oh, woman, tell me what you want

I'm not going to try and disguise this post as anything other than what it really is - an excuse to talk about stereotypically girly things and embrace them.

I don't know why this is, but for me, the best part of being a girl has always been the ridiculous little eccentricities we all have. I don't mean the nervous tick in your laugh or the way your nose twitches - not the little things that some of us love to hear from boys and somehow construe into a confession of their passionate feelings. I mean the way that some of us will only use blue 0.5mm pens and yellow highlighters, or the way that some of us can't leave the house without lip gloss. There's something endearing to me about our particular patterns of consumerism.

Our preference between lip stick shades and hand cream scents that the majority of heterosexual males can't even tease apart is something I love to flaunt. Girls always feel the need to defend themselves against the stereotype that we're all shopaholics and that we inhale cosmetics. And not every girl is subject to the stereotype, but even if we are, why should that be a problem? Why are we prosecuted for our consumerism or our love of everything pink? Victoria's Secret, Sephora, UGG, whatever brand is trending right now among the female population is not any more corrupt, evil or misleading than any of the male directed companies such as Nintendo or Nike. So why is it that we are faulted for our peculiarities and members of our own gender  feel the need to shed their association to those of us who are proud members of the female-targeted supply and demand chain?

There's something comforting about walking into your room and having it smell exactly like your favourite perfume or candle. It's the same kind of comfort that comes from stocking up on your preferred shampoo and conditioner when it goes on sale. I don't know why the male population doesn't similarly find joys in these seemingly mundane things, but I'm proud of the fact that I do. There's definitely something to be said about the simple pleasures in life, and I think girls have this down to a T. The smallest packages of seemingly meaningless things bring us such joy sometimes and that's something I never want to let go of or deny.

If smelling like daisies and applying a coat of lip gloss every hour makes me a mindless consumerist driven automaton in your eyes, then so be it. But just a head up for you: my mascara isn't stopping me from acing all my exams. My hand cream doesn't prevent me from graduating top of my class. My perfume isn't going to change the way my grades are presented in a transcript. And my lip stick isn't going to stop me from being your boss one day.

my burden is the weight of a feather

There is something extremely crippling about exams. For those of us who honestly believe we're trying our very best and not getting the results we want, or need rather, I feel you.

When we were all growing up, our elementary school teachers and our parents filled us with ideas of omnipotence. "You can do anything!" they cheered, "The sky is the limit!" they claimed. We create lists of opportunities that life has to offer us. "I'm going to be an astronaut!" we cheered, "I'm going to be a famous artist!" we claimed. When I look back on it now, there's something about the whole scenario that doesn't sit well with me at all. I like to think of myself as an optimist, but ever since coming to university and swimming with the other big fish in the big pond, I feel very disillusioned. As you grow older, you'll find that that list of possibilities gets cut shorter and shorter with every passing birthday.

As the list gets shorter, the story starts to change. Instead of personal talents and value, we start to find that everyone is now stressing the importance of hard work instead. Putting in that effort, going the extra mile, that's what's going to get us where we want to be. And it all makes complete sense - it really does. Put in the time and reap the rewards is so intrinsic in us that it should be a law of physics by now.

But life doesn't really work this way, or so I've come to realize, and exams are a big part of that. If your aims are to become a doctor, a lawyer, or anything that requires a university education, you're going to know exactly what I'm talking about. When we were all making lists of what we wanted to be when we grew up, we based those goals on our interests and our talents. We never begun to factor in this third governing body that is the education system. All of a sudden, my diploma is going to either open or close doors for me. To a degree, your natural talents and your hard work definitely still do matter, but it's no longer nearly as simple as you thought it was before entering university.

An undergrad just isn't cutting it anymore. You need to get into med school, law school, grad school, anything. Another step on the ladder just appeared out of nowhere and completely blindsided you. The importance of the courses you chose, the exams you're going to write, the papers you're going to turn in - suddenly the impact of every one of these things is hitting you hard. As if this one course is going to make or break all your hopes and dreams, determine what you're going to do for the rest of your life and seal you into a lifestyle you can never get out of.

Of course I'm exaggerating and life is not anything as clear cut as this, but at one point or another this is how we've all felt about school. It's not a matter of failing one course. It's a matter of failing a course that you need to complete a degree, that is going to help you into another degree, that is going to open up the door to your dream job. That's what it's about for the academic class, at least in these undergrad years when some of us feel guilty for sleeping a bit longer or going out for a drink with our friends when we can be studying instead.

Excuse my bout of undergrad anxiety. I thought if I put the feelings into text and laid them out before me then it would all seem less daunting. Truth be told, even now that I've outlined a way of life, it hasn't removed the enormity of the situation. One exam won't change my life, but the smallest consequences create a completely unpredictable ripple. No matter how many forks in the road we speculate on, there's still something mysterious about looking into the mass unknown. I guess the moral of the university years is to know where you want to be and make a plan for how to get there, but just try not to fall apart when it does.

all my delight, all that mattered, I couldn't be at rest.

My Tumblr started getting a little too wordy for the medium, so I decided to get a blog just to talk and lay myself bare. Behold posts of incessant university undergrad bitching and the things I dare not say anywhere else. Perhaps one day I'll look back on all of this and criticize how ridiculous I was at the mere age of twenty. I'll think back on all my days of youthful anguish and think, "Man, was I a huge drama queen or what?!"

One can only hope.