So, my junior year officially commenced on Wednesday; my usual brand-new 5-subject notebook has actual notes in it, along with syllabi stuffed into its pockets, and my to-do list is once again full of readings and papers. Aside from my fabulous college-centric life, here’s a rundown of where I’m at, at the moment:

1. Since things tend not to happen unless they’re on my all-important calendar, I’m actually scheduling myself a day off this semester—for karate practice, meditation, and whatever else I want/need to do that’s not a study session. It probably won’t survive the tsunami of work which always bashes into everything in my life during the last month of classes, but it’s better than what I did last semester, which was to keep working until I ran out of work—which is to say, straight through from January to May, almost all the time.

2. I like my job, I like my classes, and so far I think the alternating days on which I have those things will work nicely. Which is not to say that I now like getting up at 6:30 AM to get to work, because that’s sort of lame, but with proper caffeine application my life should be fine.

3. I’m getting into cooking a little bit (which is good, since I eat food); I’m thinking of returning to photography; I’m pretty much in heaven living with my boyfriend; and I’m still just doing my best to focus on being happy, and not to worry overmuch about everything else. And so I go …

Hey, an update, and only 3-ish months after the last one! My blog silence is basically due to me having run around like an over-caffeinated, efficiency-obsessed psycho for the bulk of this semester, madly juggling 5 classes, an internship, a work-study job, and Aikido, because I am a masochist and like signing up to do too much cool stuff all at once.

Anyway, in my grand end-of-semester tradition of justifying my expensive, over-scheduled school existence with a recounting of what I feel I gained from said semester, here are some things I learned this semester, aside from the in-class intellectual stimulation (hey, did you know that conjugating verbs is a torturous experience? Yeah, it really is, and I voluntarily got up on Friday mornings to do it in Arabic all semester). In no particular order …

Everybody’s balance is different. For some people, having a happy, balanced life probably means not piling on as much stuff as I tend to in mine. I, however, like having a lot to do. As long as I get the occasional few hours to myself, and I know that I’ll get a vacation eventually (hello summer!), I can handle a lot and still be pretty happy. That does, however, come with the caveat that if I ever stop liking what I’m doing, this whole thing is totally going to crash, because it’s too much pressure to have the actual work become sucky without my happiness taking a nosedive. Speaking of me being happy:

Everybody’s idea of “happy” is also pretty different. I spend most of my life doing things which basically qualify as resume builders, which is fine, but I reserve the right to do whatever the hell I want with the rest of my time. Which means that I may, in fact, do a few things which everybody else would consider somewhat ill-advised, or at least unproductive. Since my life choices tend to be pretty well accepted by my social circle, that’s not usually a battle I have to fight, but I know that everything will not always work out that nicely. I’m not trying to be selfish, or step on any toes, but I’m learning that sometimes I just need to do what I think will make me happy, even when that’s not something that will go on my resume or make me more popular. Sometimes I’m just going to go chase my own happiness and see where I end up.

It’s OK to mess up. OK, definitely still working on this. I tend to go for perfect—I like my 4.0 GPA and my perfect attendance, those things make me feel good about myself. But those things can’t define me. Sometimes I’m lazy or bitchy or irritated, sometimes I care too much about the wrong things and not enough about the right things. Sometimes I don’t even know what the right and wrong things are. And sometimes I need to get myself back in line and get back to living up to my (often insanely high) personal standards, but sometimes I just need to cut myself a freaking break, let things go a little wrong, and move on, minus the self-guilt trip.

All of this is not meant to imply that I’ve in any way had an unsuccessful three months—I’ve actually really enjoyed this semester, and I accomplished some things which I am very proud of. I think I’m just learning to take slightly better care of myself, because the craziness of this semester has meant that I have had even less room than usual for unneeded freak-outs, and for not tending to my own needs when necessary. So yeah, yay college-spurred personal development and all that, endless thank yous to the family for picking up (most of) the tab, and I’m excited for the summer! I’ll still be having this interesting little personal development dialogue with myself over the break, just, you know, after 10 AM

Just in time for me to come home and render this irrelevant (this is what happens when you take 17 credits and work 3 jobs, things like blogs and sleep get neglected!), here’s an update on what I’ve been up to for the past 4 months …

Courses in a nutshell:

Multicultural U.S. Literature was interesting but basically a cakewalk, which was what I thought it would be so no problems there.

Arabic as a second language is for masochists. I’m set to take another 3 semesters of it. Yay.

Intro to International Relations was amazing, and basically covered everything that I was originally interested in when I chose my major, so real yay for that.

Intro to Sociology was fine, easy work and very nit-picky professor pretty much evened each other out.

Environmental Science was very cool, and I got to do my final project on the Kyoto Protocol … you can take the girl out of the wonky political science/law classes, but you can’t take the policy geek out of the girl

Jobs in a nutshell:

Early on this semester, I started peer tutoring at Trinity, meaning I tutor other Trinity students in classes I’ve already taken. Signed up mainly to be an English/humanities tutor, ended up almost exclusively tutoring math because that’s what they needed. The fact that I actually despise math doesn’t seem to bother them, and they are paying me, so that’s OK on balance.

Mid-semester I started also working with TU’s athletics department, mainly doing things like videotaping basketball games, because I needed to supplement my tutoring hours so as to avoid bi-weekly paychecks under $20. All of those extra hours became slightly trickier to juggle towards the end of the semester, because …

At the beginning of November, I started an internship with the Department of Commerce! Unpaid, but still basically awesome because I’m accruing some nice resumé material while working in a fun office with cool people. I’ll be continuing with the internship into next semester, and should be getting credit for it as well, which means I’ll be breaking my personal record and taking 19 credits. Caffeine donations are always welcome.

House/Life in a nutshell:

Somewhere in the middle of all this I’ve been living in a house off campus, which equals making my own food (yay!), living with my three awesome roommates (who I adore), and having free laundry and and a couch for people to crash on and fun stuff like that, so basically I’m a happy person.

I’ve also been doing my usual non-school stuff; going out with my girlfriends, doing Aikido and my karate practice, etc etc. Despite it all being somewhat insane and hectic and occasionally a bit overwhelming, I wouldn’t give any of it up; as long as I get some sleep, some coffee, and the occasional vacation, I think I’m set. And so we go!

Almost six years ago, I started taking karate. I was 12, and it was another extracurricular in a long line of sports and arts and myriad hobbies. Three years ago, I became an assistant teacher. I was 15 and a green belt, and karate was fast becoming my main avocation. Last night, I received my first degree black belt. I am eighteen, and karate long ago transcended its avocation status to become the best expression of who I am.

My training long ago ceased being something that I could separate from myself as a person; karate has shaped and altered me, made me strong as it taught me humility, given me my second family, and become integral to my existence along the way. I don’t think about training as if it’s an option or an activity, I train like I breathe—all the time, and no matter what. And ultimately, I think that that attitude is a big part of why I’m a black belt now; not because I’m magically gifted, but because for the past several years I’ve trained like it was a necessary part of my life. I’ve trained (carefully) while injured, sick, tired, bruised, stressed. I’ve trained in 90-degree heat and on cold dojo floors in the middle of winter. I trained so much that I began to grasp something of this art that I really love (although I’m eons away from claiming any sort of mastery), so when the black belt test came around last March, I felt ready for it.

The other major factors in this are, of course, my amazing Senseis, who started training, guiding, and caring for me on day one and haven’t stopped, despite my defection to DC for much of the last year. These are the people who made me love it; these are the people who have done everything possible to make me my best possible self, in and out of the dojo. I try to be a good person for the sake of it, but also because I am trying to live up to my Senseis’ belief in me. Also, since I may as well make a list of people I’m grateful for, my parents have done everything they could to enable my being a martial artist; that’s six years of driving to the dojo a billion times a week, writing a lot of checks, and supporting my strange obsession with this thing that has me coming home black and blue all of the time, and I’m very thankful for that support.

I am now a dual-state-living college student, and my life has gotten slightly more complicated than it was when I was 12. But I am a black belt wherever I go, whether I’m wearing it or not, and I am proud of the work that I put into that, and awed by the work that others put in making sure I got there.

Oh and, of course, pictures on the Flickr.

1. 18 credits is great. 18 credits is also a lot of work.

2. Be thankful for not having had Friday classes up til now. Starting next semester, I have an Arabic lab every Friday at 10 AM. Bah.

3. Springtime in DC = rain. Every day. Yes, the flowering trees and whatnot are all lovely. But they are also wet, because they are in the rain, which is not something that they tell you in touristy literature.

4. Turning work in early makes professors really, really happy for some odd reason. Happy professors write nice rec letters

5. Math doesn’t suck … at least, stat doesn’t suck. Calc and trig are still on the list of things I do not wish to do, ever, thanks very much.

6. Less than 6 hours of sleep makes me stupid. More than 8 may never happen again during a semester. Looks like 7 is about it.

7. DC housing is OMG EXPENSIVE. But so is living on campus, so yeah. Guess we can just change that to COLLEGE is OMG EXPENSIVE.

8. Holding down 1500 things at once is not something you do alone, it’s something that is only made possible by having awesome people supporting you and making you laugh and making sure that you know when stuff isn’t really as serious as you think it is. By the same token, the right people do not always just take you as you are, but push you and challenge you when you need that.

5 years of karate training, help from the parents, huge amounts of support and training (and basically everything else) from my incredible senseis, a plane and a bus to get up to NH, a 2-hour drive down to Atkinson, Mass, and a little over an hour of testing, and I’ve just passed my black belt test. Huge thank-yous to everyone involved! And now on to registration and my final 5 weeks of school, before going on to my summer break and black belt graduation

Do excuse the lack of blog posting lately; as most people are aware, I’m taking 18 credits this semester, which is currently translating into piles and piles of reading every weekend, supplemented by other assignments and lots and lots of test prep in various forms (like right now; I’m recovering from a 75-minute in-class-essay exam for my history class while prepping for the 5 other tests that I have coming up next week in all of my other classes). And I’m in Aikido 3 times a week (my rolls are getting better!), still keeping up my karate practice, and trying to leave myself at least a day or so of chill time every weekend if possible, so my schedule can get a bit jam-packed.

In news not in the “why oh why did I take on this workload” category, my birthday is fast approaching, as is Spring Break, so yay! I’m going out Friday and Saturday for the birthday with friends, so pictures should certainly by forthcoming, and I will be home (more accurately, I’ll probably be at home a little and at the dojo as much as they’re willing to have me, sorry Mom!) for the first week of March. It will definitely be nice to have a chance to unwind for more than 2 days, and to get to see as many of my NY and NH people as possible, before I come back to school and do my best to power through the post-midterm crunch season that will be the rest of March and April. And back to the semi-caffeine-fueled study sessions

It’s been 4 days, 2 days of classes, and 2 Aikido classes since the Inauguration, so I’ve now had a chance to unwind a bit from the semi-madness that engulfed DC for the last week. A semi-madness which for me ended up involving 2 unofficial Inaugural Balls, the Lincoln Memorial Concert (Beyonce, Bono, Barack Obama, a bunch of other performers, and a ton of people, in case you were under a rock last weekend), and of course the Inauguration itself (final opinion: OMG CROWDED. But cool!). Oh, and somewhere in there I got to see Raina and Kavi, somehow It’s all been amazing (albeit cold … seriously, dresses should not be mixed with 10-degree weather, it’s just cruel), but I think pretty much everybody is happy that the tourists are beginning to disperse, the streets are re-opening, and we can all go back to looking at how cold it is outside and resolving to only go out to get between wherever we are and wherever the nearest Metro station is or whatever. Which is good, because I now have way too much homework to contemplate going out for anything anyways. Pictures on the Flickr, available by cell/email/etc, I’ll be home for the first week of March for Spring Break

So, my break has been fabulous. I’m getting plenty of karate in (we did get snowed out a few times, but this is to be expected in New Hampshire in December), I’m reading and hanging out with the awesome people that make up my NH social circle and sleeping in and eating good food on my own eating schedule, thanks very much (which, for the record, involves random meals all somewhere between 9 AM and 11 PM, none of that ridiculous three meals a day nonsense), and basically life is good.

And I somehow also feel good about heading back down to DC; I’ll certainly miss home,  but you will not find me madly clinging to something in Boston Logan Airport and refusing to leave. Compounding my general feeling of non-stress is the fact that this time, unlike when I left for last semester, I actually know what to expect; the prospect of having classes for the next 3 months is not quite as unbelievably exciting, being as I’m now aware that classes = getting up early, heavy textbooks, and lots and lots of paper writing (woo), but at least I’ve got a very clear idea of what I’m going into, which as everyone knows is something that I’m very fond of having. I’ve also once again managed to save a bunch of money by renting my books ($204.20, to be exact), which is nice. That about covers it all—DC people, I will see you starting the 12th, NH people, you have 7 more days to catch up with me if you haven’t!

It hasn’t quite set in yet that I’m really finished, but officially I am done with my first college semester. I’m sure I’ll have some thoughts on it as a whole, given some time to reflect, but right now it works down to:

I’m glad I did well academically

I made some great friends

I’m not sure yet how living on my own in DC has affected who I am, but I’m sure it has in some way

I strongly dislike school food

I am so, so, so happy to be home.