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Warning! Rant Post!
My Insides, SometimesAHHH! So glad that I can do a “ranting” post. I’m desperately in need of ranting. I’ve found myself in the course of the mere past two weeks flooded with emotions, just trying to deal with the daily life of Berlin. I’ll give a synopsis of the low points of my days so far.
Wednesday. 8:30a. Wake up and have an anxiety attack about having not comprehended any of the reading I had to do the previous night. 8:45. Shower and pack and get dressed, generally my anxiety has quelled by this point. 9:10. Leave the dorm and walk to the bus stop, having forgotten my monthly pass, apologize to the bus driver and have him grimace at me, muttering incomprehensible German. He still lets me ride for free but definitely begrudgingly. 10:00. My class starts, or rather my class should be starting. My teacher comes in late, apologizes, and rants about the recent politics of the EU without really having given us the basis of the lecture. It’s entirely frustrating. The mood of my day has been set by this point: I am intense, I am nervous, I am frustrated.
I get lunch with a couple friends and calm down, I go to a book store and look over the scarcely stocked English section until I realize that all of the books there are either classics that I read during high school, or “pop-ologies” that I have no interest in reading. My frustration is reignited, especially upon finding one Toni Morrison book that I’d like to read, but it costing 20.00 Euro. I leave, back to school.
From 2:00p until 3:15, I sit in German class. The instructor does not speak English to us which is probably to our benefit and I might appreciate to some degree if I weren’t so entirely on edge from a frustrating day. I pretend like I know what’s going on. I smile and nod, but my heart races. I sip ferociously a small cup of coffee until I’m begging for the last drop to just fall. I need the energy to get through the day.
4:00. I go to my seminar style class which I thought I loved the first week, but now I realize that it’s the same thing as the A.P. U.S. History class I took in high school. What’s more, it’s filled with all the students who are in my EU class earlier that day, except not ALL of them. Only the one’s that know EVERYTHING, and really aren’t ashamed to quietly laugh amongst themselves when I, completely burnt out from my day, ask about why Disney’s Pocahontas is central to our analysis of American identity and conceptualizing European identity.
I get out of our ugly prison-style, East German school building. I buy a pack of cigarettes and smile when I realize they are exactly half the cost that they’d be in New York, but frown when I remember that they are only packed with 17, and not 20, cigarettes. I come home, I read, I crash. I get emails from my mom asking me why I haven’t been in touch. Friends try to get to me on Facebook and don’t understand that I really cannot spend too much time sleeping here, and when I’m not sleeping, it’s entirely important to me that I spend my waking hours with the few people on this trip that are actually decent towards me, which does not include my roommate.
Still, I don’t regret studying abroad. I regret not being able to adjust to this new culture’s grind quicker. I find myself in a strange depression I’ve never been in before. Not strange in its intensity, but strange in that I can’t find a way to cope decently with it. No longer does burying my head in academic life help me like it used to. In fact, burying my head in academic life just makes me more concerned about my grades falling, and falling fast. I’ve worked so hard since being at NYU, and the past two weeks just have me so, so concerned. I need a goal, I need my motivation to be reignited.
Dude, I hear you!
I understand the need to rant I am little depressed myself...real classestarted for us about two weeks ago and I can't get into the swing of things. I've been using so much French, I am actually getting sick of it in French class. My prof catches me daydreaming half the time about getting out of class and gets angry at me so often. I really just want to speak english and people start getting angry at me when they speak French and I only speak english back. School doesn't feel like school at all, really informal. My friends at home say they can never get a hold of me. My mom wishes I would stop calling her . I go to the American library for a book for class and the book that I need the one that I researched online was available and when I make way all the way to the lib is lost. It gets really frustrating. I love Paris I really do, but finding your place here is so challenging. But i'm up for it. Don't worry u'll find your way. Lemme know if you make your way to Paris!! Keep yo head up;)
Tough trip
Too bad you can't find the book I'm reading now—The Account by Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish conquistador who wandered for six years, from Florida to Texas and Mexico, lost, naked, starving—living off cactus and pine nuts—watching hundreds of his companions die—drowned, killed by Indians, malaria and typhoid, cannibalizing themselves. Talk about a tough trip. I hope you're not having too bad a time—at least you're making it sound interesting. I'm not sure why, but your "quotidian day" reminded me a little of the crazy day in "Goodfellows" when Ray Liotta runs around doing drug deals while he's making meatballs & spaghetti. Anyway, hopefully things will pick up as you get more accustomed to the city and the weather gets more spring-like. Get some sleep, go for some long walks, have some fun, go check out these Wine Bars. And keep up the great posts (loved the earlier one about Twain and the German professors & students).