Upon visiting ls-adivse.berkeley.edu for the reapplication form, I discovered that the deadline to reapply was July 1. This is an oops. Upon calling them to ask them what I should do if I seek readmission, I got a message saying that they are closed and that normal phone hours are MW 1-4pm and TThF 9-4. Since right now falls within the time periods during which they should be picking up the phone, I am bewildered. Surely they are not just GONE for the summer–if they were they’d have changed their message to say so, right? Someone must just be out on break right now.

From past experiences the people I’ve turned in my readmission form to have brushed aside the deadline so I have the feeling that it matters less than the website says. However, as I am still on academic probation (the one-semester-fell-below-2.0 kind, not the your-cumalitive-gpa-is-below-2.0 kind, so all I have to do to get out is have one semester of above 2.0 for that semester; my overall is still thankfully above 2.0), and also as I have withdrawn many times, I will have to speak to an advisor, something I approach with trepidation since the last one I got was a dick who openly mocked me.

Now, I should find out how to get health insurance if I cannot get readmitted (worse-case scenario planning). Also, I need to get a job. I need to get a job last year. Speaking of last year, last night I woke up at 3am thinking about how China was a year ago and how fucking pathetic it was that I’m still not over it. I burst into tears every time I think about the fucking woman at the fucking ice cream stand ridiculing me for teaching the handsome white one wrong. All I fucking wanted to do was try to remember some ice cream flavor names for Ryan. Or the time a group of kids stared at us because we had our arms linked and Ryan didn’t care and worse, didn’t care that I cared. Or the time when all I fucking wanted was some water and this group of twenty adults laughed at us. It makes me so angry I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s so stupid to be so angry but I just can’t help it. Of course the fucking ice cream stand whore thought I was a native and was wondering why I was saying things wrong, she couldn’t have known that I was struggling to understand her, blah blah blah, what’s “rude” in this culture isn’t “rude” in that culture, blah blah blah, but I don’t care. I fucking hate China. Yeah, all of it. Taiwan too. And in the end I have to admit I’m so disappointed that I didn’t really get to talk to anyone. I wanted to like Shelley so much and like, talk to her about life and culture and being Chinese and see if we had anything in common because she was our age and living in a different country, but as it turns out we had TOO much in common, ha! ha!, and I had to throw up while watching her press herself against my boyfriend because I refused to press myself against him because I hated it when people stared. What gives? I could have talked to my students, who I liked, I could have continued to email them, I could have asked my mom to help me write their addresses so I could snail-mail them like I said I would, but I was too busy trying to forget that the trip existed and now I have all this paper shit taking up space in my room which I can’t throw away but can’t touch either. Speaking of cute Chinese girls, I have no fucking interest in seeing Saving Face. I wrote the whole thing off because the trailer includes the dialogue “Your mom knows about us? Does she know we HAVE SEX?” mouthed so cutely-incredulously by some doe-eyed cute round-faced Chinese American girl. A movie about young hot Chinese American lesbians. So fucking what. I have nothing in common with glossy-haired, doe-eyed, round-faced, syrupy-voiced, well-dressed cute girls. I have no interest in watching said cute girls having sex. Furthermore, I have no interest in watching a young hot Chinese American, lesbian or not, confront issues of culture differences with her mom, regardless of how much I have in common with her in that respect. I just get tired when I think about WHAT IT MEANS to be Chinese American and to have generation issues and culture shock. I don’t care. It either makes me feel really depressed, or really … depressed. Everything’s so cheesy. Yeah yeah, I’m just overreacting to “we have SEX, now watch this movie because we’re such a fantasy.” The writer is actually a gay Chinese American woman, which lends a little more credibility I guess, I was assuming (I’m an ass) otherwise. Actually I’m sure the movie is funny and has lots to say about culture and being more open-minded and probably is good. Whatever. Yeah, actually I liked “the wedding banquet” which was about a gay Chinese-American guy and his parents. Also, why should I overreact about Lynn Chen and her cuteness when I like Lucy Liu? “I hate Lucy Liu,” said Susan’s (girl asian) friend once. “What the fuck is up with those slanty eyes. Way to go with the stereotype.” Also she didn’t like Lucy Liu because she hates it when reporters ask her about being Asian and what that means and stuff (maybe I like that). Maybe it’s because she’s like “yeah, I’m totally hot, and I know I’m totally hot,” instead of “aw, I’m such a nice docile cute Chinese-American girl. Tee hee hee.” Oh whatever. Yes look at me. I’ve written off Asian studies even though I don’t know anything about it because I am insecure and annoying. Whoop dee doo.

I have probolomes. Spelled with that many Os and Es.

Tangent aside, I will finish in English and forget my idiotic dreams of switching to or doubling in any kind of applied math or CS, because the window of opportunity for that has passed. It is more important for me to graduate than it is to have fantasies of being able and diligent. In fact, if you’d like to pinpoint the absolute second the window of opportunity snapped shut, it was when I applied to Berkeley in L&S instead of EECS. It was when I decided to come to Berkeley. It was when I took too many lower-division requirements for three different majors.

I saw a post in the berkeley lj community: a prospective student was afraid of not getting in as EECS so they were going to apply in L&S and was asking about the CS BA. I typed for five paragraphs about how I felt about that and wasn’t half done and then couldn’t bring myself to post it or type about it anymore. Anyway I will never stop talking about it for the rest of my life (look I’m turning into my dad) so here we go; obviously I wasn’t going to post so much about myself but here is what I feel about it: I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so engineering seemed OK because it was all I had exposure to. But since I’m wishy-washy, and since I have low self-esteem, and since I’m not a go-getter or aggressive or active, I was afraid I wouldn’t get into EECS. Add to this the visceral fear of not getting into Berkeley at all (low self-esteem + high SAT scores = warped kid), and you get someone who cared more about getting into Berkeley so she (and her parents) wouldn’t be shamed than what she studied, what she did with the rest of her life, what she liked, what her talents were, or who she was. Further add to this the fact that some guy I liked then was doing L&S CS and had barely gotten into Berkeley as a spring admit and told me to be really scared of applying. Add to this the stories of some family friend who somehow transfered himself into EECS from L&S who everyone lauded. So I applied to L&S, becuase I had to get into Berkeley and thought this would be easier and thought I’d be too stupid for EECS (which is retarded, I had one C in math AP to be sure, but 800 math, 3/4 on calc BC and later 5 on CS but of course I hadn’t taken that test until the spring of my senior year, I really shouldn’t have been so frightened, I probably would have gotten in), because I thought I could somehow pull off a transfer stunt becuase I was brilliant, because I was afraid of locking myself into anything, because I had this vision of myself as some kind of conglomerate super-genius that could do everything well, becuase I hated all the people at my school who loved engineering and derided stuff like English becuase English was easy and for losers and I wanted to do both to prove that people COULD do both. Remember, this is the “nutshell” version. Ha ha ha. I could go on. I guess the point is I was never sure of what I wanted to do. I wish I had picked a path back then instead of trying to do everything and utterly, utterly failing. Sure, some people ARE super-geniuses who can double major in disparate things, but it’s time to admit that I’m not one of them. I’m just another run-of-the-mill 2.2 gpa student with nothing to distinguish herself from anyone else. ‘Course, the other side of this is: what, you’re saying that normal people are too boring for you? Yeah, I had these really lofty beliefs about myself and my superior, more well-rounded abilities, but they are nothing more than dust and two high school AP scores, which really are nothing special anyway. I wanted them to be, though; my claim to interestingness was going to be “I may not know much about anything but boy can I do lots of things.” And then the OTHER other side is, well you got your wish right, you got into Berkeley, read the laments of all those prospective students trying to get in and talking about how it’s their life dream in the berkeley lj community, why don’t you just fucking graduate and get on with your fucking life and be grateful for what you have, you greedy fucker? Yeah, because I’m miserable and I hate everything and I don’t really like English anyway (not that I really like anything).

I hate myself and I don’t want to move. I have cramps, I hate tampons and pads both, and I hate feeling spurts of blood seep out of myself becuase it’s gross and it gets all over the place. I’ve been meaning to do my laundry every day for the last two weeks and I’m down to my last pair of underwear and I’ve collected my keys and detergent and bag of quarters and overfilled laundry basket and deposited them on the floor by my door and still I have not mustered the strength (the ___? the what?) to walk down the hall and stairs. I just don’t want to. I don’t want to do anything. I hate everything.