amazing professor, and I'm convinced she is Monsieur's long-lost-relative-of-some-sort. I continued German and I took European history for the first time since 'global' in eighth and ninth grade. I also started band and bassoon lessons.
I made a transfer application to Drew University, and was accepted with a small scholarship. Then I wrote them a letter asking them to defer my enrollment one year. They wrote back and said I wasn't allowed to take more than a certain, small amount of credits [something like 11] in the next school year. Oops.
I also had my first ever college spring break. It was two weeks long and spent at my own home, hanging out with friends. Trina came and visited for a couple of days and we went roller skating. After Easter, my triple turned into a double and Kelsey and I rearranged. I even got a fort out of the deal.
In April, I saw my first opera, Die Zauberflöte.
In April or May, I took a trip to Mount Holyoke to perform a German play which I had had a major hand in writing, though my character only had a couple of lines, only to be left out of the programme, and to come in third place out of three schools competing. Nonetheless, the German Theatre Workshop was a fun experience and I made some new friends out of it.
At the end of the semestre, things took a turn for the worst with The Bad Thing, which had a great deal to do with She Who Must Not Be Named. So I did not enjoy most of May, and I was just incredibly grateful when it was all over. It was also around that time that I got the news that Dan H would not be returning to Conn for sophomore year. He was, indeed, transferring.
Summer was the best because it was long and I did not have anything to do for a very long time. No job, no homework, just friends and relaxing.
There was, of course, AnimeNEXT.
Then, within one week, everything exciting that would happen that summer, did.
On 24 July, I went to see David Mamet's Race with Liam and Viggi, and I was lucky enough to get signatures from the cast and A PHOTO WITH EDDIE IZZARD. And then I promptly stopped breathing. It might not be an understatement to say that that was one of the most exciting moments of my life so far.
On what I think was the hottest day that summer, I went to the beach [*gasp*] to celebrate Kristin's sweet 16. She and I being as pale as we are turned into lobsters. Very pained lobsters. I seem to remember, at the end of the day, her mother yelling at her for not putting sunblock on because she was already extremely red, and she said back that she'd put it on four times and still got burned that badly. I also remember Ying seeing me come back out of the water and freaking out: "You're all spotty!" Having all but given up sunlight, it has been years since I had had so many freckles.
Just days after that, I went to a water park for the first time in years with David, Arianna, and Kristin. It was more fun than I had remembered it, and I did not get further sunburned. And by the end of July, I was packing for a trip to Belfast! Which I wrote about while I was there but never actually posted anything [maybe I should amend that...].
It was yet another dream come true, having never been to the UK before, even though it was only for a week.
September saw me back at COLLEGE, to my dismay, but newly resolved to bury myself in schoolwork and planning for a very different future. I took two French classes - one in film and one seminar on prostitution in the 1800s. I also worked very hard to get into Chinese 201, a class which would eventually get the better of me. I continued German with 201 and I continued my theatre studies with Technical Theatre, a class on the building, managing, and designing aspects of what goes into making plays. I had so much fun with that that I actually got a job out of it, hanging lights and building sets. I didn't get a chance to work this year, but I have promised myself that next year, when I have an easier schedule, I will. And of course, band and lessons.
There was NYAF and NYCC, and I got separated from Jesson and everyone for a long time with a dead phone battery and ended up taking the bus home by myself. But I did get to meet and speak briefly to Zach Weiner, which is really, really, really cool.
Sophomore year was dramatically different from freshman year, though only separated by a few months of break. I had a car. I came home almost every weekend except for two - the one after I first arrived and the one before Thanksgiving. She Who Must Not Be Named, surprisingly and to my great joy, did not return, though I wait in fear to find out whether she is returning for the spring semestre or is in fact waiting until next fall. Kelsey came back, though, even though she wasn't supposed to. Dan did not. I had my own room and I decorated it by getting rid of all the furniture except the bed.
I started thinking more and more about my actual future [ooooh~], something which I'd never wanted to do before, and which landed me in this upsetting school in the first place. I thought about what I wanted to accomplish in the film industry, and the incredible amounts of fun I had in my French film and tech theatre class made me realise that, though I love acting, I would be content working on films in a more creative role [ideally directing, but that's unlikely, I guess]. And I realised that I didn't only want to study film as a theory, like literature. So I started new applications, this time to the UK. In the end, they went to Nottingham-Trent University for Film and Linguistics, York University for Writing, Directing, and Performing, York University for Linguistics and French, Aberyswyth University for French and Film and TV studies, and Queen's University Belfast for Film and Linguistics.
The year ended with decent expected grades - they haven't been received yet but I'm expecting hopefully all A's except for Chinese and possibly my seminar. There was a very large paper on prostitutes to be written and a very strange movie about a German drug dealer and love triangle [more of an arrow shape, actually].
There was a fabulous Christmas, filled with gifts, friends, and family. I was accepted into Aberystwyth. There were many movie days, only to be added to in the early days of this new year. There was dancing. And there was cake.
So 2010 had its ups and downs, and frankly, I'm not too sorry to see it go. But I do think that it has prepared me in wonderful ways for whatever will come next. At least three things that I survived - The Bad Thing, learning German, and learning bassoon - can all be pointed at as I say, "Well I survived that, so I can do anything!" The year was, in complete honesty, heart-breaking, and I don't mean in the traditional sense. But it had its wonderful moments, and I wouldn't trade them.
As for 2011... I don't know what it's going to bring. My classes still haven't even been finalized for the spring semestre, and fall seems worlds away. I'll have a decision to make, in some ways difficult, as to whether or not I am going to the UK for the next three or four years, and if so, which school. But what I do hope for the year is the strength to continue dealing with a school that I don't love, the confidence to make this school work for me in my last months, and the perserverence to find and follow what it is that I actually "want".
Here's wishing you all a very happy and lucky new year.
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