Tourist for the weekend

My first visit to New York City was a 6th grade trip with my classmates. Of course I had never been more excited to be going to such a fabulous place. No matter where you are or what you're doing, you always here about NYC. It's always on the news, you read about the wonderful celebrities who live/visit NYC and it never fails to be mentioned in a hollywood film. When I packed for my trip to the city, the only possession I knew I needed was a camera. A camera captures moments you just can't explain to other people. I truly believe New York is unexplainable. I haven't been here very long, but I just know that people who have lived here their whole lives still have hundreds of places they need to see in the city. It's impossible to experience everything the city has to offer. The point is, a camera is the one thing you must always keep by your side when traveling through Manhattan!
My best friend Kristen arrived to NYC Thursday night to stay with me for the weekend. Believe it or not, this was her first trip to the city, and obviously, she was excited. I, however, was more excited to finally have the opportunity to play tour guide. As I mentioned before, I haven't lived here very long, but finally getting the hang of the subway system is an accomplishment which needs to be celebrated! Anyway, when she arrived, I immediatly began my duty. "To the left is..." Well, you get the point!
On Friday I took Kristen into the city for the first time. We started at Central Park and worked our way down Fifth Avenue. Of course, we stopped in Tiffanys (it was my first time) and a few other stores we can't afford. After passing some more tall buildings, we jumped the subway to 42nd street, and made our way to Broadway/Theater district. I swear, no matter how many times you visit Times Square, it just doesn't get old. Every two seconds I would scream out "Oh my gosh, Kristen stand in front of that and let me take a picture!" I felt more like the tourist then she did. It was quite ridiculous! Do you know how many pictures of MTV studios I have? Too many, I don't mind telling you, but to me, it really isn't too many.
After the theater district we went to Canal Street and attempted to purchase some fake Prada bags (which, by the way, be succeeded in doing). Our last stop was back on Broadway where we ate at Ellen's Stardust Diner...mmm mmm...the waiters and waitresses are made up of people who got rejected from Broadway, so needless to say, the meal is quite entertaining! Once again, although it wasn't my first trip to the diner, I had my camera by my side and was snapping pictures at every chance I got. When I got back to my room, I loaded my pictures onto my computer and I couldn't believe my eyes. I had a whole album full of tall buildings, funny billboards, and parks I have traveled through many times.
I realized that no matter what, you will always be a tourist in New York City. Whether you are on your first or hundredth trip on the subway, you will always find something new you have never seen before. I guarantee you will never meet the same people on the subway you did the day before. There is always something new to discover in the city.

Superstitious being

Well first off I would like to just mention that I read everyone's comments they left on my blog (I will admit, I was very excited when I saw I had four whole comments...yay!) and I saw that someone was "inspired" from my writings. I'm sure everyone has this same feeling about their own blogs, but I think my entries are pretty boring. If I was to read my own entries, I would not be impressed what-so-ever. In no way are they interesting or have any point to them. Don't get me wrong, it's very flattering some of you "understand" and "get me," but now I feel like I'm going to lose this little touch of mine. Maybe I'm just being superstitious, but it's like when someone tells you that you are doing great at something and all of a sudden you're not good at that particular thing anymore. It's weird how it happens. I don't like when my mind plays games on me! I guess the main point of this blog is to warn all of you (especially those who enjoy my writings) that they are about to go downhill. I'm not trying to have low self esteem or anything like that, but if they all of a sudden become boring and unreadable, don't be suprised! I am going to try really hard to write some inspirational and meaningful entries. I hope you all enjoy!

A 'good' student or 'bad'?

The question “How would you describe yourself as a student?" is very vague. If someone was to just come up and ask me what type of student I was, I would probably respond with "I believe I am a good student." It's funny how much this English class makes me rethink everything (don't get me wrong, it isn't a bad thing!). To me, a good student is someone who goes to class on time, completes assignments on time, participates within the classroom, and most importantly, one who follows the professors orders. Now, for the 100th time in three weeks, I am figuring out that based on my description of a good student, I am technically being a bad one.
In a sense, these characteristics that I have listed to make up a good student aren't really bad, but they are too typical I guess you could say. It doesn't take much for someone to go to school on time, complete assignments, do the readings, etc. I am now learning that a really good student is one who thinks outside of the box. To be honest, I have never been that type of student. I would much rather have someone tell me what to do...in this class, that is going to be quite impossible. For once in my life, I am being asked to be creative and to think for myself. It's hard telling if I'm going to like this! Ha...I would not consider myself lazy by any means, but in the past, these are the things that have made a good student. Back in high school or middle school, someone who came up with their own "assignments" when assigned a different one got in trouble. It was like thinking for yourself was a bad thing. You weren't allowed to alter the rules...once they were set, you could not break them.
"What else are you in addition to a “student” in college writing class?" is another question I have never been asked...and I don't just mean because I have never been in college either. I normally refer to myself a student, because technically, that's what I am. In this class, we aren't supposed to think technically, we are supposed to think outside of the box. So, here is my best attempt. In addition to a student in a writing class, I am someone's best friend, I am someone's daughter, I am someone's worst enemy (I'm sure of it!). I consider myself a friendly person. I am not exactly outgoing, but once you get to know me, I tend to open up. Up until this English class, I was a good student and a hard working one as well (I am still a hard worker...but in a few weeks I am sure Pro. Marsh will convince me otherwise). This isn't something I like talking about, so I am going to end this here!

Description of a college student: true or false?

I just posted a quote from our reading in my section labeled CBook. The quote was by W.L. Garner and it was his description of the way he percieves college students to be. I'm not going to lie, some of the words I was forced to look up and find the definition, but after I did, it made me think a little. I'm going to relate back to some of the words he used to describe people like us that really stood out to me: "self-centered, restless, striving, discontented, hedonistic, insecure, scatter-brained, emotional, imbalanced, and unpredictable. Whoa, where to start. I'm not exactly sure if he was trying to be insultive toward college students, but I for one did not mind what he said. In fact, I'd have to say I agreed.
As freshman, we are entering a whole new realm of life. Most of us have never been away from home for long periods of time, nor have we had to learn to fend for ourselves (yes, I realize that this is a general statement, but I suppose I might be refering back to myself). In any case, college is a new experience, and we are bound to go through things we never imagined possible. This is possible where the words emotional, scatter-brained, and imbalanced come in. Of course we are emotional...in high school, we were told to read pages 1-25...it wasn't posted online for us to discover on our own. In college, not one told us we would be forced to give a presentation about it the next day. Things like this tend to be stressful, thus making us emotional and confused (Once again, I am aware that there are much more stressful things I could use as examples, such as our social crisis', but I chose to relate to school).
When we experience such challenges in our college career, we assume everyone else feels our pain or at least wants to hear about it...wrong, again. Our self-centered, egotistical minds are, once again, wrong. Life is tough, we soon learn, and sometimes we don't want to endure the pain anymore. We would rather go back to life where things were done for us...We become "restless" otherwise. When we don't get our way, of course we become aggitated. Isn't that pure human nature? Part of our intuition? When life gets stressful, complain about it (hey, works for me!)
Here comes the serious part: striving toward our goals. We all set goals for ourselves, and of curse we set out to make them happen. Isn't that what we are supposed to do? We've always been told to follow our dreams and make things happen. We work hard to figure things out and when we aren't able to do so, we become discontented, and unsatisfied. Once again, I stress this whole human nature thing. It's beyond frustrating when things don't happen the way we want them to or the way they should. Isn't everyone hedonistic at one point or another in their life? What would be the point of living if we weren't. Whether or not you want to believe it, we devote our lives to pursueing pleasure and being happy.
My conclusion is pretty much the fact that everything a college student is described to be comes from human nature.

Description of a college student

In our Vision Quest book, I ran across a quote in a passage about college students that I thought was interesting..."--“W.L. Garner described college students as “self-centered, restless, striving, discontented, driven by glands, hedonistic, insecure, volatile, idealistic, scatter-brained, emotional, seething, imbalanced [and] unpredictable.”—page 77 “Students”

Hmm, could this possibly be true?

A quote I thoroughly enjoyed!

If you happened to read my last entry, I wrote down a quote that we learned in class today. We were told to write about what we thought the quote meant. I decided to share with all of you just what I interpretated the quote to be saying. Obviously in life, we have many burdens we have to endure. Everyday, whether a good day or bad, we overcome new challenges. A challenge doesn't always have to be a bad thing. In fact, they help us grow and they help us learn the "rules" of life. Some days we get up, most days in my case, and we pretend like we can predict just what will happen to us that day. For me, my day starts with waking up, getting dressed, eating breakfast, going to class, etc...I think you get the point. I feel like I know what my day is going to be like...but then it happens. I get to class, the professor walks in and all of a sudden, you hear those two dreaded words: "pop quiz." Did you know that was going to happen? No, probably not. This is just the start of your day. You will most likely be awake for another 15 hours. That leaves plenty of time for life to alter in more ways than one. Although everyday is different, it starts to become the same. You get used to these suprises and unexpected delays.You learn to deal with them and you even start to learn from them. What would happen if you woke up one morning and all of a sudden you could predict the day? No more suprises, no more unexpected challenges. Your day would continue on and you would be able to predict just where your next step will take you. The challenges we overcome and the suprises we come across are just chains we wear everyday. We start to miss them because they are no longer a "burden" to us. We realize they were never a burden at all; just life as we know it.

The Chains we wear

The quote that Pro. Marsh had us write about in class today was a really cool quote. For those of you who don't remember, it went a little something like this: "We get used to the chains we wear, and we miss them when removed."

For some reason, I really enjoyed elaborating on this quote :)