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Sunday, April 18, 2004 Time to rant about my discoveries this term! --- Dealing with the stress of running your own club, which is something you're usually intensely passionate about, is by far much more preferable to stressing out about positions that are well established. For example, a capella in high school was a major time eater and incredibly stressful, and oftentimes i had to deal with criticisms from other people, some of them from people meaning well, some from assholes, and some who had no idea what they were talking about... kind of disappointing sometimes, after I felt that I'd worked as hard as I possibly could. But those criticisms bounced off far better than the stuff I hear about from being social chair at McCormick. In some ways, I don't mind doing it, but then there are times when I never, ever, EVER want to do such a job again. Ever. Honestly, I don't give a fuck about social events in my dorm, which by the way has the least (floor) spirit ever (so it's not much fun organizing social stuff), and a lot of times even though I'm getting some help from my co-chair, it feels like only I hear all the complaining from people. Some of the complaining is done nicely, some of it is meant to be constructive criticism... and other stuff is just plain annoying. Everyone is entitled to voice their opinion and I'm fine with that, but honestly, I put so much work into satisfying 250 people... and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with the few complaints. If someone complains, chances are 50-50 that there are a few others who feel the same way, yet usually it's not the majority. So do I take all the opinions into account? Or do I do a "majority rules" type thing? Case in point: we had a dorm tshirt design contest, and in the name of giving people choices, we had everyone submit designs and picked 6 designs that we thought were the neatest, showed the most effort, were unique and quirky. I get nasty emails implying that I submitted and selected my own designs just to win the $50 gift certificate to the Cheesecake Factory prize, that my co-chair and I have "immature" fashion tastes, that one design discriminated against a certain physical section of the dorm, etc., etc. Then we organized a trip to Six Flags... things got kind of crazy and hectic, so there were a lot of emails sent out to the entire dorm. Yes, only a small portion of the dorm's going on the trip, but you know what? I don't really want to hunt down the email addresses of 25 people. You can deal with the spam and just press delete for a week... I mean, seriously, no one likes spam, but suck it up, your finger won't be in that much pain for making a few extra clicks. I've also gotten emails saying that my tone is too nasty in them. Yes, I write bitchy emails, but when people don't show up to pick up t-shirts and I get 10 emails from people each asking me to meet them at some point in time to give them their t-shirts, or they show up late, or they generally make my life more stressful than it should be, I get fucking fed up. Maybe the previous social chairs were just lucky, maybe they organized things better, maybe they were nicer... I don't know. All I do know is I personally am working ridiculously hard, whether it looks like it or not, for people who don't really give a shit about the dorm... and for every person that takes the time to say "thank you" there's at least two more who complain. Besides being stressful, it's pretty disheartening. Honestly, if I were in their shoes, I'd probably say the same things, because before being social chair I don't think I truly understood how immensely painful it can be to try to please 250 people. Running a capella was a pain, but it was a lot less painful when I liked what I was doing that much more, plus there were only 15 people max at a time to deal with. If there's one thing I hope I can take out of this, it's that I keep my mouth shut when I know someone else is in a similar position, and try not to make critical comments about things that aren't so important. It's hard, but I think I'm really going to try, because being social chair term has been like going through organizational hell... and back and I'd never want anyone else to emerge from that just to have even one person say to them, "Gee, that sucked". Sometimes I think it'd just be easier if I stopped caring what other people think about me or trying to please everyone and just do whatever I want to do. I'm already halfway there just because I'm slowly giving up on trying to be nice and considerate to people in my dorm regarding organizational stuff... it's totally fucking up my sanity. Some days, it's not too hard to contemplate Kim Jong Il as my new idol. --- What is it with guys who want to be players? I don't know about elsewhere, but at MIT, it reeks of desperation. Maybe it's just my philosophy... if you're going to be in a relationship because you just need someone to drag around with you at parties, get a fucking blow-up doll. And I kind of want to say that if you're just going to fool around, then make sure both parties know it's only physical and nothing more... and don't get your hopes up for anything more. Except somewhere in the back of my mind I realize that human emotion isn't exactly always that controllable. I also don't understand why it's so difficult to "just be friends". Maybe one day I will; but for now I find it ridiculously frustrating and discouraging that even though you've implicitly (or even explicitly) agreed to get to know each other better as friends, they either keep trying to be more than friends or basically stop talking to you, more or less. It doesn't do much to improve my impression of a significant portion (but definitely not all and hopefully not the majority) of the male population at MIT. These experiences simply further my belief that these people that I know just see girls as ass rather than intelligent human beings. I'm sure that to a degree, I may be misreading these people. What you see is often skewed by the illusions that you choose, inadvertently or not, to deceive yourself with. Maybe they have reasons why they are the way they are; maybe they don't know better (yet?). Maybe they're not that way but through some serious misunderstanding I'm seeing something totally opposite of what's really going on. Or maybe not. --- I'm a freak and a weirdo at heart, and although I occassionally pretend I'm not, I probably have the most fun when I'm comfortable being who I am... a few parts nerd, one part pseudo-cool music geek, one part "unathletic but still trying to participate in sports", one part stressball/obsessive-compulsive/neurotic/anal personality, several parts lazy introvert with an obnoxiously loud mouth, with a dash of idiotic valley-girl-like enthusiasm and girliness. I'm slowly learning who I can count on, despite all my flaws and all their flaws, too. And I can't thank these people enough... the people who laugh at my idiotic jokes, who are there to help me out or just talk when I need it the most, who listen to my ramblings and rants and are supportive, who put up with all my obnoxious and disturbing quirks, and who come and drag me out when I'm being totally lazy and unproductive anyway. --- I'm better at physics than chem... for now. Somehow I gotta change that... without becoming worse at physics, 'cause that would kinda suck and 'cause both are important. --- So go ahead and laugh all you want I got my philosophy And I trust it like the ground That's why my philosophy Keeps me walking when I'm falling down --posted by M @ 8:57 PM | 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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