Last weekend, the Federation Orientation Committee hosted the National Orientation Directors Association conference.  I ran into some of the FOC at Tim Hortons, and noted that they changed their jackets.  I said to them "Hey, you guys changed your jackets!...I was FOC 2006"  The only response I got was a whisper, giggle and walk away.

Although this kind of atrocity would offend me, I was mostly sad.  When I was FOC, I gave my all to it.  Not just my time and effort, but my love too.  I thought that my contribution was significant, and that the whole thing was quite a grand project.  At the very moment when I was scoffed, I realized that it was all meaningless.  People don't care about the work you did, and the things that matter to you don't matter to anyone else.

Not really depressing.  Just a reality check.

Promptness in response; Eager and cheerful readiness.

I can't believe I'm going back to school tomorrow.  I am most certainly built for school, I want to fill my brain with something more than the daily humdrum of non-academic life.  I've searched out my books, prepared my schedules, moved in most of my stuff to my dorm...I can't wait!  I'm alacritous for school!

I love being in a world where the people around you are similar in age, stage of life, attitudes towards academia, and the like.  I love my school, with all the shrinking greenspace, lack of roads, the lifestyle of walking everywhere.  I love spring term, when the ugly little goslings turn into big ugly geese, the a/c is never turned off, and the campus is only one-third full.  Love it, love it!

Can't wait!  Gooooooo alacrity!

Expressing a rigid opinion based on unproved or improvable principles.

Growing up in an intensely religious family, I've asked myself many times whether I can distinguish religion from faith.  So many people are turned off to faith because of the rituals and the stifling rules.  At the same time, I don't think that one can exist without the other.

I've learned over the years the rituals are created to help people manage their faith.  We as humans can't understand the vast love of God, so rituals are created.  Rituals are ways to express our faith to ourselves and to one another in ways that we can understand.  "Rules" like going to church on Sundays and abstaining from premarital sex are seen as dogmatic to a lot of nonbelievers, and even believers.  Part of the beauty of faith is understanding that the rules and rituals are not a restriction on life, but a support system to make faith possible in and of itself.

It's hard for me to discuss this, because there's too much I don't understand, but I hope that I've done reasonable justice to "dogmatic."

One with an amateurish or superficial interest in the arts or a branch of knowledge.

That's me.

Way back in grade 12, a friend of mine introduced me to jazz.  I instantly fell in "like" with it, and from then on, I only listened to jazz radio.  It made me feel like I was better than everyone else, because it wasn't popular music.  The truth is that I didn't (and still don't) know anything about jazz.  It was just an easy escape from being a "normal" teen, because I struggled with following popular music.  When I told people that I listened to jazz, I always got an impressed "oh, really!" for a reaction, which fed my hunger for acceptance.  It was so easy to pretend to know a lot about jazz, because so few people listened to  it.  But...I don't even like improv!  How can I call myself a jazz listener when I skip through what is considered the differentiating factor of jazz?  I can't.  So I confess - I am a jazz dilettante.

In the past year, I've been listening to some musical songs.  I was drawn to them by the story lines, and the great singing.  This time, I didn't have anyone else to please, but I must have still been crazy, because I convinced myself that I had an obsession with musicals.  How perfect it was when I heard that there was a jazz concert based on broadway musicals.  I went to the concert, and was seated near a couple in their late 40s.  We began chatting, and I explained my perceived weakness for musicals.  The couple asked what specific musicals I was interested in, and it soon became obvious that, like jazz, I didn't know anything about musicals.  In ended with an unimpressed "oh, so you like popular musical movies..."  How embarrassing.  It turned out that five years later, I was also a dilettante of musicals.

Apparently, I have a compulsion to lie to make myself look classier.  I have negligible interest in the things my peers are interested in, and it seems like so many young people define themselves and others by the music they listen to.  I didn't necessarily want to escape being defined by others, but I wanted so badly to have something comparable filling the role that popular music and celebrities couldn't.  Just so that I could fit in, when I am really just a person completely devoid of personality.  Hello, Maslow's fouth level of needs...

Last night, King and I were YouTube-ing, and discovered a significant network of vloggers who share their thoughts on philosophy, religion, and other interesting topics.  I was inspired to do something of the like, but came to a sad conclusion that I have nothing to offer.  I hope this isn't true, but it certainly felt like a big black mark on my profile...or, more like a big empty hole.

I have very little to say about politics, and have zero interest in philosophy.  I guess that leaves me with religion, but I'm terrified to speak of religion.  I don't know anything about art, and I have "top 40" taste in music.  Part of the growing up I wrote about in my last entry was realizing that nobody cares about what I ate today, or what ugly person I saw (haven't grown out of calling people ugly).  So what do I have to offer?

I haven't figured it out yet.  I hope in becomes clearer in the days/weeks/months to come.