WSU got out last week so I'm spending the only free week I have of break gaming all day. Sitting here, I started thinking about two years ago when I first started coming here. I remember spending hours pouring over various pictures of anime girls, angels/demons, zelda/link pics, catgirls, etc. It was easy to stay interested in anime since I went to anime club every morning for highschool. Now I just feel like I've lost interest in that whole portion of my life. I sometimes wonder if I ever forced myself to like it at points, though I doubt I ever did. I wonder if I am really just a gamer and not an anime fan. Seeing people after highschool also really shows you what they think of you. I was talking to someone I knew in HS and another guy I knew walked by, said hi to the guy I was talking to. I also said hi to him but he ignored me completely. It doesn't matter what type of person you are, highschool really was some of the best parts of your life. I felt more emotions back then and especially felt strong emotions other than anger/sadness. Since 10th grade I've wondered whether I'm depressed but I can see that I probably wasn't in HS, just angsty. Now I do wonder though, due to a lack of caring about a lot of stuff I used to care about. In HS, its easy to have direction in life, your goal is to graduate HS and go to college. Now that I'm in college, I wonder what I should actually do with my life. I'm interested in audio engineering though I've also wanted to try DJing at clubs/dances. I want to do something with music (though not the artsy side of it such as the composition), preferably techno. Anyway, back to HS being the best parts of our lives, theres often the stereotypical jock/prom king who goes on to get his business degree and works for some business degree for the rest of his life. I disagree, though, when people say college is the best part of our lives. I would say it is one of the best parts for different reasons. In highschool, you're crammed together with a few thousand people and its easy to meet new people with 6 classes of 30 students. I formed a group of friends that we had many great nights together playing games and drinking energy drinks. In reference to my last journal entry, people at my HS acted who they wanted to be, not what people thought they should be. So maybe I've only been saying this because the people at my HS were better than the people at my college. Anyway, in college its easy to meet people on your floor and then other floors of your dorm as well but its hard to go anywhere from there. Even though the clubs and activities that people host are better than the ones at HS, they are still completely student directed and they often don't have much to work with. For example, someone tried to put on a blacklight dance but it failed miserably because there was no good place to host it so they had to put up black butcherpaper to black out the room and the music playlist was created by some guy who made the playlist for his HS dances so all the music was terrible. I would rather just go to a real dance/rave than that dance.

Back to people saying that college is the best part of their lives, I could definitely see that to be true except so far for me its only made me feel more trapped than I ever have with my parents. They say to get good grades and study lots and then bother me about why I haven't joined any clubs yet. First of all, all the clubs there suck and I would rather just hang out in the dorm with my friends. But the real issue is of sending mixed messages of "work hard" and "you should enjoy life more and find new things to do." Then I feel like I should be concentrating all my time and energy on my studies and can't do anything fun. For example, I could be saving for a trip this summer but I'm just throwing all the money I earn to afford college, even though my parents could pay for all of it. I'm not complaining that they aren't, I quite agree with me paying a portion of it. However, I wish I could do something more though. I'm trying to hit up as many dances/raves as I can this summer so hopefully those will turn out to be a lot of fun. I have high expectations for them. The other problem is that whenever my parents call me while I'm at college, they just complain that I should get better grades. They barely talk about anything else. I'm passing my classes, even if it is a C or C+ but its still passing and it will get me my degree. That's more than can be said about a lot of people on my floor, as many of them repeated classes, dropped classes, didn't pass classes, etc. I will admit I had to retake a class and I'm retaking a class this summer that I dropped last semester but frankly, that's only two classes. Some people wasted four or more classes between the last two semesters. Neither of my parents see college as a place to learn/experiment with new things, meet new people, etc. Going there helps anyone grow and become a better person. It's not all about the classes. All my parents see, however, is money and efficiency of the money being spent there in the way of grades.

People say that writing journals like this give them an outlet for their troubles. Frankly, I don't see how. Doing this does help me connect ideas but it doesn't get me anywhere, I still have the problems and they're still on my mind. On the other hand, playing/composing music does help me so I dunno how it's different.