Together

Togetherness is the theme of today's post. Not togetherness with other people, but togetherness in my mind and in my work, because for the next three weeks, these are the tings that are demanding my time and my life.

I think I'll talk about school first. I think I mentioned it already on here, but I got a 101% on my biochemistry test, which basically sets up my final to be a successful one, even if my grade it not that good. I can get a 71.3% on that final and still have an A in biochemistry, which is actually quite exciting.

I decided to take my French final early. My professor gave us the option of taking the chapter 4 test and the final (which is an oral) whenever we want to do so. I decided that in order to get lots of things out of my way, I had better take it this coming week, so I'll be testing my way through French 101 a week from today.

My genetics test is two weeks from today, which gives me an odd feeling of impermanence, which, at this point of the semester, I desperately need.

I finished reading Egil's Saga last night, and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to write for that essay.

I'm starting to get tired of writing essays, come to think of it, and I still have four more to write this semester: 2 in history, 1 in Spanish, and 1 in immunology. This weekend would be perfect if I can knock out two of the three.

Yesterday, I posted all of my remaining assignments for this semester and assigned to them their respective priorities. Finally, I think I can ganar. I can see the end coming, and if things turn out well, I can enjoy in my work.

Mentally, I am coming together too. The last several nights, I've spent looking at all of my old art books, yearbooks, anything that had anything to do with me, really, before college. I've been on this crusade, I call it, to find out everything I can from before I started college. What were my thoughts, my experiences, my anything? I only have good records that go back to my junior year in high school, and everythign after that is a mess until I started at UCCS. Then my life starts coming together.

I've been looking back on nostalgiaville ray, and I've found that it's been the serious dynamic changes that have affected me the most. Normally, when we look back, it's the little step by step things that cause change. And that certainly has been the case for me for about a year and a half, but all the while before that, it was massve changes that defined me. Moving around all the time as a young kid, having people disappear (my dad deployed during Persian Gulf, my grandma dying, moving away from all extended family [our closest extended family lives in Phoenix, and after that, swampeast Missouri] and the friends that I made in California and Arizona), and finally arriving in Colorado. So much dynamism at such a young age demands someone who is able to tolerate change. It demands maturity.

And that's why I've been so stern, serious, and essentially adult since I was about 9. But here, I have always been an outsider, and for a while, I never ever knew why. In elementary school and for the first and last years of high school, I was more or less on my own. I had a few friends here and there, but no steady rocks on whom I could depend. But now, I know that because I forced myself to grow up at such a young age, I was completely other. I was this adult in a 9 y.o. body. All that really mattered starting really at such a young age was work and success. Not friendship, not growth, not play. That paradigm has lasted. I have demanded so much from myself that any deviation from it is quinessentially anti-self.

And why did work become that thing that I obsessed over? Because it was teh only thing that made me secure. On playgrounds, in PE, in social functions, I was this island, isolated from the entire world, dependent only on myself for anything, really. Any time I tried to blend socially, it turned into this mess, one which I could never repair, really.
But in the classroom. AH. There's where Ray thrived. In there, I was the king, really. Without a doubt in elementary school, and to some extent in high school, I ruled the roost whenever we were in a class. I may not have gotten the highest grades, but I was the first authority that other students, and even frequently teachers, went to for their own academic validation. Any team academic competitions, "Ray" was the first name that anyone called.

And now, that social aspect is gone, probably because of that move from Regis to UCCS. Of course I have people that I like to do things with, and I like hte occassional social function, but now that I am here, at this place, I have emerged this creature solely obsessed with academic and eventually life success.

In the midst of all of this was still the other dynamic changes that defined me. Having such tempestous motion meant that in the midst of my instability, I somehow had to make myself stable. I have to be the iron rod, the brick wall, the impenetrable citadel. Weakness is no longer an option, for now, I am on a level playing field. The world is waiting to snatch me.

And in my nostalgia, that's what I've found is the biggest mistake of all. We're so focused on getting to ultimate goals-having a Ph.D. in immunology, becoming this amazing researcher, fluent inf 5 or 6 or 7 languages, someday winning a Nobel Prize, etc.--that we forget the everyday steps that hinge our existence. Those people that I went to school with who have failed, didn't fail because they didn't have strong enough morals, ethos, self-imae, or whatever. It's that they could not maintain them. They failed to maintain the very essence of who they were at the tiniest moment, and WHAM! Fate slammed them hard for it.

And so I must not only be and iron rod, but I must also be control. That's why I've come to see everything minor, as essential to my life. A quiz in physical chemistry is that infinitesimal moment where I can totally screw up, and see my future going up in smoke, or it can be another opportunity to reestablish myself and why I'm so invested in school.

I have to be this person, because every time I've seen someone else's failure, it's been tragic. I won't allow the word "tragedy" to follow me.