Extracurricular

EXTRACURRICULAR HAS MOVED!

You can find all future posts at christinaraus.com. Thanks for your support!

This message has been brought to you in part by this leather chair in the Bay Path College “fireplace lounge,” which currently not only serves as a comfortable place to leisurely browse the Internet in between classes but also as my home away from home.

As of late, things in my life have been relatively hectic.

With the support of friends, my boyfriend, and family I have decided to switch majors from business administration to creative writing. (Don’t ask what made me decide to major in business. I have no idea what made me think that I could grow to like the subject. I’ve decided that I am not thrilled by the idea of working for H&R Block and/or owning my own Subway franchise, thus my decision to abandon ship.) I’ve always wanted to write and I’ve finally convinced myself that I could make a decent living off of it. Although I am more than ready to change majors, my college isn’t. You see, I seemingly attend the only college/university in the United States that does not offer any kind of English study as a major. None. Zippo. Zilch. So, I’ve spent the past two months or so applying to new colleges…again.

On top of midterms and homework and trying to maintain some sort of social life, I’ve been applying to schools. I’ve been trying to keep up with my social networking sites, but I’m obviously failing miserably. My Facebook wall has become a place where my boyfriend and I exchange Youtube clips and Google Images of baby animals with one another while we aren’t together, and the most intriguing posts on my Twitter feed are references to the season finale of ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars. Imagine how I felt when the Sunday night before school commenced after spring break arrived and I didn’t update anything on Extracurricular. I meant to post a lot of quality shit while I had time over the break, and was surprised that Tumblr hadn’t even crossed my mind. I feel terrible about not posting that much recently, and I’m even sorry that my first post in a while is about how I haven’t posted in a while.

Just remember that I love you all and I haven’t abandoned this blog. Things will continue regularly in a few weeks as (fingers crossed) I receive acceptance letters in the mail.

TL;DR: I haven’t posted in a while. I have been pretty busy. I’m sorry. I love you. Things will be back to normal soon.

“Look at this damn Window’s loading circle spin around and around…around and around and around. Look at it go. Can it load? Will it load? Oh my God. I’m either going to have apoplexy or buy a Mac. Don’t know which yet.”

One of my biggest regrets in life is forever imprinted in the Benjamin J. Phelps Elementary School 2003 yearbook. Among the many privileges of being a graduating fourth grader was that we were each required to fill out a questionnaire that would be published in the yearbook at the end of the year. The questions weren’t difficult by any means, just some silly prompts meant to be comical upon rereading our answers later in adulthood. M&M’s or Skittles? M&M’s. What has been your favorite school lunch? Pizza. Favorite song? Sk8er Boi. Favorite video game? Pokemon. What do you want to be when you grow up?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I remember scribbling down the answer in its designated space on the survey without hesitation. An author. I was ten years old and I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life writing. I sat silently waiting for the rest of my classmates to finish their surveys, excited to hear everyone’s answers and to be able to finally share my own.

When it came time to share our answers to the class, I noticed a pattern in the responses that my peers were giving. Amber wanted to be a singer. Katie wanted to be an actress. Laura wanted to be a dancer. Jessica wanted to be a singer/actress/dancer (ambitious, I know). Andrew wanted to be a professional soccer player. Rob wanted to be the star pitcher of the Red Sox.

A sudden spark of uncertainty sent a jolt through my body. Was it weird to like to write? Maybe it was kind of weird…I mean, how normal could it be to actually enjoy something that most kids considered torturous?

“Christina, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Um…a singer.”

In that moment, I hadn’t felt too bad about fibbing. I figured that I had saved myself some speculative stares and snickers. I buried the experience far in to the depths of my brain and paid little attention to it until four months later, when we received our yearbooks at our class picnic. My parents shuffled through the pages together, oohing and aahing at how fast time flies by and how old I had gotten and “it seems like just yesterday we were changing her diapers” etc, until they came to the “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up…” page.

“A singer, huh?”

They were surprised. Staring at the black and white print made everything sink in. Why couldn’t I have just been honest? Even looking back now, I feel ashamed. I know that I was just a kid, and kids do stupid thing sometimes, and maybe the whole ordeal really means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but to this day, ten years later, I hear Holden Caulfield calling me a “phony,” the words stinging in my ears. I was a big, fat, fourth grade phony. The symbolic nature of the experience makes my heart sink.

What was it about having dreams of working in an a field that requires a vast amount of education and intellect that was abnormal? Why had I been ashamed of being smart? Don’t get me wrong, there are people out there with a fuckload of talent who absolutely deserve to sing/act/dance/create their own perfume fragrance at their will, but why did I feel like it was standard to desire fame and fortune?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m reading too much in to this, but to me I think it’s tragic that there could be bunches of little writers, mathematicians, chemists, and programmers out there who are afraid of being themselves in a society that so often values wealth and celebrity over brain power.

I can’t go back and change time, but I wish I could. I wish I could have been brave enough to just be myself. I wonder if withstanding the temporary embarrassment that day could have allowed me to be more confident throughout middle school and junior high school. I guess I’ll never know how that simple questionnaire exactly affected me, but I do know that I am currently a loud and proud English nerd. Now when somebody asks me what I plan to do with a degree in English, I simply answer, “Write. I’ll write anything. Journalist. Novelist. English teacher. I’ll do anything, as long as I write.”

Following almost every time after my confident answer is a snarky comment: “Huh…Well, have a good time working in retail.”