beautiful monsters

Snippets

Why do all the parties I ever go to seem to end up with the guys all talking about compost or wearing lacy dresses (depending on the kind of party) and the women always end up talking about the Cup? Do other people go to parties like that, or is it just me?

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My flatmate actually ate an entire 2 litre carton of icecream in one sitting. I don’t know whether to be impressed or horrified.

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In desperate need of procrastination, I did a survey of the books on my shelves. I have approximately 368 books on my shelves. Of these, approximately 36 percent are non-fiction, 32 percent are children’s literature, 17 percent are fiction and 15 percent are poetry. The publisher that occurs most frequently is Penguin, followed by Victoria University Press. Most of my favourite fiction books are published by Flamingo (Harper Collins) or Picador. My favourite children’s books were published by Oxford in the 80’s. The non-fiction publishers I refer to most frequently all start with V; Viking, VUP, Virgin, Vintage, Verso, Vermilion… oh and Reed, so there goes that theory.

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They tell me it’s my age. At 21, no one knows what they want to do with their life, but everyone’s in a big hurry to do it.

This is probably true, and it probably doesn’t matter if I know what I want to do… but still, I like to have a plan. If not for my life, then at least for next semester.

Part of me is really sick of university. I want to get on with the next stage of my life. Trouble is, lots of the things I want to do require a tertiary qualification. And even if they didn’t, I feel like I’ve got this far, I’ve spent this much time and money and energy, it would be nice to walk away with a bit of paper in my hand. Ya know? But the major I would really like to do (Maori) would take me three years to do (I could have started this year, but for some reason I got cold feet and pulled out at the last moment). Another three years at university. Could I bear that? Of course I could do something else (like linguistics) purely on the basis of the minimal number of papers (four) required for a major. I could finish next year. But do I really want to do linguistics?

And yes, I do have to angst over all this right now, because I need to work out what I’m doing next semester. Should I do more creative writing workshops (cos I love them) even though they won’t count towards a major? Or should I knuckle down and do something that might actually count towards my degree?

Will it really matter, down the road, if I spent an extra two years at uni? I just feel so sick of it. But then, I guess I only have to study part time, so I could do plenty of other things while I finish off my degree. Keeping on working with kids, painting, writing writing writing…

And then? Nah, I don’t have a plan for that bit either. I want to be a writer, but the trouble is I can’t just go ahead and do that, I have to get approval and acceptance from other people. And in the meantime it seems a wise idea to have a backup plan. I think maybe I’d like to do some sort of art/music therapy with special needs kids. Or journalism. Or teaching. I’d like to do writing, paining, music, swimming etc with kids with mental health issues. Yeah! That’s it! That’s what I’d like to do…

…so how do I get there?

Posted by Fionnaigh at June 12, 2003 09:18 PM