college

Sunday-Monday-Blah-Blah-Blah

Think of everything Monday represents for you: the beginning of the week, errands, traffic, going back to work, the end of the weekend, Garfield hates it too, MISERY. Yes, that’s what most people feel about Mondays. Now, picture that for a moment in your mind. And now, transfer it all to SUNDAY.

Yes, in Israel Sunday is the first day of the week. Mondays are just another day, just one step closer to Friday and Saturday. Sundays are our first days, and I can only imagine how weird that is to anyone who lives anywhere else. Sundays for most of you mean another day of rest, a day to sleep in, a day where everything is shut down, a day when there’s no mail! But here? Nope! Here, Sundays are the dreaded first day and Saturdays are the blissful weekend.

I mention this because I know I’m going to find it extremely odd to move and live somewhere where Sundays are another day off. Which makes me wonder about our definitions for things- just because Sundays are defined here as the first day of the week, that’s what’s going to be embedded in my brain forever. The rest of the world sees Sunday as the weekend but I’ll forever have this small part of my mind thinking that Sunday is the dreaded beginning of another work week.

Forgive my rambling and pointless post, but excitement for the coming-leave-taking on April ninth is addling my brain – especially now that I got accepted to Sarah Lawrence. I’m not gloating, really I’m not!

Travel Plans

Whenever I hear an airplane buzz above my house these days, I turn my face to the sky and smile. Whenever I’m at work and have to answer customers’ questions about their purchases abroad, I smile as I read them the data. Whenever I look at the calendar and realize it’s the middle of March already, I skip over to April and smile some more. In two weeks to a month I will be on an airplane and I will be bored half to death on the long, long, long flight, but ultimately, the flight will end. I’ll get off the airplane and breath the (slightly) better airport air. I’ll walk to passport control, have my passport stamped, and then I’ll hear those words that they say every time my mom and I reach the US. They’ll say “Welcome home.”

I do love my home here. I do love my friends, and my tiny city, and Tel Aviv just a few minutes away with its beaches and cafes. I do love taking the ride up to cold Jerusalem, and I do love my time there with Sir B. F. I might sound as if I’m wild to begone from this mad country – that’s not entirely true. I just need a vacation. I wish I could take everyone I love with me, though.

I apologize for the very “bloggy” quality of this post – my mother and I are starting to plan dates, and so my mind is abuzz with the thoughts of open days in colleges and hotel prices and the fact that I’ll get to see New York for the first time ever. Plus, and almost more importantly than the college-scoping, I’ll get to go to BARNES AND NOBLES.

Oh yes. Book shopping and baggage-overweight -fees, here I come.

Voice and Tense

I realized today something that I’ve realized many times before, something which gets me more excited about college than ever – I need to learn how to write. What I mean is that I need to really study and practice in an orderly fashion, with someone to read my work and tell me that “this is good” and “this is bad” and “this needs some more work.” I love this blog, and I’m proud of myself for keeping it up – my track record on keeping organized blogs is disastrous, to say the least. The fact that I’m keeping this one up is due to my true devotion and love of practicing my writing.

But, as I was saying, I need to study and learn methods for it. The reason I realized this today was because I was spending my time at work, as I usually do, with trying to plan a new story. This new story is a sort of young-adult type thing, something that I decided to try after remember how much I love Sarah Dessen’s books. I started writing about my character from the third-person point of view, but after a page or so I realized that it sounded wrong. It wasn’t what I’d pictured in my head.

So I changed the voice, and tried writing her from the first person point of view: her speaking about herself. Once again, it sounded wrong because I was using past tense, and it sounded like any second she would be lapsing into current events. I realized that I don’t know how to write past tense but make it sound like the present, and not like the retelling of a story.

And so, whether or not I major in creative writing, I’m definitely going to take some writing courses when I go to college. I can’t wait!

On a completely unrelated subject – I find it highly amusing that WordPress, a blogging website, highlights the word “blog” as a misspell in its spell-checker program. WordPress is another word that is listed as misspelled.

A Moment’s Pause

This week has been hectic, which is my only excuse for not updating as regularly as I usually do. Let’s go over some odd things of this week:

-I got accepted to Hofstra University [not my first choice of college, but it’s good to know I got in somewhere!]

-We had a very odd house-guest around for half the week [and old friend of my parents’ who hasn’t been a real friend to them for many years, and yet the courtasy of having him stay with us is still there.]

-I went to a concert [very loud and very enjoyable.]

-I had to make large college envelopes again [because I needed to send yet MORE scores and data about me to the colleges.]

Ok, so maybe there hasn’t been all that much going on. But still, it was one of those weeks where things feel strange and hurried and you never have enough time for anything. Tonight there shall be a normal post again, or so I hope.

Good Impression? Defintely Not.

I am going to share a little story with you. As most of you know, I’m applying to colleges and am currently waiting for answers from most places. One of the places that I applied to was Yale. Yes, it’s definitely one of my reach-schools, and I have no real belief that I’ll get in, but who knows?

I got a call the other day from a woman. She was one of those women who talk through their noses, and Hebrew through the nose is even more annoying than any other language spoken that way. She asked me if I was who I was, I replied that I am, and she then started saying something along the lines of “I understand my boss is supposed to be interviewing you…?” I, of course, replied confusedly that I have no idea who her boss is and I don’t know if he’s supposed to interview me.

Eventually she managed to figure out that her boss was a Yale alumni and that he wants to interview me, as part of the application process. We agreed on a time and date, and eventually hung up, to my ears’ great relief.

The interview is tomorrow, the alumnus is  a lawyer, and I’m already nervous that he’s going to be the biggest prat on the planet – if only because he had his secretary call me [the Brown alum called himself] and didn’t even tell her who I was or what sort of interview we’re supposed to be having. I ask you, is this the sort of impression I’m supposed to have about Yale right from the start? Pompous asses who don’t really care much?

Repeat

Get cover note, then notarized copy, then graduation certificate, then transcript (“Ninth, tenth, eleventh, twlefth- ok.”), then letter (“This one is two letters… This is also with councillor recommendation.”), then graduation from honors program, then essays if needed, then stick it all in an envelope. Then repeat. And again, and again, and again.

Endless repeat of the same thing, endlessly dreary, endlessly pointless feeling. Only it was all done with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart, because I was almost done, so close to the ending of this long, intense, difficult, stressful period of applications to colleges. And now it’s done.

I cannot muster the strength to think about it anymore tonight. As it is, I feel my dreams will be full of addressing envelopes and struggeling with online applications. It doesn’t matter, though. It’s all behind me now. Tomrrow the applications will be sent and I won’t have to think about them until I begin to get my rejection and/or acceptance letters. I’ve done the best I could, and now, with a sigh of relief so loud and strong that I believe my screen was a bit buffeted, I shall climb into bed, read a book, and fall into an exhausted, pleased sleep.

Sweet Relief – and Some Zombies

I just finished my application for the University of California schools. Meaning three campuses, three schools really. UCLA, Berkeley and Santa-Cruz. The application process was long and grueling, confusing and upsetting, disturbing and tiring and most of all FINISHED. It’s finished.

My brain feels so incredibly fried up and used and dried and broken and exhausted and strange and zombified. But at least I got this done. It’s a wonderful feeling, to have the weight of the first deadline off my mind. True, four down and still fifteen to go, but that’s something nonetheless.

In celebration, and laziness, a haiku to explain the way my head feels:

Zombies ate my brain,
Because zombies don’t eat trees,
Carnivorous swine.

Short Answer

I cannot truthfully say that I understand why the stage calls to me. Shy and timid for most of my girlhood, I nevertheless jumped at the opportunity to join a drama class of young girls and boys such as myself. I played my little heart out in costumes and masks, had fun inventing crazy and strange situations to place our heroic characters in, and had a merry time all around.

The first time I got to read lines though, was something I will always remember. It felt a little naughty, a little wrong, like reading a letter over someone’s shoulder. I knew, of course, that the playwright had put the words down on paper specifically so others would get to read and enact them, but still, I felt like I was prying.

It didn’t matter though. I loved it even though, or perhaps because, it felt a little wrong. I loved trying on someone else’s face, a face that wasn’t even partly mine, not like the characters I’d invented on my own. Trying to find reason and depth in the character’s words and actions – it thrilled me.

This was going to be my short answer for the common application. Since I wrote this, I have written two others that are shorter and that my mother thinks I should use. I decided to see what the verdict on this one was though, just out of curiosity. Hopefully, this sounds collegiate and well written, despite being short.

Don’t colleges WANT students?!

Why must colleges have such HORRIFIC websites? Can they not see they are losing the faith of the young generation, i.e. the generation they’re supposed to be catering to? Anyone who breaths and lives the internet knows how annoying it is to stumble across a website that is not designed well, has missing links, has strange ways of navigating users from place to place and is all-around generally bad.

Suggestion, O Collegiate Geniuses: take twenty jacking-off, pubuescent, nineteen year-old kids from your newest freshmen class, prefferably the ones taking many computer classes, tell them to design a more approachable and straightforward website and give them extra credit so they’ll do it. Your problem will be solved and your websites won’t make me and the other prospective students want to scream and hurl things at our screens.

The Difference Between Ice-Cream and Looking for Colleges.

Some comic relief. The comic part being my Paint-drawing skills and the relief being the lack of words.