longhand

My dad is so great. He got home late from rehearsal last night but volunteered to start working on the PROFILE. He won't be home for quite awhile tonight, either, but says he's going to finish it. All this financial aid stuff really stresses me out, but he's very calm and has already done the FAFSA. Everything is falling into place. I want April 1 to get here right away, while managing to magically enjoy every awaiting moment in February and March.

I still get so much stuff from Rockford College. All these pictures of students holding paper cut-outs of Jane Addam's face over their own! At first, it was sort of cool and seemed like a good marketing technique, but it's becoming somewhat unnerving. You'd think schools would begin to realize that at this point, most people have applied to colleges. Just the other day I got mail from Kalamazoo. Alissa and I were talking about this at church on Sunday; she gets mail from Kalamazoo, too.

My English paper is already over half-way done. I'm enjoying myself till dinner, then going back to my room to write the rest of the paper in longhand. I'm actually sort of ashamed that I've spent the majority of my paper-writing experiences in the past on the computer, distracted by the Internet and by the most random computer functions that mean nothing when finding an avoidance mechanism is not in order. For this paper, I figured out what I was going to do and sat down and wrote an outline and showed it to Mrs. Helton and clarified stuff and wrote two handwritten pages before I'd even gotten home from school. Usually, my process is completely ramshackle. It tends to work out, though, which is probably why I haven't made much of an effort to improve the way I go about writing. I feel a lot better now, knock on wood. (It would be horrible if this efficient paper earns me my worst score of the year or something.) At least I'll get to go to bed earlier.

Today and yesterday are complete contrasts. I felt so glum yesterday--miserable without the edge. On the way out of school today, I was talking to Daniel and John and we were asking each other about each other's days and I said (jokingly), "This is the best day of my life!" John said, "Really?" because I guess I wasn't sarcastic enough. I explained that it wasn't really, and he said, "Well, it could have been..." and went on to say something about college admissions. I really liked that. Even though the whole conversation was funny (more so at the time than now, of course), it's nice to think of each day being an increasingly wonderful best day of one's life. Utterly impossible, but a fine goal nonetheless.

I used Tom's anti-static cloth on my negatives today, and the portrait I printed of Shiva came out without any obnoxious dust spots or splotches. I'm so relieved. The 100-speed film is so beautiful--there is virtually no grain, and the pictures have this glowing quality, as if they're made solely of light. At least, they will once I get my act together and go on the dust-free photo-printing rampage I've been dreaming of.

limitless

"There's a stench in the air, which, from this distance underground, might be the smell either of death or of spring--I hope of spring. But don't let me trick you, there is a death in the smell of spring and in the smell of thee as in the smell of me."

--the narrator, The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Best lines ever! Sometimes I fall completely for slight rhymes and wordplay, in addition to the beautiful or stark or honest idea of something. I liked the "I'd yea, yea and oui, oui and si, si and see, see them too" part as well. And "I yam what I am" is a much-discussed classic. Oh, the merits of sweet potatoes. (If I had millions of spare hours, I would make some sweet potato casserole for my English class.)

There are certain words I have a lot of trouble typing. For instance, "the." And "responsibility." And "rhetorical." That poses a problem for somebody writing a paper illustrating a character's shift into becoming a socially responsible person using discriptions of his many speeches. (Rhetorical skills, you know.) But I am done, spazzy fingers and all. I am so relieved. Ordinarily I would still be working for two, three more hours at this point in the evening. It is 10:17 p.m. I feel slightly ridiculous for bragging, but I'm waiting for the paper to print and I am just so happy. All I have to do now is practice my French for tomorrow's oral interview. This might call for an episode of Cheers!