very long day. i woke up at 7am and spent pretty much all day working on pa, except for a couple of hours i spent doing reading for my classes tomorrow. i’m pretty tired now. talk to you kids tomorrow.

before i continue with my usual rambling, i just want to take a sec to thank everyone who wrote yesterday regarding my entry. i appreciate the encouragement.

i’ve been fairly productive today, but i’m not done yet. i ended up falling asleep around nine o’clock last night - maybe my body’s way of telling me i’m going to have to stop substituting no doz and venti mochas for sleep. but so i ended up waking up fairly early this morning, worked on pa for a while, then headed into the city to pick up a couple more textbooks. i should have done it on thursday, but i didn’t think of it after class and then by the time i left the pub of course everything was closed. i got them today, anyway, and got some reading done on the train. also scored a tasty grilled cheese at the diner near union square on university place.

the rest of my day has been working on pa, reading for my monday classes, and trying to catch up on my mail a little. i need to clean my apartment at some point this weekend; i’ve been so busy that everything is just sort of piled up on the bed and floor from when i get home from classes or whatever. and i haven’t done dishes in days. bad emma.

right now i think ima try and finish one more chapter of Politics UK for my first class on monday, and then work on a netscape issue with the page i’m currently doing on pa, one that’s being particularly persistent and is pissing me off to no end.

also, before i forget again to mention it: i updated caoine.org’s links recently. dig it.

for the past couple of weeks, i’ve been absurdly happy.

this is not a standard thing with me; i’m just not a very perky person. i don’t even like very perky people. i’m used to an emotional state of barely controlled panic combined with a sort of resigned apathy. i’m frequently worried or anxious, but not in a productive way, because it’s not the kind of worry that inspires me to actually do something about whatever it is i’m worried about; i just get upset and then try not to think about it.

when i first left nyu a couple of years ago, i wasn’t too thrilled about it but i felt that it was the best thing i could have done in that situation. i’d just gotten over mono and failed a class for the first time in my life because i couldn’t catch up enough on all the work i’d missed. i felt academically burned out; i’d sit in my dorm room drinking carton upon carton of orange juice and trying not to feel like i’d rather jump off the bridge than register for another year of reading i didn’t have time to do and papers i didn’t know how to write and exams i could never bring myself to study for. i felt like continuing at nyu was a waste of money because i wasn’t going to accomplish anything except drive myself even crazier trying to do something i was no longer equipped to do.

the tricky thing about feelings like that is that when you’re experiencing them, you can’t forsee a time when it will be different. not only did i not think i could continue at school, i didn’t think i would ever be able to continue at school. my parents, knowing me as they do, knew that of course that wasn’t true and that there would come a time when i’d want to go back. they tried to nudge me into, if not staying, at least leaving things in such a way that they would be easier to come back to. they knew as well as i do now that a girl who voluntarily takes classes at harvard during her summer vacations in high school doesn’t just walk away from college because she got sick for a while.

but at the time, i felt like i was done with school forever, and while i tried to play up the fact that i was working in an industry where skills are more important than degrees, it was a thought that depressed me. i had taken school very seriously for a very long time, and i felt like i’d let myself and everyone else down by just abandoning it. i didn’t see that there was anything else i could do, though, so i kept working at my stupid little design job and paying my rent and going to clubs on weekends, and everything was okay for a while.

then i got laid off from my stupid little design job, and was dumped into a job market that is no longer as easygoing as it was when i entered it the first time. companies were no longer scrambling for anyone with “new media” skills; people couldn’t even keep the jobs they had, much less find new ones. so i started to panic. a couple of months after this, i took the train home to massachusetts to attend my brother’s harvard graduation.

this affected me more than i thought it would. harvard was where i had wanted to go since the first time i started hanging around the campus when my mother enrolled in the jfk school of government. i loved everything about it; i took classes there through the school of continuing education’s secondary school program, and when i got to my senior year of high school i went to all the little prospective applicant lunches and tours and interviews, the whole deal. i applied early action, and was disappointed but not crushed when they deferred me to regular admission. but then spring came, and with the thick acceptance packets i got from the schools i never really thought i would go to, there was a slim little envelope from harvard informing me i’d been placed on the waitlist. then, i was crushed. i decided i didn’t even want to stay in the boston area anymore. fuck it, i was moving to new york city. so i did, and i enrolled at nyu, and i had that glorious first semester followed by my disastrous bout of mono. we’ve covered this already.

the point is that when i went back to harvard to see my brother graduate, i was a little bit bitter about school in general and harvard in particular. then i saw him getting his degree, i saw the handful of people becoming doctors of philosophy, i remembered how much i had been looking forward to college in the first place, and i started missing it. i stopped focusing on the one shitty semester i’d had at nyu, and i decided that i wanted to go back. i wanted my own fucking philosophy degree, or whatever. and i realized that my parents had been right, that here i was wanting to go back less than two years after i’d said i’d never do it again.

since then i’ve been doing all the paperwork, having all the meetings, worrying about whether it would all work, about whether now that i finally wanted to come back, i’d be denied the opportunity. but miraculously, it seems like it has all worked out. i started this entry by saying i was happy, remember? and this is why. i no longer have that nagging guilt and depression about not being in school. i’m back. i’m doing it again, and i love it. for the first time in almost two years i feel like i’m doing exactly what i want to be doing, as well as what everyone who cares about me has been telling me i should do.

now i have other worries, of course. i have that reading to do and those papers to write and exams to study for, but i’m excited about it. my classes are forcing me to think in ways i haven’t had to in a long time, and i’m surrounded by all these smart, interesting people in exactly the same situation i’m in - we’re all students. and that is making me really happy.

today was fabulous. i can’t remember if i mentioned on tuesday that my philosophy professor this term rocks socks like you wouldn’t believe; if not, well, he does. let it be known. it turns out he holds his office hours in an irish pub downtown; obviously i had to check it out. i headed over after my inida recitation and found him with maybe a dozen other nyu philosophy students, some of whom have already graduated or took his class years ago but keep coming every thursday night because he’s just that cool. we did some drinking (and even talked a little philosophy), and incredibly enough it turns out that we’ve been going to the exact same clubs for years - he goes to batcave now, and before that went to lbv at mother, and the bank before it closed. i don’t know how it is that we’ve never met, but i’m keeping an eye out next time i go. all the other people there were equally entertaining; a very good time was had by all and i expect i’ll be there more or less every thursday for this semester at the very least.

my other classes - india lecture and india recitation - today were interesting to be sure, but they sort of pale in comparison to my ethics lecture. i’ve never been so entertained in a class in my life, much less in a philosophy class. a philosophy class specialzing in ethical theory, even. needless to say i’ll probably end up taking all the other classes he teaches over the next year or two.

i got a lot of reading done between classes today, and reactivated my nyu net account and everything, so that’s all good. i feel really good about being back in school. i hadn’t realized till now quite how much i missed it. the schedule is exhausting, the workload daunting, and the commute ruthless but i’ve had the best week i’ve had in months. i’m a lot more enthusiastic about all this than i thought i would be, and i’m not just saying that because i’m a little drunk. which i am, by the way. a little drunk that is. shut up.

i have no classes tomorrow but i’ll be in the city for a while anyway to hang out with spencer and pick up my pa book and do a little more textbook shopping. might go see a movie later in the evening, although i have a lot of work to do the next few days. we shall see. right now i’m going to go read my einstein homework until i fall asleep. goodnight!

overall, i would say i had a really good day, although the past few hours of it have been a little frustrating. as some of you have probably read over at penny arcade, gabe and i have been working our asses off on getting the new redesign finished. i had a specific chunk i wanted to finish for him tonight which i’m just not going to have time to do. i’ll probably be able to get it done when i get home from classes tomorrow, but it’s a little disappointing since i don’t like missing even casual deadlines like this.

as for the rest of my day: today was my second day back at nyu. in the morning i had british & irish politics followed by natural sciences i: einstein’s universe, in the afternoon. didn’t have to stay for my lab at least, since there are no labs the first week of classes. i’m still not readjusted to this getting up before 7am thing, but my friend mister no doz will help me through the first couple weeks and after that i’ll probably be fine. both of my classes that met today look to be of the hard-but-interesting variety, which is substatinally better than hard-and-boring, at least. einstein will probably be my hardest class this semester; science has never been my strong point, especially labs. my professor seems entertaining and competent, so it’s can’t be too bad.

i can’t believe it’s eleven pm and i’m already this exhausted, but it’s true. tomorrow i have an india lecture, then ethics (which i’m really looking forward to - i suspect this will be my favorite class this semester; the professor is insanely cool), then india recitation, then i might head over to ethics office hours which are not actually being held in an office but rather a pub downtown. then i have some more textbooks to buy, reading to do, and pa to work on.

colin is finally coming back to new york in a couple of days, which is good because i miss him. i need to go check out london again at some point, it’s been several years since i was last there.

time for more thank yous: thanks to brendan of sydney for the underworld cd that arrived today, thanks to spencer for the coffee and penguins from thinkgeek, and to chris for the urbn package. a word about my wishlists - as i’m now in the city almost all day, there’s nobody home to sign for packages that require signatures, like those from amazon. i’ll probably change the shipping address on the list or arrange something with my neighbor, but for now (i hate to say it) please hold off on the packages because i have no way of getting them. thank you all, though!

<quatoria> good god emma, something kept you from your pikmin?
<emma> ya
<emma> i blame gabe
<cwgabe> I take full resposiblity
<cwgabe> I have been working her pretty hard
<emma> he has
<emma> he’s ruthless
<cwgabe> I had to crack the whip
<cwgabe> crack crack
<cwgabe> it turned out she liked the whip though so I need something new

this is going to be quick because i’m exhausted and i have to get up mad early again tomorrow. but yes, my first day of classes kicked my ass. i only two lectures today - world cultures: india and ethical theory - but both of them were great. india looks like it’s going to be a lot of work but really interesting, and ethics has what might just be the coolest professor i’ve ever had. i’m really looking forward to the next lecture on thursday. tomorrow i have british/irish politics and natural sciences i: einstein’s universe. the science i’m not too thrilled about - it’s never been my strong point - but maybe it won’t be so bad.

anyway, i’m really tired and i have a lot of reading to do before i go to bed, so i’ll write more tomorrow maybe.

i’m sorry i didn’t update yesterday! thank you to everyone who sent me birthday emails and cards and such and whatnot, i really enjoyed all of them saturday night at club was really, really fun. granted, i’m saying that despite the fact that i can’t remember much of it - there was drinking. there was a drunk emma. but really, if ever there is a time to get drunk, i think one’s twenty first birthday is it.

i got there around midnight, so it was officially the 20th, said hi to everyone i knew and checked my coat and gerard hooked me up with a free vodka cranberry. i danced and talked to people till spencer arrived, at which point we wandered around and talked to people and danced more. people kept buying me drinks because of my birthday, and i couldn’t really object. eventually we got tired and i was having a little trouble remaining vertical, so we took a cab over to yaffa for breakfast, and eventually home. and a good time was had by all.

i slept very, very late sunday but actually escaped without much of a hangover; several people wanted me to go out for a birthday dinner and possibly movie, but i decided to take a raincheck on that till later this week because i was exhausted. so i ordered some italian food, watched some movies, talked to gabe and colin and my mom and dad and everyone. a lot of people mailed me who i hadn’t spken to in a while, so that was really nice. i had a great day.

tomorrow morning i start classes at nyu again; i have two lectures with a couple of hours in between so i’m going to get lunch with mrtails i think. i’m a little nervous about being a student again - it’s been so long. i hope i still remember how to write an academic essay, and take notes, and study for tests and whatnot. maybe that’s not the kind of thing you forget. i guess we’ll find out. but hey, i get to be the cool twenty one year old sophomore with her own apartment and really weird hair. so that can’t be all bad.

just a quick update because i’m off to batcave in a few. it’s my birthday in an hour and a half! i’m celebrating at club tonight, so all you new york fuckers stop by and buy me a drink or something. uNF.

i’ve been working on a project for pa pretty much constantly for the past couple of days, and another freelance project i have. i’m trying to finish up this design stuff or as close to it as possible before classes start on tuesday because i know my schedule’s going to be really tight. i’m making a lot of progress on pa, which is nice, but i still have a lot to do so tomorrow’s probably going to be another busy day. but i don’t mind because gabe and tycho are two of the coolest people i know and working with them doesn’t even really feel like work.

speaking of gabe, he drew a gorgeous new cartoon of me as an early birthday present; a detail of it is above but you can check out the full thing here. gabe never ceases to amaze me. also in that directory are two other new drawings by lunacrow and melanarchy, both of which royally rock my socks.

i’ve been listening to the new live nin album a lot this week; i was prepared to be mildly disappointed but it’s actually really good. i’ll probably buy the cd when it comes out on tuesday but i’m not going to get the video yet - i’m at the point now where it seems pointless to buy anything on vhs because i know i’m going to get a dvd player very soon and i don’t want to have to buy everything over again. it’s the same as it was just before i bought my first cd player, and sure enough i don’t even own an audio tape player anymore. but so yeah, the new nin is good, even if it does make me want to see another live show. the fragility tour at madison square garden was definitely one of the best shows i’ve ever seen. i know it’s not supposed to be cool to listen to nin anymore since they’re mainstream or whatever the fuck, but i don’t really care. i’ve been listening to this stuff since i was like thirteen and i’m not going to stop now because everyone else does too.

i went textbook shopping yesterday, which was fun in a sort of spending a lot of money and hurting my back carrying all the books home kind of way. which i guess now that i think about it isn’t really that much fun. but i do have a big pile of books on india and einstein now, so how bad could it be.

i woke up feeling a lot better this morning, maybe because of all the cough medicine and vitamin c and oj i’ve been tossing down my throat, but either way i’m glad to be a little less wretched. i am trying to adjust my sleeping patterns to something a little more school-compatible, which is annoying but i guess better get used to it now than to sleep through my first week of classes.

tomorrow i’m going textbook shopping, which is both fun and expensive! i’m all for buying books but textbooks aren’t really quite as much fun as book shopping usually is. it’s usually an enormous pain in the ass just getting them back home all at once. but it’s more of an enormous pain not having the books to do my work from, so yay i suppose.

been working on several design projects today, and dabbling in a little extreme g3. i usually don’t like racing games very much, but i dig it. it’s visually pretty impressive and challenging enough that i don’t get bored with it immediately. plus you get to blow the other racers up. woo!

so sunday is my twenty first birthday, which i’m going to be celebrating saturday night, i think. i’m probably going to go out somewhere and get there after midnight so i’ll be legally twenty one. not that i’d ever do anything that would require me to be twenty one. no sir. not me.

well, it’s actually after midnight now which normally wouldn’t concern me but i am sort of trying to do this normal sleeping schedule thing so i guess i’d better go to bed. in a little while. after just a little more extreme g3. i promise.