Saturday, January 04, 2003
Somehow being ridiculously awake at 2am makes you so much more introspective.

So. I called up colleges to ask about sending in a recording... which hopefully I'll get done in time and won't turn out too sucky... even though it will in comparison to other students attending Juilliard, MSM, and the like (but I digress)... then I said 'why whine about it when you can practice more?' But I'd napped from 5-8pm the day before and went to bed at 4am yesterday, so when 5pm rolled around, I got really lightheaded and just had to nap again. 'Ok,' so I told myself, 'we don't want to be a loser on Friday evening, so why don't we wake up by 7pm?' (Wow that sentence was really weird). Set the alarm clock and all, too... when my dad woke me up for dinner, it was 12am. Midnight. Don't ask, my family's weird, haha. Then we tried to do the after-dinner TV ritual, but my dad hates talk shows and I only have 30 channels, so that didn't work out too well. Obviously, "Blind Date" was not an option as well.

I saw the last half of some old sci-fi thing instead...

The Prisoner- "The Arrival"

Debut: This June 1, 1968, episode launched the imaginative, mesmerizing---and enigmatic---British cult series.
“The Arrival” of a secret agent (series creator Patrick McGoohan) in a cryptic Village is not the stuff of traditional espionage thrillers. The hero has no name (only a number: 6), and he's trapped in a resort policed by deadly, balloon-like “rovers.” An administrator described only as Number 2 wants to know why he quit his job, but 6---believing “my life is my own”---won't budge. “Arrival” is 6's entry into a threatening and tantalizing world laden with mind games, intrusiveness, irony and symbolism; a surreal place where his captors tell him very little, except that there is no escape.

It was really strange but pretty good nonetheless. For a while I thought it was one of those post-war independent movies... one of the mantras was something like "a still tongue makes a good life" and there were other statements along those lines. But I guess it's equally appropriate for the 60-70s. Speaking of sci-fi, MST3K is really, really funny... although I've only seen one episode of it on tape because I've never had full cable in my entire life (pity me. right.).

Philosophy classes are something I definitely want to take in college... I just realized that the one good thing that Feeney has managed to do is to introduce some pretty cool topics to us. Teaching those topics is another story entirely. Anyway, Camus, Beckett, and now Stoppard... and today I picked up a philosophy/religion book from Kenny... which I'll somehow find time to read, I hope. If I had been born into the right class and gender in another era, I might've been content to smoke my pipe in a big armchair by the fire and have tete-a-tete conversations about such topics with my peers. Pretentious, yes, but also interesting. Something I've been wondering about for a while is whether any of the authors that preach that there is no meaning in life were aiming for successful careers. What is a successful career?

I've been contemplating the NYU 8 year BA-MD program today and it seems that each day I become more and more sure about applying to medical school. But I honestly wonder how much of that is the result of my own thoughts and how much is the result of my environment... probably half of the elite students in EBHS want to become doctors or lawyers, seriously. I sincerely do want to become a doctor... I do care about other people that much. I look at some people planning to do pre-med and I just hope the best for their patients. When does excellence become more important than compassion in medicine? and vice versa? Anyway, I'm torn between contemplating a life of research and one of practicing medicine. The best solution is an MD-PhD... but I've seen my 30-something year old uncle who's done that... and the numerous white hairs on his head. I don't know if I have the determination and perseverence to do that. I'm a lazy sloth like creature by nature... maybe I'll become a JD haha. Or maybe I'll just do something completely different. Maybe I'll become a PE teacher!! Now THAT's funny.

Even with colleges, there's been a lot to contemplate lately. I applied to mostly reach schools, with the exception of JHU and Rutgers. There's too many people from EBHS applying to JHU so I'd say Rutgers is a real possibility at this point... and I've been trying to get myself used to the thought. Rutgers is one of the best research institutions in the country, and I have no problem with saving a lot of money ;), but it's exactly what Arwa said in English once when Feeney asked why she was freaking out about colleges-- you want to go to college where the people around you worked just as hard as you in high school. I mean, I loved that at GSS you could have intelligent conversations about almost ANYTHING without feeling self-conscious... and I think that's what I won't have at RU (I think I'm justified in correlating the rumored 70% STD rate with lack of academic intelligence). Enough about that.

I'm not so sure whether I want to go to prom anymore... Johanna has been freaking me out. I always assumed that, even though I'm not a big fan of dances and have never gone to a single Churchill/EBHS function in any way resembling a dance, I would go to the prom. It's a chance to get dressed up, go out, and have fun with your friends, I thought. I know prom bids have been sold in pairs, but I always thought, 'surely I can't be the only loser without a date... I'll just split the bid with a friend'. With the way everyone else has been obsessing over dates, I'm beginning to think that I was sorely mistaken.

So. If anyone feels the same way about prom and would rather just go out and do something else that day/night (go to the shore, the city, six flags, whatever...)... let me know.

It's 3am and I'm still not tired but I think I want to preseve the remains of whatever sleep cycle I have left.



--posted by M @ 3:10 AM | 0 comments

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