insomniac

i can hear your bare feet on the kitchen floor
i don't have to have these dreams no more
i found someone just to hold me tight
hold the insomniac all night
~insomniac; billy pilgrim

i went to bed last night and lay awake with my new favorite song stuck in my head. the irony was not lost on me. the virginia gentlemen arranged it beautifully though, so no complaints. though i'm no insomniac, it feels somehow relevant to my life.

i'm no sorority girl

a friend of mine asked me earlier today whether i would ever consider joining a sorority, then asked me for my reasons when i told him i never would.
for the most part, i don't like being around women. we're taught from a very early age that we need to conform as closely as possible to a certain ideal: the face we need to project, the body we should have, and the personality we should express. we're also told to manipulate men and tear down other women in order to get ahead and be "independent," yet society is constantly telling us that we need a man constantly in our lives so that we can be complete.
and women buy into this nonsense, to the point where we're bitchy and catty and will destroy others at the drop of a hat if there's even the slightest sign that it may benefit us somehow.
granted, there are women who don't behave like this and are actually decent human beings, but most definitely not enough.

achieving perfection

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
philippians 8:12-14

judgements

people are ridiculous and care way too much about what other people think of them. a wall post from one friend of mine to another popped up in my feed literally 5 minutes ago, and being the stalker i am, i read it. nothing particularly sketchy (badly spelled though) and halfway through the post i see "for ppl reading this im not lesbo" and it made me go WTF?! like for real. i have sketchy wall-to-walls with my girls all the time and i feel no need to clarify whether or not i'm straight. and just the way it was written made me go "well, what do you think is so bad/wrong about being a lesbian that you feel the need to clarify to people that you aren't one?" it's not illegal, and it's nobody else's business. and if you think your friends are judging you and going to hate you because of your sexual orientation, then maybe you should re-evaluate your friendships and the reasons behind them. friends don't judge each other based on little things like that. come to think of it, nobody should judge others based on orientation.

home #1

people keep complaining at me for deciding against spending my summer in new york. and i wish i could tell them all to shut up and get their own lives on track, but that's probably rude.
when i was deciding what i would do this summer, i told my parents quite plainly that coming back to long island was the last thing i wanted to do, and that i'd only do it if i couldn't find a research position up here. and you know what? they were completely okay with it and understood exactly where i was coming from. unfortunately, most of the other people i know are behaving rather selfishly about the whole thing. i will be doing what i want to do - working in lab, flying kites, and spending time with awesome people - and if people really cared about me they'd understand that.
home is not where you grew up. home is not the place where you sleep every night. home is where you feel you belong. and for me, that's here.

straight a's

i could totally get straight A's here if i could get bored enough. unfortunately, the state of my room often means that i'll default to cleaning it instead of working if i really have nothing else to do. this is probably why i stopped working in here...

the wee hours of the morning

why do people think that it's perfectly all right for them to call me at 330 am simply because i'm now their go-to person for relationship questions? i understand that some things are important, but "can you come to the movies with me friday?" could absolutely have waited till an hour when both the sun and i are generally up. especially on a night that i'm actually sleeping. thank goodness the txt at 43o didn't wake me >.<

surprises

came home this evening and found these on my desk =) i love surprises

evolution

The Matthews/Tancredo Mutual Ignorance Session
i don't know what to say about this. i'm a creationist, in biological engineering, at MIT. over the past few years, i've found it increasingly difficult to understand why a solid comprehension of science seems to automatically negate most people's faith in God. as for me, the more i learn the more i am convinced that it could not have happened by chance.
i don't object to the existence of a theory of evolution. the beliefs that other people hold don't hurt me, and for the most part i go about my life not caring about them.
what i do object to, though, is the way creationists are portrayed by evolutionists. we're constantly all lumped together as pseudoscientists, the religious right, "those people," fundies, all sorts of disparaging terms that imply that we're stuck in the Middle Ages. i realize that a disproportionately large amount of creationists lack a formal scientific background and/or come from religious homes. but religion does not imply ignorance.
i fail to see why evolutionists cannot respect creationists. our beliefs are not such that we reject science out of hand; we simply believe in a Creator who designed that which science studies.

open letters =)

you make me mute with surprise and delight
you and your adorable singing and awkward choreographed-on-the spot dancing
frustratingly i have no words for you
beyond that i am gloriously happy with you

i write open letters because i can't express myself sufficiently any other way. absurdly happy? check. want the world to know it? check. on the other hand, take your butt out of my face? yes please.

cats and the internet

people need to stop creating blogs and/or twitter accounts for their pets. it is not cute. it is stupid and makes the rest of the universe want to vom. same goes for dressing your pets in doll clothes. IMMATURE. obviously you care not for your pet's sanity. also, it means that you are well on your way to being a crazy cat lady. stop talking about your cat. nobody cares what you think he's thinking. what he is in actuality always thinking (or at least what i would be thinking, if i were unlucky enough to be your cat) is something along the lines of DEAR SWEET GOD HAVE THIS GIRL COMMITTED BEFORE SHE DRIVES ME INSANE. and then i would swat you in the face. with my claws.

bathroom awkwardness

i will never understand why people feel the need to start conversations in the bathroom. i guess it's something to take your mind off the fact that you REALLY NEED TO PEE and OH GOD THERE IS ONLY ONE STALL AND FOUR PEOPLE AHEAD OF ME but seriously it can be so awkward. there are two kinds of awkward bathroom conversations.
1) people you once met, but as luck would have it, you do not speak to and thus cannot remember their names.
actually, this one happens outside of bathrooms a lot too. it's just that in a bathroom you cannot make some excuse and get away politely. and of course they remember things about you that you told them, but you have no clue who they are so you're left faking your way through and hoping that they don't realize that they look exactly like four other generic tiny brown chicks that you met last week and you don't know which one they are.
2) people you don't know at all and have never spoken to, but who also know things about you.
this girl auditioned for my a cappella group this winter and we didn't take her, mostly because we weren't looking for girls at the time. she's since become a really big fan and comes to all our concerts. guess who i ran into in the bathroom today. super awks.
so basically if you run into people you know peripherally in the bathroom, do them a favor and don't start a conversation. most likely they just need to pee.

fall term

yay!
made up my schedule for next fall: taking 5 pset classes and possibly choir, and somehow the year doesn't look like it'll suck!
this is exciting!
also one of my pset classes is harmony and counterpoint =) and i should really take choir to get out of sight-singing lab. depends on next term's repertoire...

confusion

it is so hard to tell people you care about that they've hurt you. especially when their knowing it would make life better for both of you. do not understand.

now with lower expectations

so done expecting the world not to let me down. semiformal and my boyfriend's orchestra concert are the same night, same time. can't go to semi because the boyfriend is playing & i have no one else to go with in any case. and like any good girlfriend i am going to the concert (would also not miss shostakovich 12 for anything) and now i find out that the friend i intended to go to the concert will not be there after all. why? he's going to semiformal. so as of now i am lowering my expectations. people damn well better be awesome on my birthday, because that is the only date i am allowed to have any standards for at all.

a new light

sitting in my window watching the sunset's light turn soft off the glass and steel apartment building across the field, wondering why it is that the light in which you see things can make them so beautiful all of a sudden when they've been the same old thing for months on end...

awkwardness and hope

hope
dangles on a string
like slow-spinning redemption
winding in, and winding out
the shine of it has caught my eye
~vindicated; dashboard confessional

just out of reach and teasing me is the end of term with a lot of stuff to do between now and then.
and mixing in the personal makes things so much more complex. i have never felt so awkward here as the past two days have made me feel and it is not pleasant.