At 12:00 we go live...

So its been a long time since I've posted. I told myself I would go on a self-imposed hiatus until I finished my first grad school course cause the times I would be tooling around on a new blog could probably be better spent reading or taking notes for class. Those two things I have always been completely remiss to do, and they were never a strong point even in undergrad. Now I am officially finished with my first grad school class, done till the fall, I can retrospectively look back at it and begin to assess what is probably the most significant thing going on in my life right now in terms of potential impact. Oh also, I got an A. I felt like such an academic gangster.

Going back to school is exciting, a bit intimidating, and a bit foreign feeling all at the same time. On one hand, my motivation for doing so makes it feel a bit more tangible and pressing than some of my "lacking" intentions when I was at Miami which makes it way more easy to get fired up about some of the more mundane and troublesome aspects of higher education (aka actually preparing outside of class and studying). At the same time, its sometimes far more difficult to adequately dedicate the time and mental resources to the material that is necessary when you just finished a full work day and just want to watch garbage dating shows on VH1.

The weirdest thing for me about going back to school (other than all the classes being at night after work and getting out at 9) was the varied demographics of the classes. I always associated college courses with a bunch of 18-22 year olds, with maybe the assorted non traditional student tossed in. I remember a couple of Psych courses I took at Miami featured a 40 something townie going back to school who was the prototypical class gunner (always asks questions, has to be heard, more obnoxious participation) on steroids. She always had to incorporate her life into things, and as a 21 year old asshole, I cared more about finishing class so I could go to happy hour or leer at new freshman "talent" than how she worried her son has Asperger's (he totally didn't, he was just quiet) or that her ex-husband might have antisocial personality disorder (surprise, he was just an asshole!) Anyways, I digress.

My class was largely late 20s or so, I think I may have been the youngest in there at 24, but there were definitely a large number of older individuals. For example, a group member of mine, Dan, was in his late 40s. This was very interesting cause it was a completely foreign and unique perspective on post graduate study incorporated with business that was actually pretty helpful for me. There were multiple times where I completely bitched about my current job situation during group discussions and his advice about patience, staying driven and hungry, and riding out seemingly incompetent managers, while complimenting my drive and intelligence was one of the highlights of the class. After my last 2 years at Miami were primarily made up of me and my direct aged peers in addition to tons of younger students, it was cool to have classmates who, while still my "peers", had a lot more I could learn from. Also, so many people were married, WTF, why is everyone in the world settling down! Will I never find love? *sob*

Of course, as with any academic setting over 10 people, there were the token outspoken douchebags. I could go on forever about them, but I will highlight my 2 favorites. First, I will call Mother Russia. Mother Russia was originally from Siberia and had lived in the States since undergrad. He had an odd accent and basically sounded like Kermit the Frog...if he had sucked some helium and grown up behind the walls of the Kremlin. This name dropping cosmonaut asked a question withing 10 min of class starting in EVERY CLASS. These questions were about as relevant as me mentioning that today at the gym I benched my own bodyweight 8 times (and I totally did, aren't I a beast?) Once, in a discussion of reward structures, he mentioned a meeting he had at "my former employer, a pharmaceutical company, Abbot Laboratories (pronounced lay-bor-ay-tories). This meeting had nothing to do with anything, he just wanted us to know he worked there. Needless to say, there was no stirring in my loins or any rush of blood to my head with excitement knowing I was in the presence of an ex pharmaceutical salesmen, so I guess he was about as successful with that as his homeland was at creating a long lasting and sustainable communist government. Boom roasted.

The other chap, less pervasive, but no less annoying, I'll call Smug Asshat. SA was in my assessment group for a leadership skills assessment in the second class. In this assessment we were placed into small groups to simulate various meetings in a corporation, like discussing possible CEO candidates, or deciding on various customer service initiatives. Well SA realized that points were given for keeping people on task and outward expressions of teamwork, so he went out of his way to cut me and others off (as we began to start the meeting and discuss the topics at hand) to basically read the titles of the meetings and the rules. Imagine the annoying moderator at the start of your standardized tests. He would recite this meaningless drivel with a shit eating grin and then be largely silent for the rest of the discussion before pulling the same pea-brained stunt to end the meeting. He tried to do it in class as well when we discussed things as a large group, but he couldn't master 40 other people with his need to please Big Brother. He also gave a cultural presentation, for extra credit, on business in Brazil. As he gave a decent, but Wikipedia-esque, presentation, he was asked if he had ever done business in Brazil. Oh no, but his wife was Brazilian so he knew all about it. Oh and by the way, he told us Brazilians are the most beautiful of all women, here is a picture of his wife and him in Rio to prove it. Now I don't normally make fun of people's spouses, but SA was a condescending cock holster with no real reason to be as such. So lets just say that when viewing he and his wife, in matching blue shirts, I thought he was standing next to the large blue globe on the Brazilian flag.

So class was all fine and dandy, but probably the most significant recent event took place last Wed. What was that you ask? The Silver Anniversary (25th) of my birth, naturally. Now for whatever reason, turning 25 kind of freaked me out. My friends, most of whom have been 25 for many months, or gasp! years now, mostly told me to shut up cause I sounded ridiculous. But its weird, probably because I am now out of my "early 20s." It also probably has to do with the recent influx of the class of 2010 into Chicago. There are now 2 graduating class between me and college, and I am now officially in my "mid-20s", so I feel like there is some gravity to that fact. Will it prevent me from being an idiot and acting like I am still a youthful 23? Probably not, but I was thinking about the fact that I am now officially older than my mom was when she had me. And that is kind of nuts. It all kind of forced to me to look at my life and the fact that now, more than ever, I have a responsibility to decide where my life is going. Not make major life decisions or do something drastic, or anything in any sort of specific time frame for that matter. But to realize that I, not anyone else, are responsible for my own happiness and I'm in the drivers seat. Life is not about finding yourself, its about creating yourself. It seems lame that it took a birthday to finally process that, but I have always looked at my birthday as more of a benchmark than New Years. Its officially the start of a New Year of my life, and I might as well steer my ship to a heading I want to be pointed at. And while I can say that I am far from content with how everything is currently sitting in my life, now, more than in years past, I can say that I am not just bitching to anyone who will listen, and rather trying to fix it myself.

Wow, that may sound like the disjointed ramblings of someone with far to much time on their hands...cause it is. Its summer and work has slowed down immensely. I basically sit and ponder like all great philosophers when they worked petty jobs. I want to get drunk and write great novels at work like William Faulkner did, but my "mom-ager" (yeah thats a manager/mom hybrid, what a professional company I work at!) claims I need to focus on work more. This doesn't mean I get any new projects or that my time is more effectively filled. I still have nothing to do, I just must be extra sneaky in my killing of superfluous downtime, and not have open Word documents that may be stories, letters...or college papers.

So the last week I have been spinning some "older" bands I haven't listened to in a bit. And buy older, I mean, I listened to them in High School, way back in the 2002 and such, on those shiny disc things. The Starting Line. No band has ever written such simplistic lyrics that so accurately and emotionally capture the dynamics of relationships (or lack thereof). Also, the band depicted on the only T-shirt I ever purchased from Hot Topic (aside from all my vampire accessories...natch) But I stumbled upon a B-side of the Starting Line that is so baller. Nights and Weekends. Released only on the Japanese version of their second CD, Based on a True Story. Japan? They seriously got this bomb track? I thought the Japanese were still obsessed with Cheap Trick and male covers of Whitney Houston songs. For good measure, my other favorite TSL B-side is their cover of Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now. Such an awesome band, can't wait for their reunion...

"She said, I've been thinking alot about you. Is it true, do you hate me?"

JW