Confuzzled

I am confused again. I have only been out of school for four months. I've been working for less than a month. But I have found that I really do enjoy this working life.

I don't like school. I was completely over school when I came back from studying abroad in Taiwan and pretty much took the minimum I could during my last semester at Berkeley. I just don't feel like I learn anything. Going to most lectures just seem like a waste because whatever professors lecture can be read from the textbook we have to read. And I just don't feel as if I retain anything I learn.

I guess I'm a more hands-on person. I must experience it to really learn and retain all the information. This is why I would rather work than go to classes. Or maybe I just chose the wrong major. I don't mind doing homework (that is not reading) because it helps me understand the material. Simply reading does nothing for me. And well, the only homework we ever really got in pscyh was reading and occasional reports. Maybe my major has made me lose interest in school.

And now that I'm thinking about this...I find myself reconsidering everything again. Do I really want to go back to school? Granted it's only like 1 or 2 years. But think of the things I could be doing instead.

I am reconsidering applying for Teach for America. I was not impressed last year when I talked to the recruiter. But this will allow me to start work immediately rather than have to go through a year or two of schooling.

And then there's the teaching English in Taiwan. Should I re-apply for that again now that I have my diploma?

Do I apply for everything again? It's so much money. And if I choose Teach for America over grad school? Think of all the money I would've wasted in applying because I cannot defer grad school admissions.

Man, I really do think too much.

But...what should I do?

Songwriting

After watching so many singing shows and whatnot, I've always been a bit curious about songwriting. When I studied abroad in Taiwan, the university I was at had a Songwriters Club so I joined it to check it out. Of course, all their classes and whatnot were in Chinese. I never really learned music theory when I was playing instruments. Try trying to understand music theory in Chinese. LoL.

But yea. Anyways. Since then I've kinda tried my hand at songwriting. Very unmotivated about it. And I guess it's one of those things where you need 靈感 for. At least for me that's the case. So far I have written two sets of lyrics and one of those lyrics has a melody with it.

The first set of lyrics came to me after I was having a conversation with a friend (who was actually the president of the Songwriters Club) about how Taiwanese girls can be so bitchy and demanding and how Taiwanese guys can be so weak at times. He's a guy and he agreed. And I was talking to him and telling him that he needs to stand up for himself. But he kept making all these excuses like how sometimes you just gotta let yourself be whipped, etc. And I was getting so frustrated. After the convo was over, I wrote these lyrics:

===

Stand Up For Yourself

There's too much injustice in this world

that we all want to stop

but where do we start?

we start with ourselves.

stand up for yourself

speak your thoughts

because if you don't

no one will do it for you

stand up for yourself

what we don't hear,

we will never know

so you must be loud and clear

so boys, don't let the girls treat you like slaves

and girls, don't let the boys treat you like toys

we must break free from our chains

we all need to stand up, stand up for ourselves

stand up for yourself

because if we want to save the world

we must start by saving ourselves

===

Sounds kinda like a poem now now that I'm rereading it. But a lot of songs are poems so I guess it's kind of the same thing. No melody for this. The lyrics came to me. But the melody didn't. It's been a year and still no melody is crossing my mind.

The second time I attempted something was a bit more complete. Lyrics with a melody. I even have harmony set but no background music. This song came to me during a downtime of mine last year after spring break with an ordeal I had with a friend. I think the song kind of explains it all:

====

[Untitled]

Verse 1

Life is full of crazies

I know, cuz I've had my share.

But please, don't leave me hanging,

Cuz I, want to know you're there.

But how, am I supposed to know?

If you, won't tell me so.

And why, won't you just trust me?

Because I believed in you so.

Chorus

I gotta get me out of here

Maybe cuz my time is near

Where do I go?

What do I know?

I thought I'd put my trust in you.

But maybe that was wrong to do.

Cuz now I don't know.

Where I should go.

Guess I gotta go home.

Verse 2

I thought this could last forever

Even though, my friendships never last.

Now look at what has happened.

I guess I'm reliving my past.

But why, does this hurt so much?

That you chose him over me.

Guess I, put too much faith in you.

I thought, that's how friends should be.

Chorus

Guess I gotta get me out of here

Maybe cuz my time is near

Where do I go?

What do I know?

I thought I'd put my trust in you.

But maybe that was wrong to do.

Cuz now I don't know.

Where I should go.

Guess I gotta go home.

Bridge

Now I...I don't know

Should...Should I let go?

Chorus

Now I gotta get me out of here

Because I know my time is near

But how do I go?

Won't you tell me so.

I thought I'd put my trust in you.

But maybe that was wrong to do.

Cuz now I'm alone.

With nowhere to go.

Guess I gotta go home.x3

But where is home?

I don't know.

====

No title for this song yet. I'd post the melody here but I don't know how to post music on this. If you can tell, it's also been a while since I've come back to this song. Main reason being that I don't know how to use the software I have for making background music. And I don't know how to play the guitar.

I don't like showing incomplete work. I've only shown the first "song" to Songwriter Club people. And only two people who are not from the club have heard my second song. I guess I'm not too confident about this kind of stuff. Even lyrics I don't want to show. But I consider this blog my own little personal space so I'll put it here.

One day I will finish at least the second song. One day...

Fail.

So I write the entry last night about not making empty statements and saying I'll do a list of things. And today I failed at it. :(

*I ate out for lunch AND dinner today. No good. At least I didn't finish either of them so have leftovers for two meals.

*Choked on water while trying to swallow the multi-vitamin so ended up not taking it.

*Been working all night since like 10pm scanning articles for the OASES ed seminar "reader." I'm almost done scanning (It is now 2:34am). Then I need to zip them up and email them to the coordinator in charge. My scanner is being moody (keeps disconnecting) so this is going super slow.

It's funny how I am staying up doing OASES stuff. Before, I would not be okay with this. But now that I've somewhat established myself with EPIC, I am okay with spending the free time I have working on OASES stuff.

Though now I don't know if I will be going to court tomorrow to try to get out of my stop sign ticket. Kind of scared of going AND I'd have to wake up at like 7am since registration starts at 7:30am. Guess we'll see...$202 is a lot of money. That I currently don't have right now.

OASES gossip makes me laugh.

Word.

I'm done making empty statements.

我說到...就一定要做到.

I've been saying for a long time that I wanted to exercise and play sports again. But was never able to consistently start it up again. When I was a freshman in college, I said that I would get RSF membership if they lowered the fees. And they did. And still I managed to not get RSF membership for the next three years.

Wasted four years of my life not staying healthy. It's time to stop. It's time for me to start practicing what I preach. It's time to start learning how to take care of myself, appreciate myself, and love myself for who I am. It's the only way that I will be able to truly love someone else and be able to feel their love for me.

From now on:

...I am going to cook as much as I can instead of going out to eat.

...I will eat my vitamins daily.

...I will workout at home every night.

Started the vitamin thing last week. Started workout and cooking this week. Now that we actually have groceries, I expect to do a lot more cooking (getting sick of going out to eat anyways). And the workout? It's really nothing compared to what other people do. In fact, I probably don't even hit one hour. But that's okay because I'm going to start off slow.

Add oil. I know I can do it.

Teaching

Today was my first day teaching enrichment (visual arts). It was actually a lot of fun. I'm starting to really enjoy this job. I knew it was going to be different from OASES, especially with the demographics (OASES is pretty much all Asian while EPIC is Latino and African American). But the children are just so adorable. Especially my first graders. I really enjoy working with them. For a while I was a little discouraged that I was the only one working in pairs to lead the smallest group in the program. But today my supervisor moved my partner to the 3rd grade group, the largest one, to help out over there, leaving me by myself with the first graders. This may not seem like much, but it meant a great deal to me. I'm the only newbie in the team and the fact that my boss chose to leave me with a team to myself rather than my partner, a veteran, shows to me the trust she has in me to be able to handle the group on my own. It really boosts my own confidence in myself.

Anyways, back to teaching. I'm really enjoying the facilitating of activities and lessons. A big applause to my boss for gathering all the information and compiling lesson plans and activities. It really makes teaching these so much easier when the lesson is already set out for you. And the kids really listen. Sometimes they may look like they aren't paying attention, but you'll see when you see the work they do, that they really are listening.

Yesterday, I had journal time with my first graders. Since they haven't learned how to write words yet, we did the journal activity with pictures instead. This month is about teambuilding so the topic for the day was trust. I talked with my first graders about what it means to trust and who some of the people we trust are (friends, family, teachers, etc). The journal prompt was: Who do you trust the most? Most of the kids drew their best friends. But one kid drew me. I was so touched. How weird is it when you have your kids present their work and you ask them, "Who do you trust the most?" and they reply "Ms. Pam." And I've only known them for less than a week!

That, my friend, is the beauty of childhood. The innocence. The care-free love. They don't have to know you for long, they will still love you anyways. And no matter how bad the day went between you and them, every day is always a new day and all bad things will be forgotten. Oh how I wish I could be like that.

And this is why I love working with children. They help me refresh my mind. During training, we talked about how we have to put our personal lives aside when we are with the children and give our 200%. I don't even have to worry about focusing on the kids because right when I walk into the program office, all I'm thinking about is the kids. I'll admit that I have a lot of worries going on in my head, but they have never been able to run through my head while I am at program. Which is strange because I wasn't able to avoid that while tutoring at OASES. Wonder why that is. Could it be the kids?

For a while I have been a little wary about my decision to become a teacher. My parents aren't particularly supportive of it. They don't think it's the right path for me to take (my mom keeps telling me to rethink my decision and go into project management instead) and so I keep trying to convince myself otherwise. Now that I am finally finding myself in a somewhat teaching position, I have realized that this is what I want to do. This is something I enjoy. And even if the pay is not much, it is something that makes me happy. Seeing the smiles on these children's face is what makes everything all worth it.

But there is definitely still room for me to grow. I have discovered that I am constantly telling my kids that they "NEED to do this..." I need to find a better word to use than need. It sounds too demanding and just doesn't sound very good. Must figure out something. Hmm...

Wild Child

Tonight a friend dropped by our apartment while slightly intoxicated. He was hilarious. Last friday my roommate came back from a party somewhat inebriated. She was super cute and funny. Both of these people seemed so carefree and happy even though I'm sure both of them have tons of things to worry about in their life.

Seeing people like these being able to enjoy themselves once in a while makes me envious. Sometimes I wish I was able to enjoy the effects of alcohol. Sometimes I wish I could really just get drunk and be able to just not care about anything, even if it's just for a short period of time.

Sometimes I just want to go wild. But I never do. I can't explain why. Maybe it's because I have this image with just about everyone that I feel like I need to keep. But then again I am also allergic to and have low tolerance for alcohol and don't really want to push myself to see how far I can go.

So I guess I will just have to live through other people's drunken states. And enjoy the buzzed state I go through just from drinking wine coolers. Ha. So weak.

Dreams

I've been wanting to write this entry for a while, but things kept popping up and I just never got to it.

I am at this stage in life where I am trying to figure out what exactly it is that I want to do. Granted, I do still have time before I need to actually settle and whatnot. But, I would like to "settle" as soon as possible and not be bothered with all these questions about who I am to myself.

This past summer I've given some thought to what I want. And through the process of applying for schools and stuff, I've also come up with more and more ideas of what I'd like to do. And now I have a list:

1. Get a Masters in Education and Multiple Subject Teaching Credential so that I can teach elementary school.

2. Get a Masters in Counseling Psychology/Marriage and Family Therapy so I can become a child therapist. If I get ambitious I might even go for a School Counseling Credential (P.P.S.) so that I can work in schools.

3. Get TESOL certificate which will hopefully give me a boost with applying to teach English in Taiwan.

4. Open an afterschool program in Taiwan. There will be enrichment and homework time. And everything will be taught in English to provide an English-speaking environment which will help the kids there learn English faster. AND employees will all be ABCs or CBCs. Asians can speak perfect English too!

5. Get a certificate for event planning and start my own online event planning business of some sort.

6. If I still feel like it, get a PsyD so I can become a child psychologist. But I think the counseling might just be enough.

Ideally, I would love to be able to travel between Taiwan and California for the rest of my life. Thinking practically, that's probably not possible. First off, I'd have to find a job that would allow me to do so (hence, trying to create my own job), AND, if I were to get married and whatnot, I'd have to find someone who would be willing to travel back and forth with me too.

Would it sound too crazy of me to say I want to accomplish everything I just wrote? Maybe not. I do still have time. But it might sound crazy to say that I want to try to get 1-3 and maybe even 5 done within the next 2-3 years. Which would mean simultaneously doing two Masters programs. It sounds pretty crazy to me. I don't even want to go back to school, but if it's something I need to do in order to reach my goal, I want to get it done as soon as possible.

Oh, and let's not forget my other dreams that are far beyond reach.

1. Pursue a music career. Go to music school and train.

2. Compete on 星光大道.

3. Record my own album. (Just ONE is enough for me.)

4. Become a backup singer.

Guess I'll worry about those later. If I ever have time.

But for now, let's stick with the first five.