I’m almost certain he knows this is a crap argument. But ego and all.

Anyway, I’m done with my internship. Anyone want to know about credit cards? I know more than the average human being about how credit card systems are run. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s necessary information, but here we are. 

~

Leaving on not-a jet plane in 2 weeks. Really? 2 weeks? Really? Senior year? NOT READY! NO MOUSE! NOOOOOO!!

~

Crap lar, he’s still talking. 

~

Still talking. 

~ 

My purpose is not his purpose. 

I need to use the toilet sooooo baaaad.

Somehow he’s spun his original words so that by redefinition he’s right and I’m wrong. Aih…

~

I want to go shopping. Anyone with fashion sense want to go with me? I really really really need a makeover. As in, this 22 year old needs someone to teach her how to dress. HELLO HELP!

~

3 Issues together is not one. Use first principle… what? Oh yeah. Still talking. And I still need to go to the bathroom. Now we’re talking about software… and the company… and urh? 

~ 

Originally, this was going to be a good legit post about my internship experience. My thoughts on the recent political issues. My thoughts on the upcoming senior year. And now… this flow of thought non sense chronicling how re-don-key-lous my mornings are. 

~ 

I’m going to stop now, cause he’s now talking about the future of the company. I have no idea what he’s saying any more. “yes, pa. yes.” “yes, pa yes.”

Other things that are slow. Today’s day long seminar. Slow. So so slow. SO so so so so sososososo you get my drift yah SLOW! Sorry Miss Lecturer/High ranking manager person, you were funny, but you were also so loh soh. I’d appreciate your humor if it meant I got to go back on time/early. But no. So in the end? Slow! Didn’t help that I already spent 2 weeks learning all there is to see about Financial Settlement and card application and chargeback and yawn.

I feel like my personality is slowly dying. I keep hearing my friends say “oh Cass we were just talking about you! And when you… (insert how I did something really stupid unintentionally/said something funny unintentionally)” I haven’t opened my mouth in days. It’s like being on a silent strike for no reason. Maybe I’ll adopt one… like… like… aih. I think my personality fly away already.

I kinda won something and I want to laugh about it and pretend like I don’t care but actually I do just a little… but no friends. Sad right?

Guys, I’ll be back Stateside in a bit.

Oklah, work isn’t that bad. But thank God time never stops moving. That fact is something I cling onto, my only hope for retaining what measly sanity I have left after the working day. Time never stops moving. 6pm will come. Eventually. Eventually.

Lessee… I’ve watched Card Maintenance, I’ve seen the financial calculations, I’ve drooled barrels of saliva. 

Right now I’m designing 3 programs to make people spend money. It’s the funnest thing i’ve done so far. And yes, it’s going to do wonders for my CV, but golly gosh monkeys I never want to work in a bank. I don’t want the highlight of my day to be analyzing customer data and finding ways to schmooze money of them. Those poor saps. Blah.

I wish this post could be more exciting, but I’m already using every ounce of my creativity to not turn this into a check list for credit card processes… now THAT is the epitome of boredom. Somedays, as I sit at my desk, I wonder if watching grass grow would be more exciting. I ponder upon that thought for a bit, and usually I come to the conclusions that… yes, watching grass grow would be more exciting. 

Mmmmm. Also I’m currently coughing like a cat hacking up a furball. Yewack.

Mmmph. Let’s just say I have a new found appreciation for people who do clerical work. It. Is. Boring.

I also have a new found appreciation for a working mouse. Have you tried making a flow chart with a mouse that clicks on everything that doesn’t move? I have. It takes awhile. 

All of me is still trying to figure out just what exactly gets accomplished at meetings. They last for a couple o’hours and discussions end up nowhere and things get… done? I assume they do. The conclusions were probably lost to me in a sea of acronyms. ABC soup. But considering there’s 26 letters in the English alphabet and assuming each acronym is on average 3 letters long there’s 26x26x26 acronyms… which means by the end of these 7 weeks I would have replaced everything I have ever learned about statistical analysis with acronyms. I haven’t decided if that’s a good or a bad thing. Will get back to you on that.

While at the end of the day I don’t much mind work (I find ways to amuse myself) I do want to crawl back into my childhood cause I realize what real life looks like and it involves that ‘r’ word… Responsibility. GASP! WAaaaaaaaaaaaaHHHHH.

Ostrich time.

Yes, us young uns nowadays have supposedly ‘inflated’ expectations of what we deserve in class. The old uns (read: professors) have what they consider ‘normal’ expectations of what a student deserves in class. The two sides do not agree. War. 

But the thing with inflation is that just as prices readjust to an influx of paper money, so does the value of grades in the eyes of the beholders (read: employers, admission officers, and donkeys.) People say 50 is the new 40, well, B is the new C. ‘B’ and ‘C’ are just symbols, mere alphabets, endowed with their meaning by society. And since society was the one that defined their initial value, society then too will redefine their value as needed. 

B and Cs are not stagnant in time. Meaning, B will not forever mean ‘almost made it not quite.’ It is flexible as time progresses in its meaning and that’s what the old stooges seem to forget.

If more people get A’s and B’s, employers will readjust their valuation of A’s and B’s accordingly. Not to mention the interview counts more anyway.

However, there is a set of eyes of the beholders that do not readjust as quickly as employers might. Information in this market is not as quick flowing as in the employment world. Oh those stodgy ole admissions officers. Most graduate schools not only look at grades but also take certain soft qualities into consideration, like the ability to make a bake sale sound like a solution to world peace. So we’ll ignore those grad schools for a bit.

Now, med school. Yes, has a GPA cut off. So grade inflation is unfair to its applicants right? I don’t think so. If you can’t get decent grades with grade inflation, which as the word inflate might imply is usually an increase upwards, then you probably wouldn’t get good grades without grade inflation. If there are too many people with good grades, I’m sure the med schools have a way of choosing the ones they like best. We don’t really have to worry about varying inflation rates across the humanities and sciences since most pre-med students have majors in the sciences and have to take the same basic core classes anyway. No worries about varying rates across major universities since studies have shown (people actually spend money on these studies? Grah) that grade inflation in most universities is about the same. Of course there are grade giving discrepancies amongst professors, but meh, life isn’t always fair. 

Law school. Mmm… law schools care about LSATs and GPA and the end. Law school applicants come from a variety of majors since law school doesn’t really impose any restrictions on required undergraduate courses, therefore one could argue that varying inflation rates between the humanities and sciences could be a problem. But I still don’t see that as an issue. First, one assumes that lawyers are ambitious and manipulative, cause honestly if you can’t manipulate words to suite your goals then why bother being a lawyer. Secondly, since they are ambitious and manipulative, one would think that someone considering a law career early on in his/her undergraduate experience would put some thought into they types of courses and activities that would best benefit them in terms of getting into a good law school. If you choose to focus on a “harder” major and then find yourself having a lower GPA than someone in an “easier” major, then clearly you have played your cards wrong. Grade inflation is not a new thing. It’s basically institutionalized and part of the system. Manipulate the system why don’t cha. It’s only unfair if you entered the undergraduate system with no inclination of the existence of grade inflation. 

Finally, grades are alphabets we’ll probably forget in about 10 years. Good gosh. I didn’t realize tests and quizzes amounted to the end all and be all of evaluation a person’s worth in life. 

I mean, I dislike the fact that a humanities major probably has a higher GPA than I do, and that someone taking the same class with an easier professor would walk out with a higher grade than I would, but those are consequences of the choices I’ve made. I can control how much effort I am willing to put into work in return for a certain level of grade. I can admit that I’m not the brightest and that sometimes, people get higher grades because they are just smarter than I am. The end.

Though I have to say, I’m still pissed at myself for blowing off a class and walking away with a grade that is far below what I wanted. But I deserved that one, my GPA will mourn for now. But lesson learned, tomorrow is another day.

There’s so many things I don’t understand about this tuition lesson. First off, why is it taught in Chinese? No wonder we can’t carry a basic conversation in Malay. (Heck I can’t, but I place the blame on not really needing to for the past 7 years.) But that’s a minor detail, I’m sure my brother would shut his brain down if this lesson was conducted completely in a language he struggles with. I guess it’s a nice compromise.

Secondly, I don’t see how mastering the format of writing a daily journal is essential to scoring an A. Is formatting really that important that it delineates the As from the Bs? Google was invented for a reason. In today’s Google universe, you can easily find the ‘right format’ online. Nothing a little creative problem solving won’t well… solve. If a formal letter was a cake, the proper format is the cake pan. Just go out and buy one. Oh sorry, can’t bake that cake now, the cake pan is 1 inch too long. 

Thirdly, there is no beauty in the writing. It’s a lesson on manual regurgitation. Place part A into part B, screw tight. Oil part C a bit. Actually, I realize now that I’m not really just talking about language. I can’t fault the system for trying to ease people into a foreign language. The end is sound, the means applied just seems a little off. In all subjects. There’s no experimenting, there’s no gray area. Everything is either right or wrong, and language is the very last thing on the planet that has right and wrong. Sure that’s grammar and spelling, but those are the lego blocks of language. Somehow all schools teach us to make say, a Lego cake, but you can do so much else with the blocks. So much.

It’s the same with Science, everything is words. Memorize this right way. Memorize that right way. I’m sure some smart person out there has said that there’s a bajillion ways to fail and only a handful of ways to succeed.

Learning through the memorization of successes… now that’s no way to learn and be interested and learn to think. We try to give the children as few ways as possible to fail, but failure is where we learn. “Oh your experiment exploded in your face? Now tell me where you went wrong.” Memorizing the way it won’t fail is okay, but it won’t stick. I will always remember the stories of how my experiments failed and why it did. I have completely forgotten everything I’ve memorized in Secondary school. 

It’s not like I have the solutions up my sleeve. Just observing.

I feel alone.  

I’ll miss all of them. I’ll miss monday nights and tv shows, late night stats studying, watching movies with absolutely no fiber of goodness. I’ll miss Alex’s bubble breaker, bad you tube videos and late night nothingness. I’ll miss the camaraderie the laughter and the bad jokes. I’ll miss baking and watching The Office and sitting on the couch watching TLC. I’ll miss a lot of things. This semester Duke truly felt like home and I have them to thank. 

Sorry if I was a mess. I’m just a sappy sappy sap. 

Keep in touch kk? Done.

I want to go back to Wilson Creek. It was a nice place of denial…

Then I got back and got my grades. Blah.

Then I realized graduation is this Sunday. 

I miss you all already.

More when I’m less in a minor funk.

In some form of chronological order by my cheese brained memory:

1. I was out jogging on Friday when towards the end of my run I saw his brown fox… then I realized it was a Lab off leash. I thought “geez, these owners are brave to let their dog off leash.” Then I saw a couple, and a another guy behind them and I thought, wonder if the dog belongs to the couple or that big burly dude behind them. Then I think, “Hmm… that guy reminds me of someone.” Then the guy stops next to a water fountain, whistles to the dog and turns to his, I assume, girlfriend and speaks in a British accent, “do you want some water?”

I think, “Gee, even his voice reminds me of that someone.” Then it hits me… IT’S ORLANDO BLOOM. Yes, read that sentence again. Orlando Bloom. My first and probably last celebrity sighting. Clearly I did what ever sane person would do and stopped mid jog to stretch so I could catch more of a glimpse. (Him and Colin Firth are filming about 10 mins from my school. In case you’re thinking, geez Cass, isn’t Orlando Bloom a little out of his element in Durham.)

2. I am the President of Chapel Choir. I’m so happy. I’m not too sure what the conductor thinks cause somewhere deep down, I’m pretty sure our relationship is love-hate. But yeah.

3. So Saturday was glorious weather. Glorious. I wandered around campus without doing much productive work. Went to an outdoor party with this water slide thingie and OH THAT WAS FUUUN! Then later that night I got dressed up, went to Chilli’s (classy, I know), went to DUI’s Big Show (amazing improv. Thank you Dean Sue. Thank you Coach K… and Mojo the Monkey… no!) Then then then then, I went to my Semi Formal. Considering I planned it… I was glad it was good. Apparently I do have the ability to make social things fun. I went with my friend and we had a blast. I’ll claim he had a blast too. Someday, I’ll thank him for putting up with my neuroticism about how the semi was going to explode in my face. Oh beans.

Honestly, I can’t begin to imagine how it feels like to be 22 even though I am. If that makes sense.

I have good friends who are turning 26, friends working, friends engaged and friends married. All these are friends who I have grown up with. It’s a little scary.

I don’t think I’ve changed that much. Am I more mature than when I was 13? Looking back I’d say, yeah, the way I approach life has changed a little… a lot. But 13 year old Cass is still very much a part of me, so is 5 year old Cass who likes cartoons and 10 year old Cass who is insecure and unsure.

Do I have all the emotional strength and mental tools to deal with the future? Am I ready to make this world my own? I don’t know. Maybe I never will. Maybe the point is to accept that I’ll always be learning, always changing, and there’s no such thing as 100% mature and learned and done. The finish line is relative.

All in all I feel like I wasted my 21st year and I don’t like that feeling. I feel like there was so much I could have achieved and I didn’t. On the other hand, I needed that year of inertia, of confusion and misdirection to grow a little. I can look back now, a year later and pinpoint all the mistakes I made… and maybe my 22nd won’t go down the same way.

21 year old Cass was confoosed and lost and angst-y.

Who will 22 year old Cass be?