I just spent the last 3 1/2 hours making a hat for my sister for Christmas and when I was finished (super chunky yarn works up with lightning speed, relatively speaking) I was really excited because I think it's ubercute. And then I remembered that my sister is 13 and although I know she will at least pretend to like it when I give it to her, because she is just one of those nice sorts of people, she will secretly think it is the dumbest thing that she has ever seen and she will never wear it, except, perhaps, when I happen to be around. It was a really depressing realization, but the yarn was kind of expensive, so I'm going to give it to her anyway. I'm making a similar hat for my ten-year-old sister, but I don't think she is as concerned with looking cool and with being accepted by her shallow, uppity peers yet. And besides, no lame hat that I might make could ever result in looks worse than those that she'll receive when she tells people that she talks to God. Seriously-- my sister thinks she talks to God. And no, I really can't believe I'm related to her, or anyone else in my immediate biological family, save for my brother, for whom I feel there is still hope. But as far as the rest of them are concerned, they're just a bunch of fucking freaks. Regardless, I think the most that I can hope for from my thirteen-year-old sister (who, I should add, is really my step-sister and, therefore, not biologically related to me and, subsequently, a-okay in the head) is that she will rediscover said hat once she's out of high school, and will then finally be grateful to have such a visionary sister who knows what hip really is.

It would probably be appropriate to say that I'm kidding here, but I'm not.

I spent the evening with my brother which was fun. He's kind of a strange kid, but not strange in the same sense as my forementioned sister. He's more quirky than strange, so he's fun instead of just out there. He talked a lot about basketball and rockets and cell phones, all topics that I can't really relate to, but whatever. And then he refused to tell me what he wanted for Christmas, which is annoying because then I'm just going to end up wasting my money on something that he never even wanted in the first place. I wish people would realize that it's okay to ask for things in situations where gift-giving is implied, particularly when you're being specifically asked. I think he was bored with me most of the time. Oh well.

I've decided to apply for a position in the Women's Resource Center, which I am pretty sure that I won't get. But it's not like I have anything to lose, and I can't even see any big disappointment resulting if I don't get it because I already have 5 million things going on, as well as a pretty secure means of paying my bills, so this isn't something that I really need. I'm not even sure it's something that I really want, but I'm fucking going to apply anyway.

I also came to terms with the fact that I don't really want to go to Japan as part of the summer camp program, because the idea of host families freaks me out more than I can express and because it would be more culture shock than I could handle alone. I would definitely need a more assertive, slightly more confident, much more outgoing and well-trusted companion to take on Japan. Because, let's face it, I'm just not the adventurous type. In fact, I am almost neurotically routine, But I still really, really, really want to go to London for the summer theatre program, and I think I've found a way to finance the trip most of the trip. Worst case scenario, I would have to borrow $2,000, but that's an amount that I would probably have the money to pay back before I graduated, so even that wouldn't be bad. So now that I'm determined, that's what I'm going to do-- not this summer, but the next. Actually, I know myself too well to even think about attaching a guarantee to that. We'll just leave it with a 'hopefully.'

Continuing with my list of random items, I landed an internship today without even asking for it or knowing that it existed. Awhile ago, one of my practicum professors mentioned the possibility of working with me to develop some of my class responses for publication in a reading/writing tutoring journal. But then a couple of weeks went by without any continuing talk about it all, and I've always felt that this professor never really liked me, and I'm just so fucking passive that I never asked about it again. But then this professor brought it up today, which was exciting in itself, and then said that she thought it would be most productive if she made me her intern while we worked on it together. She wasn't sure if I would be able to start this coming semester or if we would have to hold it off until next fall, but still . . . Being the dork that I am, I thought it was pretty fucking cool to simply be approached about doing research, but now I'm going to get paid for it which is renders me nothing short of stoked.

Because school rocks and smart chicks are hot.

On a more unpleasant note, one of the independent writing students that I tutor is totally going to fail. And it's kind of (although I feel it's mostly) my fault because I was never really on his ass about making sure that he was coming in for enough sessions and that he was bringing in enough writing. So I emailed him at the beginning of this week to tell him how many sessions he had to make up, and it was an email that was at the very least a week too late, and really should have been sent out two or three weeks earlier, but what the fuck can you do after the fact? I even briefly considered forging a couple of sessions on his logs so that he could easily pass, but then I remembered that even though I hadn't been on his ass, I also hadn't been the one who had been totally fucking lazy about the class and brought in absolute crap week after week despite my obvious potential to do so much better (so fucking frustrating) and this made me realize that getting bitched out about not having been on the ball is a hell of a lot better than potentially not being allowed to tutor at all. This bastard certainly isn't worth all of that. And so ever since I sent him the message, I've been checking my email twice as often as I usually do, fully expecting an angry reply demanding to know why I hadn't informed him of the situation earlier so that he would have had ample time to get everything together. But I haven't got anything yet, which really scares me because it makes me think that he is such a fucking slacker that he never even checks his email. So he won't even find out about the whole thing until our session tomorrow, and he'll probably blow up right there in the tutoring center in front of all the professors and directors and everybody and I will look like a major ass. I'm really dreading the whole thing, more than anyone could know. Because even if he had the initiative to do so, I don't even think he can make up all of the work by the end of the semester so that he can pass. I'm really, really hoping that he got the email and decided to just say 'fuck it,' which wouldn't really be that big of a deal because it's only a 1 credit pass/fail class, and just not come in tomorrow at all. But when the fuck do things ever go the way I want them to? So I'm not really counting on that scenario.

I've already tried to prepare my reaction for the confrontation, which I assume will involve the director of the independent writing program who is rather intimidating. I think the one thing that I have in my corner is that I'm an unexperienced, first-semester tutor with an unusually heavy load of regular learners for any tutor. So I kind of have license to play stupid. Also working in my favor, although less so than my novice tutor status, is the fact that this is not the first time that this kid has taken the class, so he should know how it works and he should have known what was expected of him all along.

The real root problem to this whole situation is that this guy just doesn't give a damn, and I got sucked into the whole thing. He didn't care, so I didn't really care. I didn't really put any energy or effort to any of the work that I did with him. And now it's going to kick me in the ass.

The whole thing has really just pissed me off. This is not at all a place that that I want to be in. But I suppose now that I've put myself here, I have to grit my teeth and push through it.

I'm just hoping like hell that this isn't going to jeopardize anything else for me, like this internship. I think that would be pretty extreme, but I'm not pushing it totally out of my mind as a possibility.

If it isn't obvious, I don't really give a damn whether this idiot passes or not. I just don't want to get in trouble.

Sometimes I really resent the person that I am.

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