sigelphoenix

I ran into an old friend from high school on my way to work. She's a fantastic person all around -- smart, genuinely friendly, energetic and ambitious. Most notably, she was just in the campus paper because she won a prestigious national scholarship that only a handful of students receive. (To people who know her, this is decidedly un-shocking.)

She mentioned that she'd been planning to take a year off before grad school, but now she had to go because of the scholarship, which made me go :o because she wasn't really trying to get it, but also because she has the next three years of her life planned out. I, uh ... don't. And I'm not saying that she'll have no problems now that she's set for grad school, but I just know that I'm not anywhere near that determined about what I'm going to do with the next few years of my life.

It's funny; I was always the "most likely to succeed" type before college. People wrote things in my yearbook like "You'll be famous!" "You'll be rich!" "You'll own a small country!" But now here I am, probably less prepared than many of my classmates who weren't as "smart." And I know it's useless to try to compare myself to the friend I ran into, but -- well, I'm competitive. :P

She did say, though, that I was the only creative writing major she knew. We talked about writing and things like NaNoWriMo, and she talked like I was impressive for studying writing and being a writer.

And I *am* happy with my writing, and the role it has in my life. Last night I began my revisions for my poetry course, meditating on the discussion from yesterday and tackling one of my poems from early in the quarter. It's one that I like, that received a good response in workshop, as well as a lot of helpful advice. I worked on it and finished the (first) revision. I also worked on my critique for a classmate -- we partnered up to do in-depth critiques as part of the revision process. And my classmate chose me personally, which really shouldn't be such an ego boost, but it meant that there's something about either my poems or critiques, the way I write or the way I look at others' poems, that she likes and wanted for her own work. So that makes me feel good.

Not really the prestigious success my old classmates expected of me. Not really the prestigious success that, maybe, I still want. But, still -- it's give and take, I suppose.

Abortion: Trouble in Numbers? by Jennifer Baumgardner:

"For many women, though, getting pregnant when you don't want to be is because you made a mistake. Often the mistake is not your own fault -- Alix was not told by her doctor that diaphragms could slip out of place, Marion got depressed on the high-dose pill and found it almost impossible to take. But if an abortion is meant to correct that mistake, is it anti-woman to presume a learning curve? I don't know."

( Cut for abortion talk )