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What happened in 2011? Well, first off, I abandoned this blog again. I didn’t have a clear idea of what direction I was even aiming for, and none of my plans were particularly cohesive¹. Additionally, I was at a strange point in my life. For the first half of the year I didn’t do much at all. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall any significant thing that happened to me or that I did, aside from having a birthday.

However, the last half of my year was quite eventful for the better, as well as the worse in some cases, but overwhelmingly for the better.

At the very end of July I moved to a town just south of the U.S.-Canadian border and about 100 miles north of Seattle, where I’d lived my entire life. The town, Bellingham, which I affectionately refer to as the Ham pretty much any time I talk about it, is pretty awesome.

I’m finally back in school with no intent of taking another break until I not only finish my bachelor’s degree, but my master’s as well. I’m doing pretty well academically (4.0 GPA, gogo!) despite the fact I still procrastinate like it’s my job. I think I’ve finally settled on what I want to do with my life (another post for another day).

I joined my school’s QSA, or queer-straight alliance, at the beginning of fall quarter to meet people and get involved, and ended up becoming the secretary after a few weeks. We throw some bitchin’ parties and I love everyone in the club. It’s fantastic and meeting other queer people is always nice, particularly in an area that’s surrounded by some severely conservative town, and thus some of the homophobia around is a little bit higher than I’m used to in Seattle. Overall, however, the Ham is pretty awesome in that regard. I haven’t had any major incidents, just a few minor ones.

I started to take advantage of several hours of free language tutoring on campus for speaking practice for Spanish and French, which I’m studying once again because, goddammit, I love languages. I would learn ALL THE LANGUAGES if I could. The Spanish conversation tutoring is particularly important in that I’m going to go visit my friend Hans, or Patty as everyone else calls her, in Venezuela this coming August/September if all goes according to plan. I can’t wait to see my favorite brontosaurus’ face and eat all the amazing Venezuelan food she keeps telling me her mom wants to make me! This will also be my first real trip abroad. I’m ridiculously excited as I’ve been dying to travel for basically my whole entire life. I’m desperate to see everything, but money is such a cockblocker sometimes, dudes.

Speaking of money, that leads me to my next point: I joined AmeriCorps’ Students in Service program (despite its website’s desperate need of a facelift) which basically means I get paid to volunteer. The payout after I complete 300 hours of service is coincidentally nearly exactly the same price to the dollar as a roundtrip Seattle-Caracas ticket.

I’ve started eating a lot healthier (with the last month or so an exception) and have lost a bit of weight, though I still have quite a bit more to go. While I still have several medical issues that need to be dealt with, and hopefully I can begin to deal with them soon as I just got medical insurance for the first time in several years on January 1st, I’m glad I’ve started taking a step in the right direction. I’m very much motivated by seeing results, because if I don’t see results I tend to give up quickly, so early success is helping me keep my eye on the prize, so to speak.

My mom and I got a bit closer this year. She celebrated her first AA birthday (as well as her real birthday) in August, for which I’m very proud of her. We had an amazing time at the Puyallup Fair in September, just the two of us. We bought Dizzy Passes, or unlimited ride passes, and rode rides all day and spent a completely insane amount of money on fair food, but it was worth it. We had a complete blast even if our feet were about dead after standing for about 14 hours straight.

My dad and I get along quite a lot better when I live away from home so that’s been great. We talk frequently. He still says insane and hilarious (sometimes inadvertent on his part) things that I can text to all of my friends.

Internet-wise, I’m still a Twitter scrub in that I don’t seem to post nearly as frequently as everyone else I know, but I’m sort of fine with that. However, after lamenting circa 2009ish that I didn’t understand WTF the point of Tumblr even was, I am now a tumblin’ fiend. I tumble all the things! I even recently started a new tumblr dedicated to reblogging all the Joss Whedon-related things I find and enjoy. I loves me some Firefly.

I’d kill for a Tumblr-style RSS feed aggregator sometimes. It’d be so much easier to keep on top of my reading, though I have been managing quite well lately after culling some old feeds I was never reading. I do still need to learn to be less of a lurker! I’ve always had an issue with being an epic lurker.

Perhaps that’s one more thing I’ll work on in the new year. More about that later. For tonight, I’m out.

1. However, I’ve now done a total redesign and culled some useless pages and reorganized and rewritten quite a lot. ↩

One of the things I’ve learnt in my pursuit of a BA in Spanish and French is that people tend to say stupid things in regards to my educational plans. Because, you know, a degree in anything besides IT or medicine or whatever is a waste of time. Clearly.

Below are examples of idiotic things said to me on a weekly basis as well as either the response I give or the response I wish I could give depending on who is doing the commenting.

“Oh. A useless degree.”

First of all, kindly fuck off.

Is there such thing as a useless degree, honestly? I don’t believe so. Least of all a degree in languages. Many people in English-speaking countries are monolingual; being multilingual is a sought-after skill in today’s job market. There are tons of things you can do with a BA in Spanish and French. Many people are unwilling to learn a second language. For some reason, this seems to be more rampant in countries where the predominant language is English.

Mostly, I’m getting a BA because I love languages and I like to learn, not because of the job I’m seeking.

“Nobody speaks French.”

I think the people of the 29 countries of which French is an official language would disagree with you. About 300 million people on the planet speak French. There is a French speaking country on every continent aside from Antarctica–as far as I know, emperor penguins don’t speak French. Or at least they didn’t in March of the Penguins which is clearly a vital source of penguin language information. It’s also an official language of both the United Nations and the European Union.

“French is useless.”

See above.

“Can you get a job with that? What are you going to do with that degree?”

I’m not getting a BA in Spanish and French to get a job; I’m getting a BA to learn more about something I love. I love to learn. I’ve always been that girl who’s constantly reading up about random things. When I was a kid, sometimes it was animals or dinosaurs or space or Sweden. Sometimes it’s still animals or dinosaurs or space or Sweden. I’m filled with tons of random bits of information about everything.

And, as I said earlier, multilingualism is a sought after skill even in non-interpretation or translation fields.

I started my classes last Monday. I’m taking Spanish 201 and French 101 this quarter as I plan on getting a BA in Spanish and French.

You know your previous teacher has messed you up when your teachers tell you they want you to be comfortable and it’s okay to make mistakes and that makes you nervous.

My previous Spanish teacher was amazing, but he scared the hell out of me (and everybody else) which worked; fear motivates me. The class started out with 40 people at the beginning of the quarter and ended up with 10. He was definitely good about weeding out the people who weren’t serious enough about the class.

When he said gracias what he really meant was shut the fuck up. Once he called me by my first name and I didn’t know who he was talking to–he usually just abruptly shouted my surname.

But he was hilarious and definitely overprepared us. He didn’t want us to miss out if we transferred to university because we started out at a community college.