11-27-04
I think I’m running into a case where I have to choose what I’m going
to believe about something.
On our group’s evaluation, Katherine wrote “Amy and Jeff, you’ll make
truly fantastic teachers! And, Avrila, you will obviously be a
success
in whatever career you choose to pursue.”
Now, I’ve been trying to figure out what the heck she meant by
that. I want to teach—that’s why I’m taking classes toward an
education major. I can’t help wondering if she was somehow trying
to nudge me away from teaching…
And yet, I don’t think so. I’m not such an awesome presenter yet,
because I haven’t done all that many presentations. This one
wasn’t my best, either, I think because I was saying stuff to people
who were already supposed to know it from the reading, and I’m better
with getting information across. Also, the lectureesque part is
relatively minor when the students are nine years old. But…I’ve
seen the presentations Mrs. Harms, Mr. Watson, and Miss Mortlock
do. I could do that. Part of the problem is I didn’t have a
totally killer handle on what I was trying to put across, and part of
the problem is kids are different from grownups.
So, I don’t think she’d be right in nudging me away from teaching, and
really, I wasn’t worse than lots of people, so I don’t think she was.
Which leaves…maybe this is nutty, but since she’s been practically
bullying me about the fiction writing classes, I think she wants me to
be a writer. That would be partly because she’s a writing
professor and probably wants to have a hand in shaping the writers of
the future or something…and partly, because she thinks I can make it.
I can live with that. There are a lot worse things than having
someone believe in you.
But even if I do seriously pursue the writing thing, I still want to go
through with teaching too. Having a life outside of writing will
be good for my writing. For one thing, I wouldn’t want to try to
pay the bills out of royalties alone. For another, the life I
live and the people
I meet inform the material I have to write about. If I only wrote
and
didn’t have anything else going, even assuming I could afford to
somehow
(there’s that lottery ticket again), I’d be taking water out of the
well
and not giving it a way to fill back up. Eventually, I’d run dry.
So I’ll write on the nights and weekends and in the summer when I’m not
doing school stuff or going to conferences or something. I can do
both. And there could be worse things than writing in the summer,
’cause I’ll
be traveling some summers, and I’ve heard that travel writers can
bloody
near travel for free.
I know I can pull off the teaching thing…and if a writing professor
says I can pull off the writing thing, well—I thought I could anyway,
and I guess she knows what she’s talking about. So I’ll do both.
12-6-04
So…since last entry, I’ve landed a job at Valsetz. I’ll have to
stay on-campus at least half my weekends (a single tear rolls down my
buttcheek—less time around my mom) ’cause I’m scheduled to work on blue
(as opposed to
yellow) Saturdays. Naturally I’ll be trying to grab extra shifts
anywhere
I can. If I have to sacrifice time with my freaking stressful
family, oh, darn.
The new job and the food handler’s card’ll be making my resume a little
longer shortly, as will the writing 440 final where I get trained in
state writing assessment scoring. So I’m not totally freaking out
about not having a winter break job lined up—I think I can use plastic
and borrow from my dad to make stuff work out.
And if I’m supremely lucky, Jeff’ll still have the Tuesday dinner shift
next term, ’cause I’ve got that one too, and we can bond over dirty
dishes or something. Trying to grab extra hours should also help
with the odds
on that one … dang. Am I turning into a girl emphatically enough?
As long as I still have Work-Study funds to burn, I should be able to
balance my logged hours between the two jobs, and if I knock myself out
on the website keep myself at 20 hours a week, or $145, which will
really
help with the freakin’ medical bills. And after I run out of
Work-Study,
I can still try to get a lot of hours from Valsetz, ’cause money is a
very
helpful thing when one is a college student. (I take that on
hearsay,
’cause I can’t remember having enough of it. But, not being broke
would
be nice.)
I’m just so freaking tired of being stressed out about money stuff and
family stuff. This is gonna sound crazy, but I actually kind of
like the school stuff kind of stress, because I can do something about
it, and either way it goes away on its own at the end of every term.
12-15-04 12:35 AM
Okay. I’m
freaking tired of going “duuuuuuh” when the laws of reality
accidentally give me
a chance to work on my stories. To this
end,
I hereby begin brainstorming.
Current setting-type stuff: Springfest celebration, Dragon’s Gate
Recent events: Menela and Cairal are officially a couple
now; Kerana just had and won a battle royal with a set of
rank-and-village patches for the outer cloak of her formals; Rali’s
showing bard potential
Stuff going on: Kerana and Tamlan have a running difference
in their trust and respect levels toward the Spirits; Tam still wants
their
friendship to turn into more; Kerana’s getting killer headaches (caused
by,
and they don’t know it yet, a curse cast on her by Edfor, the mage of
the
rat familiar Pouncepaw caught and an associate of Curnlin, who 1: hired
Emmirae’s
dad to kill Tam’s parents, and 2: is Dorlin and Brollin’s father)
Stuff about
this curse:
Causes headaches
Increases target’s access to
magical power—causing target to eventually burn out --> Nayelle’s hand will have to be going bonkers
or I lose credibility here)
Nayelle’s still got an eye on
Shosa Nisha who’s got an eye on the Circle and reports (when she has
to) to the Seekers; Nisha’s finding out everything she can about the
Seekers --> she eventually decides the Seekers actually
are OK (and they actually are too!!!) and loosens up on the info --> Nisha finds out Nayelle knows about the
Seekers at the same time as the Seekers decide to help the Circle with
something
(?????) --> Nisha gets an awesome line about “Why did you
assume that people wanting to know about you was a bad thing?”
Stuff to set up for: Tam’s going to his parents’ old place in
King’s River Port; Kerana’s going to get messed up by that curse, and
Pouncepaw’s going to go for help—help being Brina Zhala and
Tamlan—Zhala won’t be able to do it so she tells Tamlan about him and
Kerana being Spellcraft partners (which allows him to use her powers
some) and “Tradeblood,” which is worth something since his mother was a
healer
Stuff I want to include in the
Springfest celebration scene:
Kerana kids Menela and Cairal about “stopping at the half-dozen”
because
of the saying that a girl who dances seven times around a fire at
Springfest
will be married inside the year; Kerana dances a round with Tam (on
impulse)
but then pulls back (of course), and Tam says something
to
the effect that she shouldn’t be telling him to trust beings he’s never
seen
when she doesn’t even trust him and she knows him; Kerana messes up an
ankle
and gimps off to a quiet corner, Tam notices, checks on her, and
notices
that she’s using crazy amounts of power on a self-healing—and that worries him (self-healing is harder than healing
others,
because it’s hard to be objective about damage to yourself, and
it’s a fairly minor injury, and there are tons of
healers
around ’cause it’s a Temple gathering), partly because the amounts of
power
she’s burning aren’t hitting her at all and she doesn’t seem to think
anything
of it
It’s now
9:25 PM … unless we’re being technical, a whole new day
I just thought of something—since Skystar taking this long a trip is
practically unheard of, I bet the Headmaster has something in mind for
the Circle to do at—or, wait, it’s not totally the Headmaster’s own
idea…
12-16-04
I’ve been thinking on a thing or two of late. I know that most
people, when they’re in college, make all these plans to stay in touch
forever. And then usually they don’t.
I haven’t kept in touch with anyone from Chemeketa, but I didn’t even
try, and I never thought I would. I’m not really thinking about
keeping
up with people from Western, after graduation, either. Maybe I
moved
one too many times as a kid, or something, but all my friendships, of
whatever degree, seem to be incredibly transitory…and I worry about
that some, because it’s not like I’ll have that many opportunities to
interact closely with
other adults in my future career. I need to make some friends
that’ll
actually last a few years while I’m still around mostly grownups,
but…not
planning to keep up with them might be a problem.
I e-mailed Jeff today—my main excuse was that I’m trying to hunt down
some stuff for the Professional Core application, but really I mostly
wanted
to say anything, so he’d have to write back ’cause that’s the
rules.
I just can’t help thinking—there’s a guy on this planet who’s into
reading
and writing and may know I exist. I’m not actually dumb enough to
let
that get away without a fight, am I?