Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Procrastination

I've always been a terrible procrastinator, and that's what I'm doing right now - avoiding a chore I dread. What chore? Applying to a few California state schools for next fall. I need to apply for my brother's financial aid consideration, and I need to attend some school - any school - to keep my student loans deferred. But oh god, I don't want to go to a California school. I like California well enough, and I'm a good student when I'm sane, but I'd be a commuter student, and it's hard to make friends at a new school period, let alone when you're only there for classes. Of the three schools I'm applying to, I'd far and away prefer to go to UC Santa Cruz - it's the best of the three schools - but CSU Monterey Bay and Monterey Peninsula College are far cheaper and far closer. I'd be commuting more than an hour every day to go to Santa Cruz; the gas alone would be expensive, but the tuition is also more costly - twice what I'd pay at CSUMB, and much more than I'd pay at the local community college, MPC.

But it's hard to try to get excited about taking community college classes. My parents are friends with two professors in the area, one at CSUMB and one at MPC; both teach in subjects I care about - the professor at MPC is the head of their Great Books program, and the professor at CSUMB teaches biology - and I'm going to get to meet them this Saturday at my parents' dinner party. So I'll show up, be cheerful, look as normal as I possibly can in front of people who know about my mental breakdown because this party was cancelled a month ago so that my folks could fly me to California, and just grin and bear it.

But yes. Decreased expectations. And I do know I'll be happier and better off in any school rather than no school, but god damn it I want to be at St Johns, I want to be in Maryland, I don't want to be in California.

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