¿De dónde? ¿Adónde?

Year two, day two:

I'm at school right now. Before I get into what I'm doing here (nothing) I'll rattle of some details of how I got here. Maybe one day this thing will have more specific content, like a theme or something, but you should always write for your audience, and I don't have one, really, so random assortments of words will do for the time being.

I'm from a tiny little town in Maryland, up on a hill and in the woods. I adore it there. I'm going to school, however, in Silicon Valley. So how'd that happen? Well, at the end of high school, the world said, "hey, Merrill, go get a degree."

Bewildered, but not wanting to disappoint my home planet, I replied, "well, alright." Glancing around quickly, I noticed that I was sort of interested in 3D modeling, and that there was a good school for it in California, near a lot of relatives of mine. I hurried to it (applied and was in within a week - the only school I applied to) and promptly spent two years wasting my parents' money.

Now, this isn't something I'm especially proud of. I'm pretty disappointed in myself for it. Fun fact: I've never held a paying job. I'm pretty much just a lazy ass who gets everything handed to him and still complains. It's no good, I'm aware. Anyway, that only relates in part.

I went to this art school for two years (the modeling program has its foundations in traditional art), and I loved a lot of it. I loved graphic design and I really loved figure drawing and sculpting. I was never a hard worker, though, and never very motivated, so I always did very poorly, and didn't ever become especially skilled. Not skilled at all, really. Every semester, then, I felt terrible about being at Cogswell (that's the school), and after four of them I realized I was constantly threatening to leave.

It actually became sort of comical to my peers. After the first semester, I decided that I wouldn't return. I was told that I would be missed. I did end up returning, though, and people were pleased. At the end of the second semester, I warned that after the summer had passed, I would not be back. At this point I had built some tighter friendships, and people a little more concerned. I was told that I would be missed very dearly. Come next fall, though, I was back. Following that, same deal, but the response was a little less worried; the idea had become pretty usual to everybody. They figured I'd come back. I did. At the end of the fourth semester, I was really definitely deciding not to come back. I was really wasting money at this point, doing really terribly in my classes, not really enjoying myself, and that was no good. I didn't sign up for any classes, I pack myself up, and I returned to Maryland, where I decided I would get a job, finally, and go to community college to collect gen. ed. credits while figuring out what I'd like to do with life.

It should come as little surprise that the next semester I was again back in California. I had finally left Cogswell, but the better of my friends were out west (a poor reason to enact a remote plan - which costs more money, of course), and I knew the area and I wanted to go back. I called up some friends of mine who were getting a place, and moved in with them ( I live in "Merrillspace," a blocked-off portion of the living room), and now go to a local community college wtih the goal of eventually majoring in Spanish, maybe at San Jose State.
So that's where I am now. I'm just beginning my third quarter here (quarters go by way faster than semesters, damn), and so far I'm doing much better than I have in school since, I think, forever. So finally I feel like I'm not wasting as much money. I'm going to go ahead and work on become a resident too, so as to further aid that process. Maybe I could even get an actual job? That'd be nice.

This is totally unrelated, but I just discovered that a bird shit on my backpack. Oh boy.

Anyway, so now I'm at school. My schedule this semster is M-F 11:30-1:30, which are Spanish II and English, and M/W 6:30-7:30 which is karate. Not a bad setup. Lots of afternoon time (for a job? Merrill, get a job). My Spanish teacher is great, especially relative to the last one I had (probably more on that later), and my English teacher is mind-blowing. I don't really understand what's going on in that class, but hopefully I'll figure it out. It is, after all, only the third day. The karate instructor I've only met with once so far, and all I really know about him is that his name is Peter Rabbitt. He seems like a decent guy, though. I think I'll enjoy the class. I think I'll enjoy the semester, on that note.
So that's a little snapshot of me at the moment. I'm off to do other similarly unproductive things. Later.