The self-inflicted pressures of school

Ok actually i don't have much to talk about, but rather i just need to kill some time before i start working cos i dont want to work with the internet on my computer cos it could get potentially distracting, and i happening to be downloading Deuce Bigelow atm. So its about 15 min more, i might as well blog about something for now.

What is pressure? the fact that you have an essay and half a ton of spanish homework on top of 30 pages of middle east readings? the fact that 5 hours of spanish a week is insufficient for an A or a B grade? or maybe that essays are demanding and calls for an hour per page required? maybe also the fact that you feel this overwhelming desire to silence ur naysayers--by aceing everything u do. Or that you feel this overwhelming need to excel and thus maximise the costs of an overseas education.

I feel so Machiavellian in my approach to grades... As if the ends really justified the means. Is that GPA really worth the effort of overnight escapades into the Middle East or the Oxford English Dictionary? A jungle trip into the wilderness of Spanish vocabulary, as dangerous as the 'Ñ's, 'ó's, ánd ¿¡ that threaten to tear out the synapses in my Englishly wired brain. Its just like falling into the JC trap... Of getting work and never rising above it again. I do rise sometimes, at the end of a long journey past the hour of dawn.

I have the utmost respect for writers. Its hard bringing complex ideas together in a cohesive lump of text, with structure and examples. Of how every sentence and paragraph must be moulded to suit the issue at hand. Its tough verbalising ideas that float like wisps in a fog, and ever so often i feel like i can't find the means to haul that idea into my boat, even though i've got it by the balls.

Maybe thats why i enjoy cooking. Watching the bubble bubble toil and trouble as the spaghetti jumps in response to the musical airs that rise from the bottom of the pot. So random, yet it gets the job done. Like the release of pressure from the completion of the task. Lifting the lid of a boiling pot calms the churning broth, just as printing my finished essay calls out for my gastric acids to receive the products of my painstaking efforts. Arrest me for substance abuse i say, I drink juice like water and coffee like a drug. For what it does to me, for what it does for me, for the pains in the nerve endings that convince me that a breakdown of bodily function is nigh.

And even when the essay is "not going to be graded", we remember lessons from movies : "in order to succeed, one must project an image of success"; sometimes at all costs. Mindless toiling just for a few pages of text that could mean anything to anybody. Just like how this entry might sound like an analytical piece of trash to you as it is a meal for me. Alphabet soup for my soul, to be savoured after my work is done. And that was one reason why i started blogging, ¿no? No me gusta hablar español, porque español es difícil; no me gusta escribir, porque escribir un ensayo se cansa. (My gramma is probably off anyway)

So what have I achieved through six weeks of toil? The acceptance of the inevitability of suffering (Buddha's first law), as well as the written, conversational and emotional engagement of my intelligence and my experiences. And i conclude that this is the challenge for me--to be the best that i can be, wherever i am. Sounds very ACS right...

ok am finished with Deuce Bigelow European Gigolo. Time to work work.

"You don't know how good the tea tastes until you put it in hot water."

signing off,

Kinfoong the mugger toad.