fumigation

I have been called mellow on more than one occasion. This always comes as a shock. Maybe I don't always display my anger, but that doesn't mean it's non-existent. And at this particular moment at midnight on a Monday night, I'm particularly angry about a lot of things that will undoubtedly seem silly and stupid in a few days/months/years time. But I need to sleep tonight and I won't without venting so here goes. Disclaimer for pettiness and rage induced irrationality.

F-ing Henry's on Market has still not returned the 100 DOLLARS they stole from me more than a week ago. It's unacceptable. For some, having 100 dollars go missing from your bank account isn't a big deal. But I'm a college student aka poor. And to have them take the money wrongly, then take their sweet freaking time getting it back to me not only makes me vow to never go there again, but to spread the word until everyone I know never goes there again. Oh and maybe plan to spray some crude graffiti on their walls, until I realize that I could never in my life spray graffiti unless it was directed at a canvas owned by myself. But still, freaking Henry's is now my mortal enemy. And I just know if I was some 50 year old local with a house south of Broad I would have had my money back a week ago, plus an apology from the manager. College students are people too, Charleston drinking establishments! And the amount we spend on alcohol probably pays your bills. So one more reason you suck!

My adviser. It's official. College advisers are worthless. They're professors with other jobs to do who get assigned students whether they want them or not. Some advisers may find a way to pay attention to their advisee and actually, you know, advise them. But my adviser unfortunately is too caught up in her career or book deal or whatever to give me the time of day. As a result, more than two months after the end of last semester, I still do not have a grade for my last semester internship, except for the big fat, F, the Registrar's Office put in its place because it has been so long. Meanwhile I have literally done all but show up at this woman's house. I have resorted to putting "read receipts" in all my e-mails to her like a crazy person. I show up at her "office hours", but shock of all shocks she's not there. What do I have to do?! Hire a sky-writer to spell out "talk to your frickin' advisee" across the sky above the College of Charleston? Kidnap her baby and use my grade submittal as a ransom? College seniors, heck college students in general are stressed enough, busy enough, everything enough. The least an institution could do is spring some bucks to hire people who specialize in advising instead of sticking us with whatever professor happens to catch their fancy. College and its layers and layers of paperwork and procedure and bureaucracy is confusing! We need people who can actually help us, who want to help us. And the part that gets me the maddest is that finally this woman responds to the plethora of panic e-mails I have been sending her way, and she writes back a terse, two sentence reply. No apology. No excuse. She simply doesn't care. She doesn't care that I'm a graduating senior who has to sort through the confusing mess of getting my credits in order with my major department, my minor department, the Honors College and the general college by May. I had this woman as a professor and I used to respect her. But at this point I'm tired and never want to deal with her again. I wash my hands of advising. At least in my experience it was at best a joke, at worst a pain in the ass.

Annotated bibliographies. Yeah, you heard me. I'm pissed off about annotated bibliographies. Of all the ridiculous, time wasting things I've had to do in college, these may take the cake. Unfortunately I have two classes requiring them this semester. But seriously? Isn't a bibliography one of those magical things that speaks for itself. Like a table of contents, or a title page? If a professor really wants to know what a source is about can't he or she just look it up and read the abstract? Shouldn't he or she be doing that anyway to check for that whole plagiarism thing, i.e. the whole point of doing a bibliography in the first place? And if it's not for the professor, then why the hell do I need to annotate my own bibliography. If I'm writing a fifteen page research paper I should darn well hope that I know what my sources are about without having to refer to my bibliography. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This may sound petty, and okay, well sure it's petty. But right now I'm in a petty mood so just roll with it.

So what really got me in this mood tonight was seeing another example of something that's hard to explain. I'll just say that I'm feeling a little stung by a former employer. And it's completely on my end, because clearly the position has evolved. But it evolved after I left, and maybe it's childish or stupid and I'm sure I'll realize as much or just get over it, but I feel upset, or to really be blunt, like I wasn't as good as whoever is there now, and these changes reflect this new person's initiative or drive or motivation or just likability and as a result this person has gotten all these cool new things to do or credits or what not. And this probably makes no sense, but I at least have the restraint not to go into deeper detail. Because this is really more me feeling childish jealousy than anything else. The experience was amazing and life changing and I shouldn't let stupid things alter that. So there. Even within this posting I'm learning to channel my rage into more zen-like avenues.

And finally I'm just mad at this past month for its unbelievable amount of suckage (although there were good parts, and I will go into further detail about the amazing Funny or Die show and our road trip to go see it later). But all in all a lot of sucky things have happened this month; the trivial (falling down the stairs way back in January and I'm still bruised), the less trivial (hitting another car with my car in a seemingly minor fender bender but which ended up sending my car to the shop for more than a week and costing my very understanding parents our entire 1,000 deductible. Sorry mom and dad!) and the very not trivial (serious sickness in the family and the death of a kind and interesting lady who hosted one of my friends in Paris and who let our silly bunch into her big, old apartment on a regular basis to drink wine and watch tv. I'm more sorry for my friend who knew her well. I knew her only passing, but she made a definite impression and it's a sad thing that she's gone. Future Hollins abroad kids will never know the pleasure of wine and board games at Beatrice's house.)

So that's that. I feel better now. And as always talking about the big, sad things reminds me of how really silly and unimportant the little things ultimately are. I get mad, and I fume, and I vent. I cry or rant or kick something. But hopefully I come back to a place of perspective. I think I at least found that tonight. Hopefully that means I'll be able to sleep :)