Ready to Go Back!

I just realized I did not write any entries for May. Perhaps because I was busy getting ready for finals!

Ok. This summer is 102 days long. That's about 3 and a half months long.

That's a really long time to not be in school.

But school is less than 2 weeks away now, and I gotta say, I'm pretty pumped to go back.


Aside from the fact that I genuinely like being in school (though I'm not 100% thrilled about every single class), I'm looking forward to being in Riverdale again, back on the campus, and seeing my friends and acquaintances. And I hope some transfers came in my grade. And who knows--maybe I'll make friends with some freshmen! The cool thing about college is that the grade differences aren't as obvious as they are in high school. I've shared some of my classes with seniors last year. It wasn't a big deal.

Of course, I do have a few worries. What if I end up losing the friends I do have? What if I end up being overloaded with work? What if--as the semester wears on--I have to start taking the bus every day?

I do have my driver's license now, but I sadly no longer have a car =[. So the way my mom and I worked it out is that I would drive our car on mondays, tuesdays, and thursdays, with her in the passenger seat so she can drive herself to work. Idk how that's going to work out honestly, but we'll see. Then, wednesdays and fridays I'll take the bus (classes start later on those days).

I have a 9:00 am class this semester as well as a class that ends at 6:05 pm, so that is why mondays, tuesdays, and thursdays are driving days.

Another main fear of mine: repeating mistakes from last year. I hope I really have learned from them, but I guess I have to wait and see.

Here's what I learned from last year (if this is repetitive in lieu of previous entries, I apologize):

1. Do not mooch off/suck the blood out of friends who dorm. I do think it's partially their fault that things didn't work out, but I am willing to take part of the blame for things going sour between me and that group of guys I hung out with during the fall semester. I was often in their dorm rooms. I was constantly eating their food. (It is here that I will say that being a commuter kind of sucks. End of random point.) Albeit, I TOLD THE GUYS "If I ever get annoying, please let me know." They didn't. But I still felt like my company was unwanted! Or that they were apathetic towards my presence. I'm a girl! I need conversation! Which brings me to my next point...

2. You need friends of both genders. When the fall semester started, I came to MC fresh from my little, all-girl Catholic high school in "the nice part of the Bronx." Even though I had hung around guys during those four years of high school (because I went to youth ministry at my church), I still was not used to having guys around, like, every day. In my classroom, no less. But believe me, I was excited. A little too excited.

My mind was like, "YES! Oh my gosh, GUYS! This is great! Guys are so funny! Guys are so fun! Guys never PMS! Guys aren't catty or clique-ish! Guys are guys!"

I had already made several guy friends at orientation, and then their group expanded, and yeah. Sometimes there was one other girl around, but quite often, it was me and the guys. And I kind of liked being the only girl. (Don't ask why--I already have a boyfriend.)

But after awhile, I noticed some things: I can't play video games. Never learned. They LOVE to play video games.

It's that time of the month. I'm feeling rather sensitive. They don't know--they don't care.

And then--my favorite--

GUYS ARE NOT MUCH DIFFERENT THAN GIRLS.

"What!? Hold on there, Nicole. It's time for a brief little bio lesson...."

What I mean IS, guys can also gossip, be somewhat clique-ish, and PMS.

That's right. GUYS PMS.

Most [normal] guys don't. However, I can say that I have met some guys who clearly have some emotional issues. I'm talking, like, mood swings. In an almost bipolar fashion.

I (thankfully) do have friends who are girls now. And they're really chill. =]

But now, on to my next point, which relates back to those guys:

3. Don't hang around people who treat you like a doormat. Sometimes--especially in the fall--I felt like I didn't have much of an option. In order to hang out with the whole group, I had to put up with the one person who was mistreating me. In that situation, though, I felt like the group didn't really care what happened to me, so I didn't have too much trouble breaking off with them.

Though I had a lot of lonely anguish for awhile afterwards.

But then, in the spring, I started to work my way into another group--the j-6 crew. And the head honcho of that floor was "Nameless."

Nameless was a funny sort of lad. Sometimes, he would be really nice to you. He'd want you to sing, or he'd be willing to give you his M+Ms, or he'd walk you to the pizzeria. But then, Nameless would constantly seek to pick an argument with you. That was the way Nameless was--he loved to argue. But then the argument would go nowhere, and both sides would get frustrated.

Nameless could sometimes make you feel really strange. I would liken him to a wolf, but I don't even know if that's the right animal for him. Maybe chameleon? No.... Snake? Nah...

Nameless was Nameless. And one day, in this very summer, Nameless and I got into a very heated argument over facebook chat (more heated I guess than our usual fb chat arguments, which btw, I never seek out), leading me to delete him from my friend list. I had enough of Nameless. He mistreated me in a somewhat different way from the last guy.

4. No one's gonna replace my boyfriend. It's strange in a way--and I'm sure I'm not the only person who's done this. But being in a long distance relationship really, really sucks, ok? And so, I think, psychologically, I felt some sort of weird boyfriend void, even though I already have a boyfriend. This probably is another reason I tended to gravitate towards guys--I wanted the company of a guy.

No, I didn't cheat on my boyfriend. And no, I have no plans to in the future. It's just hard to explain this. But I felt like I had plenty of Jacob Blacks in the past year. But none of them could compare to my Edward Cullen.

And this is the part where I say, "*Psh* Ha! Most of those guys probably couldn't give two...uh...red cows about me! A lot of them probably tolerated me because they felt bad for me or they just wanted to be nice. While I talked, they probably thought, 'Man, when is she ever going to leave!?'"

Ok, so maybe some genuinely enjoyed my company. Some didn't mind it. And some probably couldn't stand me.

But guess what, guys? That's why I state and restate my "if i ever get annoying, tell me to get lost" disclaimer! So you can't complain about me later if you clearly had the option to get rid of me!

i need to calm down.

Ok. *sigh* Because I never really fit in anywhere for my entire life, I've been convinced that I'm just a very unlikable person. I like myself. I just don't think many others like me. And it makes me wonder what's wrong with me. But I never stop and think, "gee, maybe i'm not the problem after all."

To bring this point full-circle (because I'm getting waaaaay off topic here), I would like to state that my boyfriend, for reasons unbeknownst to myself--genuinely likes me. Not only does he like me--he loves me. Crazy, right? I question it myself sometimes....

I think the fact that we both love Jesus helps.

5. There is a way to witness. (And here is the part of my blog entry where I apologize for being very brash thus far. I'm sorry.) I don't shy away from sharing my faith with people. I don't randomly seek people out, but if the topic of conversation is relevant to my beliefs, or if someone asks my opinion on something that could be related back to what I believe, or even if a friend is going through something I've been through before, I'll talk about what I believe, or how God has helped me.

A lot of people at MC tend to be very open-minded. The upside to this is that they're willing to listen to what I have to say. The downside to this is that they're not necessarily going to change their minds. I think the typical response is, in a nutshell, "you believe what you believe, I believe what I believe, and that's that." Some people are up for some healthy debate. Some people want to violently argue with you.

In the past year, I've been exposed to different kinds of people who have beliefs all across the board. And they all have had different lives. Some love to smoke weed. Some love to party it up on Thursday nights. Some cut themselves. And the list goes on and on...

But I'm not better than anyone. Because I make/have made plenty of mistakes before. I'm not perfect, either. And I've been through some rough stuff that plenty of people don't know about. So I try to show God's love to people as best I can.

And I failed to do that plenty of times. But now I can learn from those mistakes. I seriously hope I don't repeat them.

Idk how much they may care about me, but I love my atheist friends. A lot. And I know God loves them, like, a bajillion times more than I do! But I often feel sad when I think about them, I know they could have better lives as Christians. But I can't make them decide.

A lot of them are former Catholics.

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There's also stuff I learned in relation to academics, but honestly, it's late and I'm too tired to get into it.

Night. Thanks for reading.