Corin Chellberg's online something or other

I’m trying to write a novel. Have been, on and off (mostly off), since I could write. I think my continued failure can be blamed on a lack of adequate planning and an excess of self-criticism. <- (See how nice that sentence is? I could definitely write a novel, right?) I just realized this month that most of my writing attempts fail because I can’t figure out what’s supposed to happen next in the story. Don’t ask me why, but I never realized that this was a result of me not planning the story ahead of time. I usually just start writing, creating the plot as I go on a whim. It can be fun in some ways, since you have the opportunity to do absolutely anything you desire with the story, but (for me) it always ends with a gridlock. I arrive at a juncture in the story where it could either go in many directions, or I write myself into a corner with no foreseeable exit. The now obvious solution is to create a detailed outline and work from it. Problem solved? Almost. I’m encountering a similar problem with creating the outline—all I’ve done is moved my story-killing moments of writer’s block to the prewriting stage. I still reach that same juncture where I have no idea what to do, I just reach it in far fewer words.

So I have a dilemma. When I reach such a juncture, do I scrap the outline and give up, or do I stare at the outline hoping to be struck by inspiration? Do I bug Laura to come up with a brilliant solution? Do I employ a tacky deux ex machina? (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase!) For right now I guess I’ll go with starting over. If I find a better solution, you will personally be the first to know. Whoever you are.

Winter sucks.  If you disagree with me, you are wrong.  I will do my best to demonstrate why I think that is.  (That there where I said ‘think’, that was false humility.  I’m sorry.)  Just in case the unthinkable happens, and someone who doesn’t know me reads this post, I live in Indiana.  I recognize that there are many places in the world where winter is far worse than it is here, but as I will demonstrate, it’s still pretty awful here.

Before I get too deep into my argument, I’d first like to rebut those of my opposition.  ”But Corin,” my ill-informed opposition may say, “winter is a beautiful season!  It snows and everything is pristine and white and peaceful!” This may be true on, say, three days of winter.  Sadly, this argument disintegrates upon further inspection.  First, it assumes that it snows.  In Indiana, that is by no means a regular occurrence.  Yes, it snows more often in winter than it does in the other seasons, but not by much.  I’m not going to go look up this statistic, but I figure we get 3-4 decent accumulations of snow per season in winter.  Considering that winter spans roughly 4 months, that’s a once a month occurrence.  Next part of their argument: it’s beautiful – pristine, white, peaceful.  Even a winter-hating Grinch like me can admit that gently falling snow is pretty and peaceful.  Until you go outside.  The pristine aspect lasts all of a few hours, until cars start driving around, promptly turning that pristine white powder into gritty, grey, slippery, nasty, slush.  So pristine is pretty much out.  White is out.  Peaceful is pretty irrelevant – whether it’s peaceful is fairly unrelated to the manner of precipitation on the ground.

Another possible wrench they might try to throw into the unstoppable gears of my logic machine could be “But Corin, winter brings with it such delightful things as Christmas, Christmas break, two-hour delays, and snow days!”  Sadly, they would again be wrong.  First, regarding Christmas, the holiday originated in Israel, right?  I just checked, and the average low temperature for Jerusalem in December is 42 degrees.  Not that wintery.  In addition, I spent Christmas in San Diego this year, and it was in the 60s, so it is very possible to have Christmas without Indiana-style winter.  Next, Christmas break.  As I just showed that winter isn’t required for Christmas, it clearly isn’t required for Christmas break.  In fact, Christmas break would be much more enjoyable without the cold temperatures and possible black slush keeping you inside.  (I went whale watching the day after Christmas, what did you do?)  Next, two-hour delays and snow days are very nice, but overall I find that they bring much more pain than they do pleasure.  Every time you hear that it’s going to snow the next day, or that it’s going to be really cold, you inevitably get your hopes up.  Maybe, just maybe, we’ll have a snow day tomorrow, you think.  Maybe you even try to keep yourself from getting your hopes up.  After all, you’ve been hurt before.  But it never works.  And the next day, you wake up and look at the clock, hoping it’s way past when school starts and your mom just didn’t wake you up, only to see a glaring 6:15 blinking at you angrily.  On the rare occasions when you do get a day off it’s nice, but it doesn’t make up for all the emotional trauma caused by those days when you didn’t.  Especially when your superintendent is one Peggy K. Hinkley.  (It isn’t libel if it’s true, right?)

Really, in shooting down those two (straw) arguments, I’ve pretty much covered mine.  Winter is filled with emotional trauma, nasty black precipitation, and bitter, bitter cold.  I should touch on the cold.  Cold is bad.  That’s why heartless bitches on reality TV are called cold.  Cold is a heartless bitch.  Take today for example.  I had to walk a couple miles to and from various classes at opposite ends of campus.  I have an extremely warm winter coat, awesome leather gloves, a hat I stole from my dad because it’s extra warm, and a scarf I never use because it looks ridiculous.  On this particular winter day, I wore my coat, my hat, my gloves, and had my hood up.  In addition, my coat zips all the way up to just under my nose.  Effectively, the only exposed part of my body was my eyes, nose, and cheeks.  As I walked to class, I noticed that by some miracle of meteorological science, the wind blows directly into your face no matter which direction you’re walking.  My eyes were watering from the cold, and my nose was numb after just a few minutes.  The cold literally hurts your skin, even the measly 8 square inches that are exposed.  So, to summarize, even if you dress up like a pre-2001 Afghan woman, the cold hurts like a bitch.  Because it is one.

Not only does winter suck, winter is the worst season.  Spring has rain (the best form of weather), cool breezes, blooming flowers, new leaves on trees, and delightful allergens in the crisp air.   Summer can get uncomfortably hot, but it is free from school, and you don’t have to look like an  Islamic fundamentalist to exit your home.  Fall has weather almost as nice as spring, and provides welcome relief from summer.  You get to wear jeans and hoodies again, but it’s not so cold that you consider suicide halfway to class.

In summary: November, December, January, Febuary – you are dead to me.  As soon as realistically possible, I’m gonna live somewhere where winter doesn’t cause more pain than the Cruciatus Curse.  Yeah.  I played the Harry Potter card.  Game over, winter.  You lose.  Just give global warming a few centuries, and you’re toast.

Had to pull myself out of bed just before 10am this morning to begin the arduous trek to French 202.  I really need to get better acquainted with the bus system, because at top walking speed it took about 15 minutes to get there.  The time and effort don’t bother me, but that long a walk is tedious and boring.  Especially in winter.  Regardless, I found the classroom a few minutes early, and luckily for me, my friend Matt from 201 was in the room.  I grabbed the empty seat next to him.  The teacher is a guy named Dawuda from Ghana.  The accent is slightly different than my last teacher (who was Russian), but not hard to understand.  He talked about the course for a while, and we did the typical introduction activity (Matt and another senior near us were also poli sci majors), and class was over.  I made the also-too-long trek to the ME building, and was one of the last people into the room for Intro to Philosophy.  The professor is in his 60s I’d say, with a long, unkempt beard, and equally long, equally unkempt gray hair.  He was, like my history professor, hilarious, slightly profane, and thought provoking, even on the first day.  One of his more memorable quotes was ~ “This is funny.  We’re at a good college, and all of you are supposed to be smart.  I ask you whether “4+4=8″ is true, and you’re all like ‘Shit, I don’t know!.’”  Good stuff.

As usual, sorry it was boring.

Second things first.  Blogging is frigging hard.  First things second.  Today was the first day of the semester for us Boilermakers, unlike the poor folks in high school and those at Rose Hulman.  Christmas break was nice, especially the 10 days in California and the three with Laura, but I’m definitely happy to be back.  I get to use my desktop again, which you really don’t appreciate enough until you use a laptop for three weeks.  I get to use my comfortable computer chair instead of a mediocre one I pilfered from the dining room.  There aren’t parents bothering me once an hour with some request or inquiry.  The parents (since they are reading), to their credit, weren’t unbearable at all, but adjusting from near-total independence to semi-subjugation wasn’t easy.  Anyway.  Over break I somehow lucked into moving my French class from 8:30 AM to 10:30 AM, right into the spot in my schedule I left open should such an opportunity present itself.  This turned a pretty bearable schedule into a really, really nice one.  On Tuesday and Thursday, I’m in class from 10:30 – 12:20, and then done.  Pretty nice right?  Monday and Wednesday I’m in class from 12:30-4:20 with a one hour break at 1:30, which is also very doable.  Friday is the only full day, with classes at 10:30, 11:30, 12:30, 2:30, and 3:30, but I can deal with that.  Really anything that doesn’t require me to ever wake up earlier than 9 is a huge break from last semester.  Sadly I doubt my next 6-12 semesters will be this relaxed.  Better enjoy it while I can.

So far I’ve had my Intro to International Relations class, American History 1, and Modern Weapons and International Relations.  All 3 of them are heavily reliant on tests for the final grade, which I think is a good thing.  Busywork is much more of a challenge for me than essay tests.  At least that’s what I’m hoping.  For example, the Modern Weapons grade is made up by 2 30% tests and a 40% final.  High pressure? Maybe, but the subject matter is fascinating.  In class today we watched a 20 minute clip of The Last Samurai, looking at the way the improved weaponry of [whoever was fighting the samurai] completely nullified the decades of training in swordsmanship and combat.  One hour of training with what looked like a primitive Gatling gun and a fresh recruit can overwhelm a huge number of highly skilled samurai.  This bodes well for the rest of the course.  The Intro to Int Rel course is taught by the same guy, who seems interesting and competent, so it should be good, if slightly less interesting than the Weapons class.  It’s a requisite, so I’m taking it.  Though it’s possible I should take government instead.  I didn’t learn much in my AP Gov class in high school.  That’s a long story involving a wacky teacher and a tired senior.  Anyway.

I thought my history teacher was British, because I read it on RateMyProfessor or whatever that site is.  Turns out he’s from Iowa.  Kinda disappointing, because I was looking forward to learning about the revolution from a Brit, but he’s hilarious all the same.  Part of me wants to drop this too, though, because if I had gotten a slightly higher score on the AP US History test I’d already have credit, so how much new am I really going to learn…  But I really didn’t learn much in APUSH and it seems like knowledge I should have.  Granted I could read a book, but what are the odds I’ll actually do that?  That was one of my New Year’s resolutions actually, read more.  Meh.

Got my laser printer today.  It is awesome, as far as I can tell.  That’s about it.  Sorry this was totally and completely uninteresting.

Oh, I forgot.  Laura gave me an idea for a story today.  It might be funny.

No I’m not posting it here, you thieving bastard.

I should be studying for my chemistry final right now… It’s on Tuesday, and I still have a good portion of the semester’s material to learn.  However, I started reading my chem book like usual, and I could just feel my brain cells rebelling against the unwanted information.  Polymers and semiconductors and functional groups… It’s hard to motivate myself to learn crap that I’m only going to need to know for two hours on Tuesday morning, and then be able to forget for the rest of my life.  How much of it I learn will decide whether I get a B or a D, so it is important to some extent, but it’s completely uninteresting.  I really have to question the sanity of all chemistry and chem engineering majors.  I don’t see how you could take this class and have your reaction be “Oh gosh yes, I’d love to take classes like this only progressively harder for the remainder of my college career!”  If someone told me I had to pick between being a chemistry major and a homeless panhandler in Alaska, I’d have to think seriously about my options.  Thankfully, those aren’t my options.

Next semester I’ll be starting my new major, Political Science, or as I like to call it, polar opposite of engineering.  Ugh, polar.  Just made me think about the phospholipid bilayer.  Damn you general chemistry.  My classes next semester are going to be so much more interesting and enjoyable.  That’s the plan anyway.  I think the topics will be fascinating to me, which will be a nice change of pace from excruciating.  I’m in American History, Intro to International Relations, Modern Weapons and International Relations, and Intro to Philosophy.  Oh and French.  At 8:30 AM.  Might have to do something about that.  But still, pretty freakin sweet, to quote Peter Griffin.  Next semester I won’t have so little tolerance for the classes that I can’t help but skip them.  Right?  Right.

So to summarize: laundry time isn’t a great time to study chemistry.  But then, there’s no such time.  Ever.  That means you, chemistry majors.