I'm in a 100-level english class about literary analysis after a sad realization I needed three more credits in that level so I can graduate. I'm sure most people have taken a class like this and they probably really enjoyed it; I'm dying of boredom. Call it snobbery, or whatever, but sometimes I just feel like I'm a little too old for this class (at the ripe age of 20! haha). I was doing these classes about two years ago and in comparison to the other english classes I'm taking, this is at the back of my mind, or was until a few days ago.
I sit next to a girl straight from high school who comes to class scared out of her wits. The constant questions she throws my way every class is usually the only thing keeping me awake as my professor, for the hundredth time, pronounces predicate wrong (I sound like such a brat right now, haha). They are usually all about the course.
What are the finals like? Have you done the readings before? What should I look for? Do you get what she meant last class? Blah blah blah... It was like a tidal wave every day I sat down next to her. The other day we had a conversation though, and I just can't get it out of my head. After the initial "hello" and asking about each others weekend she asked me for some advice on the upcoming essay. I told her what I generally do.
"I usually sit down and write one sentence to explain what I want to accomplish in the essay. After deciding what I want out of this, I outline the essay to such an extreme that every paragraph even has bullets of the main thoughts I have. I spend more time outlining than I do actually writing the essay because by the time I finish I look at my plan and it's practically written before me. All I have to do after is simply put together the ideas and fill in the blanks to make it look pretty. Just plan the heck out of it!"
She laughed at my response, said she'd try it, and then further said, "I guess you could say that goes along with life too."
I didn't really get what she meant at first until I kept thinking about it. I read a book this summer about "Achieving Your Life Mission". I won't really get into it too much, but I did enjoy reading it. There were activities you could do and one was making a mission statement. Like, You know those slogans that schools come up with? Most are super cheesy and about the growing of students or something? Kinda like that. I thought of the one sentence I write at the beginning of each essay. They usually go along the lines of "To portray so and so's idea that such and such exists in today's society based on blah blah's writing"and then I aim everything towards that one sentence. You know I'm all about the analogies so I decided that I was going to write that ONE sentence, that mission statement, for myself! I'm still working on it. So I guess I'm asking everyone, what would your mission statement for your life be? To be a mother? A chimney sweeper? Mel Gibson's butt? (haha, that's from Notting Hill I couldn't resist)
What are you aiming your whole life towards?
This was a really long post, forgive me.
Oh, and P.S. this is what I was for halloween! A twitter bird. Get it? haha.
