Free entry to UBC Slam’s Grand Slam tonight at Koerner’s Pub, beginning at 8:00 PM. The Facebook event is here.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it, as I have to work on my essays. I got an extension on one of them, though, so I can foresee getting through a few more days than originally deemed possible!

Hmm, my Blog Squad avatar seems to have disappeared from my front page. This is a little disconcerting, but not enough to push me to find out why. School is ridiculously busy at the moment (as it always is at this time of year).

For those of you who are interested in this kind of thing, there is a slam poetry event going on in MASS (Buchanan D) on March 31. You can find the Facebook event here. I will definitely try and make it if I can.

I had a really comforting discussion with some third- and fourth-year friends I bumped into today; it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who gets more confused about what I want to do with my life the older I get. It’s extremely frustrating to remember how much more direction I had in first-year; sometimes I just want to pick something and go through with it. It’s especially frustrating when talking to people who do know exactly what they want to do and are following their passions.

What if you don’t really know what your passion is, or more specifically, how to make money off your passion? What if you care about more than one thing and don’t know how to balance it all?

At the moment I’m just trying to plan out my life in the short-term and not worry too much about the long-term details. Life happens, things change, and it’s very hard to to make concrete plans. As long as I do what I feel is right and good for me at the moment, things should work out.

(NB: Please note this is only a short-term solution for the confused. Having a sense of the general direction you want to take goes a long way in helping you shape your life.)

Summer will be a wonderful time to sort out some more of what I want to do with my life!

For now, I should work on those six term papers.

This is something I once heard (in Chinese):

In your first year of university, you don’t know that you don’t know.
In your second year, you know that you don’t know.
In your third year, you don’t know that you know.
In your fourth year, you know that you know.

And that, my friends, would describe my university education perfectly.

Just entering university from high school, I was pretty confident in my abilities—and while I did well overall, I found out quite a few things about myself and how I envision my learning environment that I had to work hard to create.

In my second year, I’d managed to get into third-year English Honours, so I was pretty excited about embarking on a two-year journey of lotsandlotsandlots! of English. Knowing perfectly well that I didn’t really know much about anything, it was incredibly enjoyable to just launch myself into my learning. Over the last couple of years, I’ve taken at least one course in each century of English (which is how the courses are loosely divided) and then some. That’s a pretty great overview, if you ask me.

“In your third year, you don’t know that you know.”

I’m really hoping this above statement is true because, since I don’t know what I know, I generally feel like I still don’t know very much about anything at all. (And this statement will probably continue to be true for years to come, when faced with the great sea of knowledge.)

Which is very frustrating when your friends are graduating around you left, right and centre, and you still can’t clearly articulate what exactly it is you want to do with your life this summer.

The main problem being that there are many things I ought to do this summer in preparation for applying to graduate school and to explore possible careers, such as:

• study for my long-distance ed course which began last September and will finally finish in August;
• possibly take a few extra courses for interest’s sake and/or to add a Minor to my degree;
• do research in preparation for my thesis next year;
• study in preparation for the GRE which I ought to take at the end of summer too;
• do extra readings to fill in the gaps in my brain (no matter how many classes I take, it seems there will always be some of those…);
• research graduate schools and programs around the world;
• consider and decide what it is exactly that I want to study in grad school;
• possibly apply to direct a seminar next year;
• in which case will need to research and prepare for that;
• learn to drive;
• maybe visit my parents for a month, and also stock up on materials for my research while I’m in Hong Kong;
• find some kind of publishing internship;
• and/or work full- or part-time to fund all these activities.

And these activities do not count the things I want to do for fun, like:

• go exploring;
• write;
• do some art;
• play my piano;
• travel someplace new;
• and hang out with friends before they leave Vancouver forever.

My one bit of advice? If you’re thinking of grad school, consider doing the GRE at the end of your second year. Depending on your program and how ready you are for it, it may take a lot off your plate in your third year—and at least it will allow you a chance to retake it if you need to, without any rush.