soulscape

Well, well, well. After so many years, so many proclamations that “I didn’t need that piece of paper,” it is just about done. Tomorrow is the last day of my undergraduate career. Finally! I am done with UCLA, at least as an undergraduate. I have been taking summer classes through their summer sessions (both A and C sessions). Spanish 3 and English Composition 100w, both of which I needed, were my last two classes. Engcomp 100w was done today. Spanish 3 is done tomorrow (technically, it’s already tomorrow). I take the final and I walk away a free man.

It is bittersweet, since I do love that campus. But man, it’s been long enough. I am ready to go out there and explore what God has in store for me next. Course there’s always the slight chance I’ll be back here next fall, in the event I make it into the UCLA film school, but that’s another discussion for another time.

Of course, I should have finish years ago. But I remember back in 1998, I couldn’t take it anymore. Back then, I only cared about dancing and partying. I had no clue what I wanted to do in school, no focus. I rarely went to class, and I even missed mid-terms sometimes, ha! So I did what I had to do — I left and started working. Six years later, I found that there was nothing left to do but go back and finish. Lo and behold, I am now at the end of that road, and I will be glad to get that piece of paper. (I better find out how I get my hands on it).

A nice quote given to us in my English Composition 100w class:

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

-Calvin Coolidge

Engcomp 100w and Spanish 3 are the last two classes of my undergraduate career. In a few weeks, I should probably start looking for a job. Oye. :/

Well well well. March already eh? Wow, it didn’t take long to get used to being in 2005.

Just to catch everyone up (I promise no movie news in this post), I’ve been keeping pretty busy, while at the same time spending very little time on actual schoolwork.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone. School just ain’t for me…at least not when you’re studying stuff like sociology. They should call college what it really is — one, big regurgitation training experience. Even in the classes where the professors claim that they’re striving for individual thought, once the midterm comes around you’re just expected to cough up what you had been fed. “Try to use the exact words that the authors use” was one instruction this quarter for the midterm.

The dance ministry at Mosaic has been going well though. The performing arts director said that the staff was “glowing” yesterday because we’ve doing a good job churning out dance pieces. We HAVE been on a roll, with the “Revolt” piece I did a while back getting kudos and this past weekend the dance piece choreographed by another guy from Mosaic also was well received. Then in a couple of weekends there’s a Palm Sunday dance piece being put together to music from the Passion of the Christ soundtrack. My next effort will probably be for early April, using choreography done to live drums.

Meanwhile, a few of us from Mosaic are also trying to start up a literary journal. Dancers, actors, etc. have a chance to create, so why not the quiet writers that slip in and out without being noticed? In fact we have a website out, click on it on the left or here. It’ll be called Tessera, the quarterly review. Yes, I know it looks like this website, but I threw it up overnight. Sometime in the future maybe I’ll change it, or maybe we’ll get someone else to completely redo it.

Ah well, Spring is nearing, and once again, another season has rushed by without observing the speed limit.

- To answer Monicow’s question in the chatterbox on the right, I have only so far gone to this salsa class a friend teaches at the Gold’s Gym in downtown LA. It’s in the shopping center thing on the corner of Figueroa and 8th. The beginner’s class is at 1pm on Saturdays, with an intermediate class coming after. I’ll probably be there again this Saturday. I hear there’s another salsa class taught Sundays near Chinatown on the corner of Alpine and Yale (?). I think it was called the Alpine recreation center, with the beginner class at 2pm and intermediate at 3pm.

- Sometimes this blog feels like it’s my online journal, but it’s not. Not everyone I know knows about it so I feel free to express myself pretty openly, but I definitely do not let my deepest darkest thoughts out on here. No way. Not with all you heartless wolves out there lurking in the shadows. Yes, I see you — all two of you. Everyone has to maintain somewhat of a facade after all, right?

- My hair is growing longer and longer…I forget when the last time I had it cut was, though I KNOW I haven’t cut it in the three-plus months I’ve been back in Los Angeles. And I also know that this is the longest my hair has ever been. Some of my friends who can’t accept me with long hair have said I’m growing a mullet, but in general, I’m digging it.

- I am in the middle of reading “My Life” by Bill Clinton. I am on page 228 and I still haven’t gotten to his Presidency yet. In fact, he’s not even governor of Arkansas yet on page 228. On page 228, he has recently graduated from Yale Law School, found work as an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law, and had just narrowly lossed in his first attempt at elected office (for Congressman). Two things about Clinton: he has the most amazingly detailed memory, and he’s gotta be the most peoplest people person who ever lived. Yes, that’s right, I just made up a word. The whole book is 957 pages. It should last me through the rest of January or much further beyond because:

- Man, I knew I was going to have a lot of reading this quarter but this is ridiculous. In my Sociology of Family class, we’re assigned SIX required texts. These includes a textbook, a novel and a course reader. And I haven’t seen the syllabus for my Self and Society class but I hear there’s a lot of reading there too. And I haven’t even gone to my Politics and Society class yet. My Self and Society professor is a character. In her own words, she puts on a show for us, and I think she expects us to be dazzled. I had a straight face for the most part, so I think she had it in for me. At one point I looked down towards my notes and she snaps, “Sir with the hat — eyes open!” Sure, I had less than four hours of sleep last night, but I certainly never closed my eyes. In my book, she’s gonna have to make up for that blunder.

- I enrolled in netflix.com, and the next seven or so movies I have lined up in my queue are all Akira Kurosawa flicks. I had seen his “Seven Samurai” last year and loved it. Then I recently got a documentary on him from netflix and enjoyed that, so now I’m going to go on a Kurosawa binge. I’ve just seen “Ran” after the documentary, which was somewhat depressing but very enjoyable. I think “Rashomon”, his first global real hit, is next in line, then “Yojimbo” after that. I also have “The Magnificent Seven” and “A Fistful of Dollars” mixed in there because those are western remakes of “Seven Samurai” and “Yojimbo” respectively.

Woo-hoo!

The Heat have beaten the Lakers! By two points in overtime! With Kobe missing the last second shot that could have won it for the Lakers! Yeah!

It truly was an enjoyable game — the first one this season I actually watched from beginning to end. I’m sure just having Shaq and Kobe on the same court (although on opposing teams) was a treat for everyone who enjoyed them as teammates. Although they don’t get along, I have to admit there’s just something exciting about the two of them. Perhaps it’s because, as Shaq described it, they are the “Corvette” and the “Brick Wall”. So different from one another but both so charismatic in their own way. And yes, you can call me bandwagon if you want, but it does seem that I root for players and teams that I consider deserving. I’m not going to root for the Lakers just because they are LA and because they are the Lakers. I particularly like Lamar Odom, but all that means is I wish he wasn’t Kobe’s teammate.

Anyway, I decided to check online to see if all my grades are in, and I received a second Christmas gift today. Maybe it’s because I actually care a little bit how I do now, unlike all those years ago, but I’ve been nervous about seeing them. My Sociology 102 class (Contemporary Sociological Theory) was my toughest, because we were assigned two or three indecipherable readings every week, and we were expected to know all of it! Basically the study guide handed out for both the midterm and the final could be summarized to: “Read everything. Know everything. Know how everything relate to everything else.”

A sample: “In the conventional complaints about declining taste, certain motifs constantly recur. There is no lack of pouting and sentimental comments assessing the current musical condition of the masses as one of ‘degeneration.’ The most tenacious of these motifs is that of sensuality, which allegedly enfeebles and incapacitates heroic behavior. This complaint can already be found in Book III of Plato’s Republic in which he bans “the harmonies of expressive of sorrow” as well as the ’soft’ harmonies ’suitable for drinking,’ without its being clear to this day why the philosopher ascribes these characteristics to the mixed Lydian, Lydian, bass Lydian and Ionian modes.” Drone, drone, drone, drone…. ZzzzZZzzZZZ….

This particular article was 30 pages long written by a guy named Adorno in 1978, and even the Professor basically summarized the whole thing by saying that he was a snob and was telling his readers that they had bad taste in music.

A class I enjoyed more was my Psychology 110 class (Fundamentals of Behavior/Learning), which basically started with Pavlovian conditioning and went from there. This was my friend Monicow’s favorite class at UCLA, and I enjoyed it too, but was just worried at the end because it got more and more technical. The final seemed especially jacked up in difficulty. Classical and instrumental conditioning, cool stuff, Rescorla-Wagner Model, not cool. As I said in an earlier post, “Delta-V = k (lambda-Vsum) blah blah blah”.

Anyway, I digress, the happy point of me mentioning checking my grades is that I received three A-minuses and a B-plus. Not summa cum laude material perhaps but I am fairly happy. My first quarter back in school, my first time ever taking 18 units in one quarter, every single class required for my major, my effort perhaps not as good as it could have been but as good as I’ll be able to manage for an academic pursuit, and once again, I am fairly happy with the result. Merry Christmas to everyone!

All my other finals were done by Monday, but I had this last one in Psychology 110 (Fundamentals of Behavior/Learning) scheduled for the LAST time slot of finals week — Friday 3-6pm. Pavlovian Conditioning and that sort of thing. Interesting until they started teaching us the mechanism of learning in formulas. Delta-V = k (lambda-Vsum) blah blah blah.

Wow, is it possible that I’m barely realizing at age 29 that I don’t like math? I think I was thrown off for a long time because I scored higher in the math portion of my SATs than in the verbal. Hmmph.

Anyway, what I would really like to rant about is how the Dodgers are handling, or should I say bumbling, the offseason. But I’ll put that off until after my final.