Is There a Major for "Student"?

If I had the choice, honest to Bible, I would be a professional student. When I say this, people always ask me what I've been smoking because people are supposed to hate school, right? WRONG. You are wrong. I love me some school.

When I first told my friends I was looking at graduate schools, they all had the same reaction: Ew. I truly am so excited about the prospect of getting more education. I love it! I like knowing things. It makes me feel accomplished and special. I constantly find myself asking questions about things and what better way to get the answers than school? (or I suppose wikipedia if you really are short on time and can't afford to take a class just to find out how to survive the zombie apocalypse - side note: this is a real class at my friend's university and I almost transferred just for this class).

My issue is that I want to know everything about anything that remotely interests me. If I had infinite time and infinite monetary resources, I would probably have degrees in four languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian), acting, film making, forensic anthropology, creative writing, dance, and sociology. All of these things are the best things in my mind and I want to know about them. But I don't want to pay for them, so I suppose I will just be another ignorant american who doesn't have forty degrees.

Europe is always besting me.

I am currently in the process of changing my major for the fourth time. I am a first semester sophomore. I'm told this is normal, but I feel so strange and awkward every time I change my major. When I entered college, I decided to be a Liberal Studies Major. This was partially my way of selecting undeclared and partially me being interested in the program. However after a semester of people asking me, "What is Liberal Studies?" and me being unable to come up with an answer, I decided I should probably change majors. It was at this point that I decided to get a double major in Spanish and French. I went through the process and got approval from those two department heads, however I still needed to get a signature from my current department head who also happened to be my Honors Humanities professor. I kept chickening out of asking him to free me from his major that cannot be defined and finally decided to just stay a Liberal Studies major. I tore up my change of major sheet and continued with my spring semester. However, again within one month I decided that being to chicken to get my sheet signed was also a really pathetic reason to have a major in something, so I went through the process again to do a Spanish and French double major. This time I did it. I entered my second year of college as a Spanish and French double major (here comes another however). However, now I am working on dropping my French major for an Acting/ Theatre major (I don't think I'm going to do a BFA so it'll be called a theatre major). I also have decided that I'm about 90% sure I'm going to grad school because a) life outside of school scares me and b) I would then be the first person in my family to go to grad school. Win.

One might look at my changes of majors and think, why the variety? Fine arts and foreign language? Well, here's where I am right now: I have wanted to be an actress since I was a small child. I first did a play at age six (I peed my pants on stage... but that's another story) and consistently did community theatre and high school theatre for the rest of my life. When I was first entering college, I had all intentions to do a theatre/ acting major, however I got a lot of mixed feedback from it and decided to do Liberal Studies. For the past year and a half, I have always gone back to the idea of doing this major, and finally I am saying, "why not?" This is what I love and I want to do it. I also keep thinking about myself in an office setting or doing a typical career, and it just doesn't go well together. I am too snarky, too spacey and too hands on to be in a typical career.

Plus, I like to play pretend and dress up.

I really do think that if there was a way to be a professional student, I would do it. I would totally love to get paid for going to classes and learning stuff. I could be like one of those know it all things!

Is that a real thing or am I making it up?

Sitting On The Outside of "Boy Talk"

A few weeks ago my friend asked me if I wanted to come to a party with her and hang out before the summer was completely over. I of course said yes and joined her at some guy's birthday party, or going away party. I don't remember which it was. The party was fairly entertaining however, after some time we decided that we just wanted to head back to her boyfriend's house and hang out.

We arrived to my friend's boyfriend's house, and even though he had been following my friend for some time, he didn't arrive until 40 minutes after us. He then presumed to tell us this elaborate story about stopping at a house to stop a fight but originally he was going to get his backpack. We asked why he felt the need to stay and stop a fight and it was apparently because, "some guy was talking shit about Dave." (Aside: don't forget about Dave... he becomes an intricate part of the story.)

After the discussion of the backpack and the fight (which never really did make sense in our heads) we began just hanging out and my friends started to make some food. We were quickly interrupted by my friend's boyfriend's roommates coming in absolutely furious about the guy who was talking shit about Dave. This was where I noticed a magnificent phenomenon: when boys begin talking about their bros and people who talk shit about their bros, girls no longer exist in their lives.

The boys continued talking while off to the side my friend was talking to her boyfriend whom she had just accidentally hit in his manhood. He seemed to be in quite a bit of pain and was really making sure she knew he was in pain, however once someone walked into the house and said that one of their friends was jumped by a group of kids from the party, he sprung into action as though no ailment had ever come over his body ready to defend Dave and the other guys honor.

There were about five guys in the house at this moment and constantly they would go back to the conversation of, "I can't believe someone would try to mess with Dave." At this moment I decided to turn to my friend and ask her who the hell Dave was because I had never heard of him before in my life. She told me he was apparently one of their close friends who was leaving town... oh yeah, it was a going away party... but she had only heard of his existence three days previously. Neither one of us ever met Dave.

For the rest of the night, the boys paced around the house discussing Dave and the jerks who tried to ruin his going away party. Any time they spoke to my friend and I it was about Dave and how it is so important to defend your friends when someone talks trash.

This brings me to my point of the story. Why on Earth do boys a) solve their problems by fighting and b) think that a girl is going to think that it is attractive for him fight for the honor of some mysterious guy named Dave. Some girls may find it attractive when guys fight, but none of the ones I've ever met. Sitting on the outside of Boy Talk though is possibly the last thing a girl should do. We don't need to know how they tick and especially when the way they tick makes them look like a dick.