... And in the midst of the Spanish notes, grammar books, and the infamous Am.Lit. anthology (otherwise known as "The Brick" or "The Concrete Slab") I suddenly find myself immersing into the deep recesses of cyberspace also known as "The Blog". Oh yes.
After a couple of days with the all-too-familiar academic dry spell I decided to plunge myself into it all, with varying results. Perhaps it's due to me feeling a little too hyper. I blame working out. :-P To be honest it was good to get into the gym again, though the consequences for my brain were only so-so, i.e. in terms of concentration. But this is supposed to be good, however. I guess I just have to get the hang of this; let my body get used to it again.
Alas, alack, exams are stealthily closing in on us, the unaware students. My first exam will be on Dec. 3 and my final is on Dec. 14. So yeah, less than a month until I'll be sitting by a desk staring with a mix of panic, nervousness and nonchalance ("just get it all over with!") on the dreaded exam paper. And we're not even done with the syllabus yet! To put it plainly, this is like, soooo not cool! So basically, while I'm frantically trying to put the syllabus back together in my mind (and on paper) we are still going through it. I wish we were done with the whole shebang at least one month before Judgment Day. Maybe I'm just asking for too much. Maybe I'm just acting like some demanding "the-mountain-will-come-to-Mohamet" diva. Still, there are times like these where I wish I were still in Senior High. Despite the mountains upon mountains of work we went through the syllabus thoroughly and still with plenty of time before our exams. *sigh* The wonders of IB... Stated sarcastically, of course.
Furthermore, I find that the hopes for me studying abroad for a semester slowly but surely dwindle into oblivion. The thing is that the English courses are all too static and are only offered either in the spring or in the fall. Not both. At least the Spanish courses are much more flexible than this, but that doesn't really help me very much - especially when there are so many units I want to take here already. I kinda wanna take all of these subjects and still study abroad without breaking my back in the mean time. Again, I think I'm asking for a little too much here. Again I'm acting like that demanding "the-mountain-will-come-to-Mohamet" diva. Excuse my neuroticism, it's part of who I am. Besides, I've still got time to take my master's somewhere else (over the rainbow). If I will take a master's, that is.
Sorry, needed to vent this out a little. I just hope and pray to God that I'll do alright for my exams, that's all (as I'm sure many of us are doing at the moment).
Anyway, enough with the trivialities already. There are much bigger issues to be discussed here. Like for instance the school massacre in Finland. I was truly shocked about that, and I'm not the only one. That this could happen; even in Finland! I guess it just goes to show that you can find lunatics anywhere; not just in the US (without attempting to stereotype in any way). Additionally it also shows that obvious fact that happenings such as those that are close to one's home or loved ones affect you even more than if it happened elsewhere.
And the thing was that this guy (God rest his soul) was a loner, just as the guy responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre last year. (It was last year, wasn't it?) In addition to this, this Finnish guy was even bullied by other students (even though he was very intelligent) and had extreme right-wing views. He even had b******s such as Hitler and Stalin as his idols. Ugh, I get such shivers down my spine even writing about this... I guess being a bullied loner can trigger such massive hatred, a hatred so strong that it can beckon you to kill other people. As an afterthought one might blame the teachers and his family for not noticing his extreme tendencies as a cry for help - I certainly did at first. However, turning a blind eye to his problem was the way that was thought to be most sensible at that moment, I reckon. After all, he was just a teenager; teenagers go through a "stage of extremes", to put it rather vaguely. He'd probably grow it off. Unfortunately he never got the chance to do so.
All of this just shows you how important human contact is to a person. All of the stuff that we've been served with through the news from psychological experts stating that "oh, well, this was inevitable, there was nothing that could be done, loners can be prone to do such things given the right circumstances and all staff at public institutions are able to handle such situations", etc. are all true enough, but they're overlooking the main fact here: We all need to have people around us, caring people. It's part of who we are as human beings. Without this support, this scaffolding, we just won't function properly. So I guess it's up to the rest of us to prevent this from happening by forming relations with others, especially loners. They're the ones who need it the most.
The lyrics of "All You Need Is Love" by the Beatles could never ring truer than now.
Ok. Enough. This post has grown too large. Time to hit the books again before my beauty sleep.
Elise
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