Hello there, friends of 826. Hope you're all having a swell holiday season. I just wrapped up my first semester at Berkeley, and now I'm back home in a very cold and rainy Fairfield, with little to do but work on my college diary. I was fortunate enough to receive some really cool responses to my last entry. One person sent me a link to an amazingly comprehensive website called "Jon's World o' Squirrels." Others offered well-wishes and claimed to have connections to actual vegan cookies. And I found an ad hoc pen pal in Liz D. of Wheaton, IL, who has sent me some terrific letters about her own college experiences. (Liz, I promise I will get back to you again as soon as I manage to make my envelopes a tenth as beautiful as yours.)
Nonetheless, I'm sort of nervous about this entry. You see, my mom was not completely happy with the last one.
"I wish you'd talk more about your classes and less about the things you spent money on," she said. "And why can't you write nice things about your mother like that nice Yalie Kamara?"
"First off, material possessions are more fun to write about than classes. Second, I'd be more inclined to write nice things about my mother if she stopped ending sentences with prepositions."
"Keep talking, Mr. Grammar Pants. You're about this close to being out of the will."
Well, she certainly won that round. Without the promise of my mother's cow teakettle, I am nothing. Here are a few notes on each of the three (count 'em) classes I took this semester:
Education 40AC: In which we studied the educational challenges of various Bay Area cities – my group had Oakland – and then put together formal presentations detailing our proposed systems of reform.
Low point: Reader was expensive and non-refundable.
High points: Groupmates were friendly and incredibly hardworking. Instructors' depth of knowledge of the material was top-notch. Oh, and I actually learned some stuff.
Comparative Literature 41C: In which we explored the concept of "narrative" from many an angle. Challenging, to say the least, but, as stated previously, it did get me finally reading Harry Potter.
Low points: About a dozen turgid, headache-inducing articles which made me (and most of the rest of the class) feel really dumb. Having 200 more pages of The Wings of the Dove and knowing they'd be just as unreadable as the first 300.
High point: Subsequently Googling "wings of the dove" and finding an article in which Wings of the Dove star Helena Bonham Carter all but admits that no one involved in the movie could finish the book ("It's pretty unreadable as a novel. I did sort of labor through it to the point where I sort of reached two thirds of the way through it, thinking, well, the eyes are going but the brain's not taking much in."); immediately feeling better.
Spanish 1: No explanation necessary, right?
Low point: None. This class rocked on all fronts.
High point: This one time when the teacher held up a teddy bear and pantomimed shaving him, murmuring "Qué guapo." I don't think you've lived until you've seen this. It may have been the high point of the whole semester.
No, wait – the high point of the semester was belting out Alanis Morissette's "Thank U," yowl-heavy coda and all, at the dorm karaoke night. No – it was going to the campus screening of Spellbound and getting to say hi to Shivani Kadakia, with whom I competed in the National Spelling Bee way back in '97, and her brother Neil, one of the stars of the film. Then again, it might have been going with my best buddy Peter to see Barenaked Ladies at the Berkeley Community Theatre, and realizing once and for all that they are the coolest band in the world.
It really has been a great four months.
I'll close this entry with a disclaimer of sorts. You may have recently heard a hit single by Eamon, an up-and-coming young R&B singer on Jive Records. I'm not gonna say the title here; suffice to say it's an overtly profane girl-you-done-me-wrong ballad. Anyway, as bowled over as I am that there exists in this country another musician named Eamon (and one with a hit single!), I feel a certain need to stress that we are two different people. From a songwriting standpoint, "I do admit I'm sad / It hurts real bad / I can't sweat that, 'cause I loved a ho" is not quite my style.
Happy New Year.
P.S. Have I mentioned that my mother is very funny, and generous, and a good swimmer? She is.
