It's rained the past week.
No, that's not the right term. It's been a damn biblical flood the last few days. This is of course coming from a twenty year old upper class Californian who considers a light shower the tell-tale signs of winter approaching. Though it's finally cleared up a bit (it was an uncharacteristically beautiful couple days this past weekend), I still feel the storm approaching: rains that have taken too long to fall; winds that are sure to knock tree branches from their redwood empire, inevitably blocking the one road that leads to campus; the downpour of avoided reading assignments; a gust of class days flying by, reminding me that the only thing that's quicker than a new quarter starting is a new quarter ending.
Most of all, I worry that I'm not growing. I'm not being challenged intellectually. These grades, these stupid letters that are supposed to mean something, have made it so that I look at them as some sort of barometer of intellect, as if another 'A' on an essay really means I'm growing. Last quarter, my Introduction to Film Theory & Analysis class proved to be the most demanding and challenging class I've ever taken. It was also, without a doubt, the single most influential curriculum I've ever been subjected to. I was reading theorists that I now praise like rock stars; writing about subjects and film's that have changed me as a student and, most importantly, a film lover; developing theories that would divide me in half. I hate not feeling that same challenge, that send sense of desire to be better than I am. Now, I'm reading a book that says:
"To delve into the topic further would require too much time. You can read more by researching further; use search engines like 'Google' or 'Yahoo!'."Would you believe this is an actual quote? I kid you not. I want, more than anything, to know I'm getting better. And it doesn't help that anytime I sit down to write something new I convince myself that I can't write for shit, and that anything I've written that's been even remotely successful was pure luck and nothing more. I want to tell myself to "snap out of it", but I can't shake the feeling that my success has been good fortune, and that anything from here on out has the chance to fall to the wayside. I have to embrace the shitty first draft, but I can't. I can't weather the storm of potential failure.
How in the hell do I plan on moving to the East Coast if I can't deal with California drizzle?
