In which I find meaning in 90s teen dramas

Lately I've been watching "My So-Called Life" on Netflix Instant. I probably vowed at one point in my life that I'd never watch it, because I found Claire Danes so annoying or something, but I caved inexplicably and now I just wish that I had found it when I was in high school. The show is structured around Angela Chase's (Claire Danes) inner monologue (kind of like what Zach Braff did on "Scrubs" but takes itself a lot more seriously.) The things she says are just the kind of things teenagers say when they think they've earned the right to be world-weary. But I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. It makes those times when she's happy all the more poignant, actually. Like there's this scene where she's in the car with Jordan Catalano, who's played by Jared Leto and is totally dreamy and lazy and doesn't give a damn. Also he wears a lot of flannel and doesn't talk too much. Anyways, the voiceover says something about that moment when you feel like your life is about to change, and you can feel everything turning around for the better.

As much as I hate relating to a 90s teen drama, I'm kind of having a moment like that right now.

In the past two days, I've landed a summer internship in New York and an official spot (with classes and everything) for the fall semester at Goldsmiths College in London. It's been a weird awakening that I live in a world where good things happen to me, and I'm a little worried that I'm going to get hit by a PVTA bus soon. When I was in high school, I didn't think I had what it took to live a life by my own standards. I lived for other people, and resigned myself to the supposed fact that I wasn't wired to get what I wanted. Lately (even as I type this) I'm feeling vibrations in the air because things are finally turning around and reshifting. I'm going to spend this summer in New York and next fall in London. It sort of feels like I shouldn't get to say that, like those are things that more fortunate people get to say and do. But then I realize that this is my life, and I do get to say those things because shit is finally coming together.

Library, 7:25 pm on a Friday night

I wish I could stop feeling so self-conscious about having no intention to leave this place for a while. My mod is about as as messy as my head, and the library is clean and neat. The fluorescent lighting feels institutional in a good way. I don't know if there are any parties happening tonight, and I don't really want to go to them. It's not that I'm becoming a homebody, because I plan on going dancing every night when I'm in London next semester, I think I'm just over Hampshire parties for a while. They're crowded and full of people I don't know. Also it's awkward when I do see someone I know and it's too loud to talk to them. If I see someone I don't know in the library, it's okay to share a table as long as you mind your own business. My headphones are helping me out with that. I'm listening to music from the 90s that I vaguely remember.

Thank goodness I've got nothing planned for tomorrow. The past two days have just been packed. I am so ready to spend the whole day at Amherst Coffee with my laptop and just work on this midterm I have due Tuesday. Hopefully I can knock it out in one day. But it's for a psych class, and I'm really getting sick of it. So much of it is too open-ended, which is good but I can't say I'm not relieved to have my history class right after this one every time. It's like I go from "what is power? we don't know" to "this is an event. this is what happened because of that event." Very refreshing. History is fascinating, and I like that it has a balance of theory and extrapolating, as well as concrete facts. There is so much resilience in it as well. Events that happened so long ago are still present in discourse because people worked hard to preserve the records of these events. It just reeks of passion.

Writing all this makes me even less excited about this psych midterm paper. When will I learn that psych courses at Hampshire=endless theory or endless neuroscience? Probably never.