I’ve recently found out that next year I’m Kitchen Manager for Kairos. This is awesome because I spend as much time as possible in the kitchen already, so I might as well make it official, and because I no longer have to fear living in Crothers (graduate housing) due to extreme misfortune.

I would say that I’m pretty excited about employment and being in Kairos again next year, aside from being afraid of living without my friends, but last night, attempting the first step in choosing the next RA was certainly less than awesome.

The evening started with some frazzled Residential Education man trying to direct a bunch of frantic people who were just barely on time (including myself) to the right room. Except, as an interviewer (in the loosest sense of the term) as opposed to an interviewee, I was far less aggressive and sort of just milled around for a while, trying halfheartedly to push myself to the front. Anyways, I eventually managed to figure out which room I should be locating. I would proceed to spend a rather numbing 2 hours in this room, but I didn’t know that then.

The first round of people were mostly in the room when I entered, as I was a little late by the time I managed to sort things out. The room was forcefully segregated into half interviewers and half interviewees, so I sat at my rightful place and started judging people immediately. As this was the ultimate goal of the process, I felt sort of justified but nevertheless pretty douchey. The interview process went like this:

First, the applicants introduced themselves and then gave some bullshit “quirky” fact about themselves. They also helpfully stated which houses they were interested in, which allowed me to completely tune out the people who were irrelevant. Then, each interviewee got asked one question by a random interviewer. It was, possibly, the worst method of getting to know someone that I have ever experienced in life. After that business, the interviewees were told to engage in a “group activity” while we creepily watched. It was sort of odd, but the most enjoyable part for me. I like creeping.

We did this 3 times. Fortunately, each time became shorter as people started leaving. I have little to no more information about anyone than I did before, except that now when I see them around, I know their names and some idiotic fact about them. This mostly leads to awkward social situations in which I get confused about whether I need to introduce myself still.

Sunday evenings will never be anything to me but cesspools of drowsy stress and general self-loathing. (Actually, once I’m out of school, they might stop sucking quite this much, but that’s a terrifying thought.)

Pretty much all I want is to curl into bed and read City of Ashes, but obvs there’s work to be done. I compromised by doing work very slowly and unproductively and reading during obscenely long breaks. This is how it always goes. Sundays aren’t fun, but they aren’t productive. It’s just kind of stagnation and feeling shitty about doing nothing scholarly but feeling angry about doing nothing leisurely.

The theme for this academic year seems to be making lofty goals and mostly not meeting them, but talking about them a lot. Pretty sure in the beginning of the year I said that I wanted to “write more about my life,” and then kept a Twitter account for a few days, then, let entirely abandoned it. This entry marks the beginning of my re-attempt to chronicle my life (this time not through texting. poor choice), or some bullshit like that.

Anyways, today is an easy day to start because, as opposed to the usual, “Today I studied and then maybe took an exam,” actual Things happened that I actually would like to remember. The second part of Kairos’ Counterculture trip was today, which mostly consisted of us gallivanting off to San Francisco and moving around from place of eating to place of eating. Predictably, I classify this method of travel as one of the best, because, you know, foodz.

We started in some probably historical bookstore called City of Lights and perused mostly intellectual titles like the educated hipsters we are. I spoke to a lot of people about how we always have books we have been meaning to read and occasionally buy but, in fact, rarely actually pick up and read. I could blame this on being busy with school, which is probably partially true (I do read more during the summer), but I also seem to find comfort in rereading books. I just like knowing what will happen. It might be some bullshit about not being able to control my life or know my future, but it also might just be intellectual laziness. Anyways, predictably, I bought a book that I’ve already read but, in fact, do not own, that is, Milan Kundera’s Immortality. Also, do note that this is appropriately intellectual/snobby to be a good City of Lights purchase.

After some exhausting bookstore meandering, we ended up in some sweet Italian deli for sandwiches and/or bread and cheese. After several months of what can only be described as reckless cheese overdoes, the deli was pretty much the best thing I could have imagined. I shared an amazing eggplant marinara sandwich with someone, and, wow, so much happiness. The eggplant was all breaded and kind of fried, and the mozarella was just melty enough, and I could go on for a really obscenely long time about this sandwich. For those moments, everything was the best.

We asked some Italian man where to get good gelato and followed his instructions. I judged the gelato store by the grayness of its banana flavor, which we used to moderate success in Europe. In retrospect, the gelato (espresso and Nutella) may have been a poor choice, but it was pretty awesome. After gelato, we started walking to the place where Stanford was treating us to some sweet classy dinner. We were early, so we sat around some non-functional fountain and ate an orange out of boredom. We had some contraband goat cheese from the deli and maybe may have swiped a roll to have “for the road.” (The debilitating fear of being hungry later was sort of a theme for the day.) The food (penne primavera) was, again, awesome, and then there was dessert and coffee. Food coma.

The expedition to some swank jazz club called Yoshi followed, and I pretty much felt the classiest I’ve felt, ever. I had to take off my sweet mismatched socks to not be ashamed of my attire. The music was awesome, but I wish my jazz knowledge consisted of more than what I remember from AcaDeca. It may have been more meaningful. We were more or less forced to purchase food at the club, so I got some edamame despite having already fulfilled my caloric needs for the day several times over. They were pretty tasty, needless to say, but now I feel sort of sick to my stomach.

I’m getting tired, so I guess detail will have to suffer for some brief mention of the topics of discussion of the day. As said, much of my expended effort included making sure I wouldn’t be hungry later, which, really, wasn’t a problem at all. We talked a lot about our level and quality of fun. Our new thing is trying to have “lasting fun” as opposed to “transient fun.” (This stemmed from me semi-drunkenly making a reference to Arrested Development, when Michael & George Michael go fishing instead of Gob’s bachelor party.) Here are some conclusions that have arisen so far. Transient fun includes getting shitty, mostly because it seems a lot more fun while it’s happening than while you go back and think about it. Lasting fun is spending time with friends because it forges emotional bonds and, um, I don’t know, I just got sort of bored and vaguely ashamed about how seriously I’m taking transient vs lasting fun.

Tired, sleep now?

A revelation:

I’m no longer sacrificing my health for my grades. It’s stupid and not worth it. Not failing as a human being is more important than not failing at class.

I can’t hear out of my right ear. (Yesterday, I couldn’t hear out of my left.) I also generally feel like crap. Doctors say it’s viral. Let’s hope it goes away soon. I’m almost certainly going to do very very poorly on my midterm tomorrow, as I can’t really get it together enough to study. This is disappointing, but I’m going to have to figure out how to be okay with it.

Rough week.

Throat feels like I swallowed something with claws.

If my GPA were based on this week, it would probably be lurking somewhere around 2.0.

Lingering sleep deprivation finally caught up with me.

Class attendance rate: just over 50%.