Back from the Dead – Thoughts on how time passes

Hey guys, I’m finally back from the dead, I haven’t posted in a few months because school is getting out of hand. Well maybe not school, time. Time is getting out of hand, my hand to be exact. It is quite hard to grab something you can’t see, time, opportunities, courage. These are things that you don’t notice are gone or lacking until you look back.

It is strange, if you think throughout the day about how much work you have to do and how much time you have to do it…I should not be up at 4 in the morning. But here I am, and I DON”T KNOW WHERE MY TIME WENT.

I’ll find a system, I’ll make it work, and i’ll let you guys in on the secret. In the meantime i’m creating a new tag called “Where did the time go?” When I’m up at 4 in the morning, this is what i’m sure EVERYBODY is thinking about (unless you got a paper due in class, then maybe you’ll be thinking about the paper). I’m sure this tag count will go up like crazy, maybe the first 5 of them should be facebook facebook facebook facebook facebook. What a nice way to keep in touch of friends? What a goddamn waste of time ( this should be another post for itself, another time perhaps). The first step to solving any problem, is admitting it and finding the cause.

11 rules of life (college version) – Bill Gates

(It has been brought to my attention that this is actually from “Dumbing Down our Kids” by educator Charles Sykes not Bill Gates.  Someone posted something on the web and this got viral, but Bill Gates did say these things, so still let’s not forget. – 4/15/2013)

Some advice from one of the most successful man the world has ever seen, Bill Gates. His 11 rules of life that he gave to a high school started circulating the web in the year 2000, it has been over a decade and I think it is time to refresh our minds. Although I may not be in high school anymore, these rules are still golden in college. This is the cold hard truth, and he gives it to us straight.

1. Life is not fair – get used to it.

Sometimes even though you work long, hard, and relentlessly, you will not get the results you want. You may not get that A, you may not get that interview, you may not get that internship, you may not get that position. So what? Life isn’t fair. There are only two things you can do. Keep working. Or work harder.

2. The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

We are still in college, and unless you are paying for your own tuition AND taking care of whoever raised you, you haven’t done anything yet. You can feel good about yourself, you can be proud of what you have done, but don’t be fooled, this is just the beginning. Your biggest accomplishments have yet to come.

3. You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school  college. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

We are in college now, this isn’t all that unfeasible. However don’t forget the entire rule, you have to earn it.

4.  If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

It goes like this. Teachers care about you, they want you to get good grades. It doesn’t matter if it has something to do with their salary or if they just genuinely care, they want you to succeed. College professors don’t give a sh*t about you unless you learn to give a sh*t. It is a give and take relationship. If you aren’t willing to put in the work, goodbye see you never I have 300 other students who are willing to put in the work. But if you do put in the work, your professor will push you, and push you hard to make you better, all that for preparing you for after. Now I’m still at this stage but from what I have gathered the future is like this. Your boss does not care, you either put in the work or you’re fired.

5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

College is one HUGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE. That reaction paper you have to write twice a week? It is not bullsh*t, do it, and learn from it.

6.  If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault; so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

At one point in college you WILL mess up. It’s done, its in the past, learn and move on. It may be hard in the moment, but you have to move on.

7. Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

I see this as two messages for us. 1, clean up after yourself, if messiness and uncleanliness becomes a habit, it becomes a disease. 2, enjoy college now cause you will be be a parent and have to deal with your smart alec kid sooner or later.

8. Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

You get mistakes, you get make up exams, you get extra credit, you get leeway. This is BACKUP, don’t rely on them. Why start a class thinking you’re going to need these things anyway?

9.Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you “FIND YOURSELF”. Do that on your own time.

We are young adults now. Although life is still split into semesters, life is not that far off. When your summer/winter or whatever break comes yes you may relax a little. However you better still be keeping up, read some books take some extra courses, this is NOT the time to be slacking off. Also, no matter how busy you are you will have time to find yourself in college, so do it. Explore, experience, whatever, but do it now.

10. Television and video games are NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

This is a lie, Gates must have been mistaken. Just kidding.

11. Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Yea we get that now, when the curve is a c+ and glasses got a 94%, you should feel bad that you called him glasses. But in general, ,be nice to people, a**holes don’t live happy lives. And there are people out there, amazing people who can be both a nerd and have fun, and guess what? You can be.that.person.

These 11 rules Bill Gates lived by should be hardwired into everybody’s brain. And if you follow these 11 rules and things STILL don’t pan out, send me an email and I’ll go to Bill Gates personally and tell him to revise his rules

Backpacking – more stressful than exams

I absolutely unequivocally hate, with an undying passion, backpacking for classes. For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, backpacking as advisers like to put is, is essentially shopping for classes. You find classes you want for next semester, put them in a bag, so when it is time to register (checkout), it is quick and easy. That is if when shopping and you get to the register, the clerk takes the item OUT of your bag and says, “sorry but the item that you have in your bag is no longer available, please go find another item that you don’t want as much while I put this item that you did want right in front of you.”

So much fun.

Also, when you’re shopping and you find something you like, you grab it. However when backpacking for classes, some classes collide with other classes, some classes are too far apart from each other, some classes end too late or too early, some classes coincide with other activities, blah blah BLAH. Finding the perfect schedule is tantamount to finding say.. a random $100 bill under your mattress. It rarely happens, it brings you a state beyond bliss, it makes your future look so promising, and you wonder to yourself what heavenly deed you did for karma to swing your way in such a big bundle of goodness.  I had a near perfect schedule once, I might have cried.

This is me while scheduling

I’m pulling out my hair, my computer seems like it reverted back to the old school one. I feel 100 pounds heavier and my eyes are cringing. It is like a punishment, in which I don’t know what I did wrong.

This is me 10 minutes right before registration, as I see my classes get ripped from my grasps right in front of my eyes. My eyes are bloodshot, I’m up because my registration just HAS to be at 8 in the morning. My fingers are trigger happy, right on the mouse ready for the moment it hits my time because I’ll BE DAMNED IF SOMEBODY TAKES MY CLASS FROM ME.

Then after registration this is me.  I hate myself, I hate life, I hate everything everything and anything this school has to offer. I only got some of my classes, my perfect schedule again just a dream. I have a class that is a seminar, only 30 open seats. AND THERE WERE 45 PEOPLE ON THE WAITLIST!! That means in order for me to get the class, all 30 students currently enrolled must drop, then for the 30 lucky souls that got the class, THEY MUST DROP THE CLASS TOO IN ORDER FOR ME TO GET IT. WHYYYY!!?!?!

Backpacking, it is NOT like shopping, it’s like creating a dream, working for the dream, and watching THAT DREAM GET STRIPPED FROM YOUR REALITY PIECE BY PIECE.

Twitter – the online virus for the human heart

Sorry guys, but I’ve been infected, and now I’m flying high in the twittersphere. I got the bad case of the tweets, all of a sudden I have this need, this CRAVING to voice all of my opinions to the public no matter how dumb they are. We live in a very digital world, in which one’s voice no matter how small, can be spread across the corners of the globe. So this is me, spreading my voice.

We all have things we want to say. Sometimes, we don’t even want people to listen, but we just want to shout, and shout loud. We just want to scream into the world because maybe if we scream loud enough it’ll make a difference. However since we can’t just scream at the sky whenever we want, some creative genius out there created the twittersphere, a place in which it is ok to scream your thoughts whenever, wherever, however you want.

That is exactly what this world needs, a way for people to voice their opinion, their thoughts. A lot of it is going to be nonsense, a lot of isn’t going to mean anything to anybody. But maybe, somehow, in someway, your voice will make a difference to someone out there. And if that happens… Congrats.

I guess it is a little harsh to call twitter an infection. It is quite the opposite, not a cure but more a remedy. Like soup, Chicken soup for the modern soul.

so follow me @BeforeGrowingUp on twitter

There is no such thing as “just a nap”

Have you ever had a break in between your classes? You’re at home and you think to yourself well I have like 25 minutes until my next class, I’ll just close my eyes and rest for a little bit, make sure I’ll be well rested for my next class. THIS IS A TRAP. IF YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES, YOU WILL NOT OPEN THEM UNTIL 30 MINUTES AFTER YOUR CLASS HAS ENDED. If, by some miracle you are able to open them, you will reach class even more dead then before your “nap”.

There is no such thing as taking a nap, or a power nap, it is a lie some heartless bastard out there made up to watch college kids suffer. The reason is because we, as college students, undeniably do NOT get enough sleep. Sleep is our drug, we need it, and when we don’t have it, we crave it, and when we do have it we want more, and more, and more, and then we miss our class.

However there IS a way to nap properly and not look/ feel like the living dead, more on that later.