Saturday, March 24, 2007

The End Justifies the Means

I'm a third year Psychology major. I love my major and I love my career choice. There's nothing else I'd rather be studying than Psychology. Every morning when I wake up, I'm just so delighted to be studying something I'm so passionate about, and I think that's a blessing. But it wasn't always like this. I was a Computer Science major once and I wanted to be a Computer Engineer. I enrolled as a Computer Science major and thought that was my dream. When I couldn't get ahead in that program, I was really upset. I completed high school in a private, non-government aided school, and I didn't have many of the opportunities that most public school students do. But I went to my school because my parents wanted me to go there. When I couldn't grasp some of the concepts of Computer Science in university, I blamed my parents for it. Had they not forced me to go to a private school, I would've picked up the skills essential to do well in Computer Science. I ended up changing my major and I wasn't too excited about the change when it was happening. But just a year later, when I chose a career in Psychology, I was pleasantly surprised on how happy I was with my decision. I tried to look deep down in my heart to find an iota of remorse for not being able to get a career in Computer Engineering, and I couldn't. My point is, things happen for a reason. It all makes sense at the end. We just have to go with the flow, and have faith. "Everything is okay in the end; if it's not okay, it's not the end."

Friday, March 9, 2007

Random Babbling

I have too many things on my mind right now and they’re all important, so it’s hard for me to focus on just one and write on it like my usual style. So I shall be writing everything! One of the many things that bother me is the concept of love. Divorces are the main things that throw me off the track. Does love die and you feel that you can’t live with a person, the same person you wanted to spend your whole life with? But love can’t die – it’s supposed to be eternal. People die, but love stays forever, or so I’ve heard. What IS love?

Another thing that bothers me is people. What is up with us?! We preach equality, kindness, friendship, generosity and hospitality to others, yet we don’t seem to follow our teachings ourselves. That has always annoyed me. In fact, just a couple of days ago I was thinking and I was really down over the fact that I couldn’t find a single real life example of kindness that could make me believe in humanity. This world seemed like ‘every man for himself’. No altruism whatsoever (except for in children’s story books or as examples of negating Darwin’s theory of ‘survival of the fittest’ in my textbooks). And then, fortunately, I remembered this amazing family who had helped us in one of our lowest times without any hesitation, reluctance or the thought that we would return their favor some day. A truly pure good deed, and I smiled and thought to myself that there are some exceptions left still. May God bless such exceptions!

You can’t be a real student until you have complained about your teachers, so here goes:
‘my teacher and a donkey were sitting on a trail
the only difference I could see, the donkey had a tail’
As much as I disagreed with this in high school, I now equally agree with it. Some professors (and TA’s), man… frankly I don’t know what they’re doing teaching. They should all be living in a village, far away from schools, and should remain that way forever. I have spent the last two and a half weeks in one of the most distressing times of my student life. Luckily that period ended two days ago. And all that torture because my TA didn't respond to my email and my professor was too lazy to have even allowed us to email him when a problem arose. You’re getting paid for being a professor pal, do your job as a prof. and actually earn that money you bum!

~I call attention to the dark side maybe a little bit for mutual catharsis but also to try to paint the universe as it is - both sides of it. John Shirley