"Funeral for a friend." - "Funeral for a Friend," Elton John.
This blog post is dedicated to my pet, my companion, and my brother Simba, who died at the age of seventeen on December 13, 2014.
This blog also goes out to all those - Mike, Slurge, Kolar, Nick, Josh, Mrs. A, and various others - all of whom helped keep me sane throughout my second trimester in college. You guys deserve a one year break from me to say the very least.
Death, heartbreak, unrequited love, anxiety, financial pressures, family troubles, scheduling conflicts, grief, stress, complex material, the occasional sleepless night, and the constant pursuit of bliss and tranquility. All the aforementioned feelings and ideas are ostensibly cherrypicked from the first season of The Young and the Restless, when in fact, they were the many moods of my second trimester in college. Following a mostly tumultuous ten weeks of adjustments and loneliness my first trimester in college, I went into my second trimester with the same kind of hesitance and uncertainty that I had before. While I've generally been a person to anticipate future projects and different opportunities, I admit, perhaps to some monotony, that it was difficult to anticipate each day during my second trimester.
To begin with, I never really stopped going to school for more than two weeks after the conclusion of my first trimester. Following less than a week off for Thanksgiving, I attended an interim mass media and society class to fulfill part of my interactive media studies major from December 1st to December 19th for three hours each day, five days a week. The class was among some of the most fun I've had in a classroom before, learning about the different functions of Television, radio, and the distribution of news. On the last day, following the exam, I emerged from the class wishing it was a ten week course and not a heavily truncated, three-week course.
This interim class, however, was grueling, as we were assigned over one-hundred pages of reading a week and, on top of that, began a whirlwind of personal issues for my family to deal with. For one, we finally saw my cat age past what we all deemed was no longer an age where a certain level of quality could be obtained. After his diabetes diagnosis in October, seventeen-year-old Simba, who has been by my side since age four, saw feline neuropathy in his hindlegs get the best of him, along with a general disinterest in being activity or as loving as he once was. My persistent and thorough leg massages, my mother's obedient veterinarian followups, and repeated insulin injections proved to be all for naught. His quality of life never improved and he was put to sleep by my mother and I the morning of December 13, 2014. It was the last good thing we could do for the cat and, while I miss him every day, I don't regret the decision in the slightest.
Armed with the pain of my cat's death, despite it being the right decision, I pushed on with the optimism that the aforementioned interim class, the films I had scheduled to watch that month, the forthcoming Christmas holiday, and a strong sense of friendship with another soul would lift me up. Alas, another downturn occurred. Following my A in mass media and society, something I was momentarily proud of, my grandmother, who had long been in the hospital following a debilitating stroke in August and recovering slowly before her progression grew stagnant in November, died on December 26, 2014. My father and I were both working at the liquor store and cut work early because of an emotional phone call from my aunt saying it was anytime before she passed; we were ten minutes away from the hospital when I got the gut-wrenching phone call from my aunt, barely coherent and sounding as if she was drowning in her tears, saying, "She's gone, Steven, she's really gone."
With two deaths, though ultimately for the better, a souring relationship that meant the world to me, and a great deal of work that awaited me during the holiday season at the liquor store, it was becoming very difficult to get excited about anything other than whatever I was venturing out to see at the theater that particular day. At the start of the new year, I began my second trimester as down as I had been since my freshman year of high school. I was enrolled in quantitative reasoning, a logic/reasoning math course to which, even the day after taking the final, I don't think I could accurately summarize to you, an introductory sociology course, which I very much enjoyed, and a class examining religion and ethics in film, which was another wholly intriguing course all around. The big difference this term, as is the same with my spring term, is that I only have to go to school Tuesday and Thursday, which has been wonderful for my academic productivity and my review productivity. The scheduling for these next two terms couldn't have worked out any better.
But January saw me in one of the coldest states (there's an ambiguity to that, living in Illinois) in a while. There were days I'd go to school, and, much like first term, go the entire day without speaking to anyone. Some days I was just in an unbelievably miserable mood, where the only thing to look forward to was the film I had to watch later in the day or the CD I was reviewing on my way to school. Combine this kind of day-to-day loneliness, a friend growing distant, and the neverending grieving process, and it was some of the hardest things I've yet to deal with. "Get used to it," my father would say, "that's life."
The friends that I had that I mentioned from the first blog post, Désury, Gerrardo, Joceline, Sarah, and Sam, are all still present in my life, but in a tragically lesser form. Our schedules rarely intersected and we all had other top priorities, and with me only going to school twice a week, it was difficult to meet up on the same day at the same time. Nonetheless, I met a handful of other kind souls, such as a non-traditional student named John, who could easily pass for the same age as myself, and Katheryn, an uncommonly bright individual, who always asks for my input on her essays.
Late January/early February was extremely difficult as well, with the funeral for my grandmother taking place and the final nail being put in the coffin of the aforementioned friendship. The funeral was particularly rough, not really because my grandmother was dead and gone because, at her state, there was no quality of life there, like my cat, but seeing the family so together yet simultaneously so torn apart was heartwrenching to say the least. By that point, halfway through the trimester and already so much happening, I knew I'd be writing a reflection that was more downtrodden than I've been in the past. I'm the kind of person who fears complaining about my personal life too much for fear of sounding whiny or petulant about my issues, as I clearly know I'm not the only one life is happening too. If anything, this second trimester has proven that these bad days, while miserable and ostensibly neverending, help you appreciate and really recognize how good the good days actually are.
If you asked me what I wanted in college at this time, above all, it would be real human connection. While I have a solid set of good friends at North Central College, I've come to appreciate the kind of connections that just click from the get-go and fill each person with the kind of immense satisfaction and happiness that they don't get from just anyone. The kind of person you meet and instantly feel open about speaking your mind and your personal lives too. There has to be an immense level of comfort between both parties and, in a spiritualistic way, the stars have to align properly for this kind of meaningful connection to occur. I had it once this year and I'd do just about anything to get it back.
This is the kind of time period in your life you'd more or less like to forget, save for a few noteworthy instances such as meeting a few new faces and having some excellent class discussions (in sociology particularly). Just a week ago, I released a new song with my good friend Josh Witt that did a nice job chronicling the events of this past trimester and, in a way, I used it as the metaphorical ribbon to tie together the past so I could move forward and look to better days. My next trimester sees me on the same Tuesday/Thursday schedule, taking Introduction to American Government, creative writing, and English style, with the latter two almost guaranteed to increase the output of content on this particular blog. Right now, I have a mind-clearing week and a half of spring break and then it's back on academic go mode come March 31st, 2015, with my final trimester (and first year) reflection coming in the middle of June 2015.
Until then, the fence will be the direction in which I swing and my nuts will continue to be dropped.
But January saw me in one of the coldest states (there's an ambiguity to that, living in Illinois) in a while. There were days I'd go to school, and, much like first term, go the entire day without speaking to anyone. Some days I was just in an unbelievably miserable mood, where the only thing to look forward to was the film I had to watch later in the day or the CD I was reviewing on my way to school. Combine this kind of day-to-day loneliness, a friend growing distant, and the neverending grieving process, and it was some of the hardest things I've yet to deal with. "Get used to it," my father would say, "that's life."
The friends that I had that I mentioned from the first blog post, Désury, Gerrardo, Joceline, Sarah, and Sam, are all still present in my life, but in a tragically lesser form. Our schedules rarely intersected and we all had other top priorities, and with me only going to school twice a week, it was difficult to meet up on the same day at the same time. Nonetheless, I met a handful of other kind souls, such as a non-traditional student named John, who could easily pass for the same age as myself, and Katheryn, an uncommonly bright individual, who always asks for my input on her essays.
Late January/early February was extremely difficult as well, with the funeral for my grandmother taking place and the final nail being put in the coffin of the aforementioned friendship. The funeral was particularly rough, not really because my grandmother was dead and gone because, at her state, there was no quality of life there, like my cat, but seeing the family so together yet simultaneously so torn apart was heartwrenching to say the least. By that point, halfway through the trimester and already so much happening, I knew I'd be writing a reflection that was more downtrodden than I've been in the past. I'm the kind of person who fears complaining about my personal life too much for fear of sounding whiny or petulant about my issues, as I clearly know I'm not the only one life is happening too. If anything, this second trimester has proven that these bad days, while miserable and ostensibly neverending, help you appreciate and really recognize how good the good days actually are.
If you asked me what I wanted in college at this time, above all, it would be real human connection. While I have a solid set of good friends at North Central College, I've come to appreciate the kind of connections that just click from the get-go and fill each person with the kind of immense satisfaction and happiness that they don't get from just anyone. The kind of person you meet and instantly feel open about speaking your mind and your personal lives too. There has to be an immense level of comfort between both parties and, in a spiritualistic way, the stars have to align properly for this kind of meaningful connection to occur. I had it once this year and I'd do just about anything to get it back.
This is the kind of time period in your life you'd more or less like to forget, save for a few noteworthy instances such as meeting a few new faces and having some excellent class discussions (in sociology particularly). Just a week ago, I released a new song with my good friend Josh Witt that did a nice job chronicling the events of this past trimester and, in a way, I used it as the metaphorical ribbon to tie together the past so I could move forward and look to better days. My next trimester sees me on the same Tuesday/Thursday schedule, taking Introduction to American Government, creative writing, and English style, with the latter two almost guaranteed to increase the output of content on this particular blog. Right now, I have a mind-clearing week and a half of spring break and then it's back on academic go mode come March 31st, 2015, with my final trimester (and first year) reflection coming in the middle of June 2015.
Until then, the fence will be the direction in which I swing and my nuts will continue to be dropped.
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