okay, so this is the epic life-update post you've all been waiting with bated breath for. or something. I'm sure. in list form! because we all know how I love lists.

1. so classes end on wednesday and then I have about a trillion essays to complete before they're going to let me go home. I WOULD be heading home on the 3rd or may or something, but I have a hardcopy hand in for a final paper on the 10th, so I have to stay a full extra week. SIGH.

2. I'm also right in the midst of handing in my thesis prospectus, which I will also have to DEFEND to PROFESSORS ie. give them ACTUAL REASONS that they should let me write a YA novel instead of a gross paper next year. since most of those reasons revolve around "I don't want to write a gross paper" I probably need to work on that.

3. so yes, I actually do have a premise for this forthcoming novel but I don't want to bore you all since not all of you are here to hear me whine and natter on (even though that's like 90% of what I do on this journal), SO! if you are interested in being apart of the thesis process this summer and next year, ie. be privy to drafts and my epic complaining and probably existential crises, just comment on this entry and i'll add you to my thesis filter and that way everyone's f-lists will be happy. :D

4. speaking of thesis stuff, i've had a pre-thesis tutorial this semester on princesses. (so i basically read YA fiction and watched disney movies all semester) with the most AWESOME grad student named christina who is literally a disney princess. (she has perfect hair. ALWAYS.) and christina has kindly and wonderfully offered to be my thesis advisor, which would be wonderful beyond belief because we work really well together and she's awesome and i want to grow up to be her. AND THEN SHE INVITED ME TO HER WEDDING.

no you guys, she's literally perfect. she's so sweet and adorable and nice and aksld;fjasdf. i would marry her in a friggin heartbeat.

5. we just got our housing for next year, which is perfect and brilliant and awesome and we're going to have KITCHENS and beautiful hardwood floors and kals;djfasdf I'm so excited. we were literally FIRST in the housing lottery because we've been shafted for two years running and we just got to stroll in, steal two of the best rooms and waltz out. it was such a beautiful thing. mwahaha.

andddddd that's all the news for now. :D

(5.5 OH OKAY I LIED SO I'M IN LOVE WITH NASIR AND AGRON FROM THE TV SHOW SPARTACUS AND THIS IS A LOVE THAT WILL NEVER DIE PEOPLE OKAY THEY MAKE OUT ON SCREEN AND THEY'RE PERFECT AND BADASS AND AWESOME AND ALL NEED TO RESPECT K? K.)

So I'm writing a young adult novel for my thesis next year.

Guess who I'm gonna make read all of my drafts?

If you guessed "me", then you would be utterly correct. Ya'll are gonna suffer through my writing, no complaints.

Just letting you all know. :D

Guess who just got awarded a $6500 grant to pay for her trip to England?

THIS FUCKING GIRL.

I'm stunned, I was honestly expecting maybe a thousand bucks at most, but this is like 3/4ths of the total cost. I'm floored by how wonderful this is. My parents are thrilled, I'm thrilled - I mean, I know they were willing to drop the money on this trip no matter what, but it makes a huge difference to me that this doesn't mean they're sacrificing so much for a few months in order to make this happen for me.

This trip is going to be awesome.

It seems simultaneously like an eternity and no time at all since we last spoke Rachey. I miss you so much.

Love you.

1. Got my wisdom teeth yanked out on Monday! All four of them. They were all fairly easy except for one of them was coming in at an 80 degree angle, it was kind of gruesome on the x-ray no lie. Apparently there was a 1-2% chance I'd lose feeling in my lip when they took it out because the nerve was running right along side it - but everything turned out fine! They yanked 'em out and apparently I was a star patient. I remember talking through the surgery whenever the doctor's hands weren't in my mouth. We talked about a lot of random shit, but I don't remember it all.

I'm recovering fine too. I had bad pain for the first few hours but I popped a vicodin and everything was fine. And then a couple hours later it was like normal mostly - I'm still a little achy and my mouth doesn't want to open super far, but I feel fine! And there's like zero swelling, so it's crazy.

2. Still on break from school though I head back on the 20th (a Friday). Classes start that Monday, so bleh. I've got some cool ones lined up, so hopefully my schedule will be AS awesome as it was this past semester, ie. basically both Thursdays and Fridays off.

3. Oh, oh, speaking of school - got my grades and I was pleasantly shocked. I actually got an A in one of them, which pretty much set me off crying because I'm a baby and it meant a lot to me.

4. Speaking of schedules though, I'm scared that with taking 5 classes that I'll also be hauling in more hours at the library because I'll probably need to save up money for my plans this summer. I just don't want to be super overwhelmed, so yes, that's a fear going into this next semester.

5. But! My plans for next summer are hopefully me attending the University of Sussex in Brighton, England for a class or two that look fantastic. Also, this will hopefully mean I get to meet Kim (and Rai, tho omg I don't want to even know how far away that is, probably forever, sigh) so that will be awesome! But yes, I really want to go and I really hope we can afford it and I hope it'll all work out. The classes sound awesome.

6. Also, ya'll are going to have to work reaaaaally hard to be as awesome as Tiff. She and I just had an hour long convo on the phone and she was drunk and I was not and it was fabulous. Ya'll need to step up your game.

7. So when Lissa stayed with me I got to read her screenplay for her thesis film and it looks/sounds awesome and I'm super pumped for it and I wish I was in the area so I could be a nuisance and like help out and hang out and watch and stuff because it sounds fantastic. I'm super excited to see the end product.

8. Kev and I are discussing a race-bent RW cast which makes me super excited because I've always wanted to do one and it should be awesome. But yes, if you haven't checked it out yet, you should see the genderbent cast I posted up yesterday for RW. They look pretty cool if I do say so myself.

9. Kim and I have decided that we should just take over all of media and run RW shows and movies and flood awesomely written books filled with gay awesome characters into the stores and everything would be much better. I think everyone would be much happier.

10. omg, so I just watched Tom Hardy's Warrior and it was amazing. It was right up my alley as far as movies go (I'm a sucker for heartwarming sports movies with drama and underdogs and family and aksdl;fjasdf) and I just wept through it and it's totally underrated and it should win mad awards and I'm scared it's not going to but it was FANTASTIC and aksld;fjasdf. Everyone should go see it. And someone should buy me the dvd.

11. I know this is making it uneven but I just had the best bacon/egg/cheese sandwich ever. (Sorry 'bout your OCD Kev.)

12. Maybe this will help. I have mad music recommendations, I've been addicted to fun.'s album Aim and Ignite and Damion Suomi's album Go, And Sell All of Your Things. Also Etta James, gosh. She's been very sick lately and rumors were that she didn't have much longer for this world, but apparently she's stabilized which is fantastic. But honestly, I've been listening to so much of her stuff lately, such a gorgeous voice. But yes. Now it's an even number!

Feel like crap all day, even start drinking alone in my room because I feel such in a weird headspace.

Ten minutes of talking to Tiff and I feel better.

Christ, I miss you guys.

It was a beautiful day here for your birthday, Rach. Miss you.

So I guess this is the catch up entry, the one where I tell you about the last nine weeks of my life because I was too busy to barely breathe for a second, never mind write an entry.


Or... I'll just give you a list? Maybe things I learned, which is apt, because I spent the last eight weeks working at Breakthrough Cambridge (BTC), a middle school summer teaching program where I taught Literature to rising ninth graders. And it pretty much changed my life.


1.  Kids are fucking hysterical. Especially middle schoolers. They are smart as hell and movtivated when they want to be and they are always, always funny. They surprise you with their answers - sometimes they're funny because they're just so wrong and sometimes they're funny because they stun you with how insightful they are. Often times they're funny because they're freaking ridiculous and silly and you can't tell when you want to strangle them or hug them.


2. Middle school is fucking hard. I don't just mean material wise, which it is, because your kids (edit: and by your, I mean mine, my kids, my students) are getting eleven different answers from eleven different teachers. They're learning how to do a thesis sixteen different ways and each class is asking different expectations of these kids. If they can slack off, they will. They're smart, they know what they need to do to get by and they will do the least amount of work necessary. But it's hard because these kids are legitimately crazy and emotionally ridiculous and they constantly feel cornered and scared and terrified someone's going to embarrass them or that they're going to embarrass themselves. It's bloody exhausting.


3. I learned that I will never, ever, ever in my entire freaking life, EVER have the same experience with a work environment as I had there. I will never work as hard or as long, I will never have 12-14 hour days probably ever again BUT I will never be as glad to do it. Every single member of the staff was someone I adored and someone I knew I could learn from and work with and hang out with. Someone smart and cool and interesting. I want to be best friends with all of them and I'm determined to stay in touch. We grew so close and it was so amazing - the entire atmosphere was just one of constant investment and compliments and reassurance and support. If you did a good job, everyone let you know, and because they did you WANTED to do a good job. Everyone went above and beyond constantly and of course we bitched about it, but we were all so important to each other... god, I don't ever want to work somewhere that doesn't feel like BTC.


4. I want to be a teacher.


5. God there's so much to put into this last one. I learned how to run a school newspaper, how to design a summer yearbook, how to be a mentor, how to teach a thesis statement, how to talk about symbolism with kids who've never read Lord of the Flies, how to coax kids into reading and what it feels like when they succeed, how it feels like to punish your kids for not doing their homework, how it feels when a kid says they hate you, how it feels when they change their mind three days later and they love you again, how it feels to watch them figure it out, how it feels to see them get so angry and so frustrated and have no idea how to tell you because their vocabularies simply can't encompass the confusion they're feeling. I learned how to attitude check and that BTC is WHAT - DYNAMITE! and the moose juice song and how to give a spirit stick and how to hump dee dumpty dump and how to sing the good morning song and shout good bye for hours, how to chase a bus and act like a dinosaur. I learned how to co-teach and how it can be the most rewarding thing you've ever done, how to make posters and command a classroom, how to get attention and keep it, how to fail miserably at keeping your kids quiet. I learned a lot about how to teach. And that I have so much more to learn.


I am so, so glad these kids are from Cambridge. I get to keep hanging out with them and seeing them and for as long as they'll let me, I'll get to keep being apart of their lives. It's an amazing thing. I had a brilliant summer.



School starts soon. Time to get back into it, I guess. Christ, I'm a junior. What the hell.