I don’t know what it was about me that renamed all those other posts lyrics from Kanye West but it lasted way longer than I thought it would. I think even he got sick of it and made his Christian album hoping I’d make a sudden change.
Oh, well. The little kid in me got what he deserves.
Enjoy the Easter egg I have this time.
I don’t know which is worse: Having nine months worth of blog posts being titled after song lyrics that are derivations of poop or having an entire romantic R&B/rap song loop whenever someone follows or DMs me on Twitter.
Since I can’t figure it out, I’ll have to live with both.
But yeah, every time someone does that, “Be Mine” by G.R.I.T.S. plays. And loops!
It’s not a bad song by any means. It’s just that it has gone off at weird times. Last time it was at lunch in the Caf.
Before that, someone was DMing me. Like a lot. He is one of those people who can only fit one sentence in a single message. So, whenever he had a lot to tell me, I heard that acoustic guitar intro over and over again and had to wait like 30 seconds before it could finish and get on with the song.
Oh boy, was that annoying.
The worst time is when it went off during a class. Typically, I set my phone to vibrate while I’m in class. That day, I thought, “Eh, no one calls or texts me anyway. I won’t even bother with putting it on vibrate.”
Not even 10 minutes later, I hear that acoustic guitar.
“Oh crap.” I quickly cover the speaker through my pants, hoping it’ll muffle the music.
It didn’t really help.
I had to dig it out of my pocket and get it to stop.
Of course, no one really cared about it. This type of thing happens every class period with someone. Except this time, it was from the annoying bald guy in the front row who was homeschooled.
The professor tried ignoring it until the background vocalists started singing “Hey, baby, hey baby.”
Oh, man. It was so embarrassing.
Never letting my phone be on sound in class again.
And the worst part is I can’t get it to change. It was a setting that was automatically changed when I got the phone. I was able to transfer my apps and preferences from my old phone. Apparently, instead of adding a feature, I think they removed one that is keeping me from turning it off or changing it.'
I don’t even know how that song got set as it. Firstly, I do own the song and have a copy of it on my phone. But nothing else makes sense. There’s no option for me to change or remove it. Heck, notification sounds are only supposed to be a max of five seconds long. Ringtones are 30. And neither of them are supposed to repeat.
Oh, well. Life goes on.
One thing that has kinda been bothering me for a while is not getting credited for my work, specifically the photos I take.
It’s one thing when the college posts them since I took them for the college and that’s just how things work. It’s what I agreed to. Plus, it would be a little weird on both sides if they did.
There’s also people who download and repost the photos not knowing who took them. Or those who already did that and found out afterwards. That’s a bit different.
No, I’m talking about people who ask me for additional photos to post on social media. I agree to do it under the condition that they tag me in the photos, to which they agree to do.
So, I spend an evening going through all my photos and pick out the ones that weren’t already posted online anywhere. I send them their way and they immediately post them. Without the photo credits.
-_-
I feel like a ninny for talking about it. I would have reached cotton-headed ninny muggins level if I asked for the tag afterwards. Anyway, that’s what I felt like.
So, I let it boil inside of me for a while. Yeah, it’s a given that an artist’s work will be stolen. I knew that it would happen. But it really hurts when the person you went out of your way to help says they’ll at least publicly thank you for going the extra mile and they lie.
The lie is what is bothering me.
And it’s just something I’ll have to get over. Plus, they weren’t photos that were artistic in nature. They were candid shots that were taken in the moment.
Going into the future, if I were to take photos that were staged or otherwise artistic in nature, I would make a big deal about it. I feel bad for saying that but that takes a lot of work going into, doing, and coming out of it. It just makes sense to me.
Now, there have been instances where people did keep their promise and tag me or I didn’t even expect them to tag me and they did, and it felt great! It wasn’t so much the fact that everyone saw my work but that the person I did it for or they modelled for me were 1. proud enough to share my work and 2. thankful enough to credit it to me. It just shows their honesty and gratefulness for the hard work that was put into it.
Either way, I am working on letting this issue not bother me. The candid stuff doesn’t really bother me that much, unless they lie to me, but even then I need to let it go. I need to really work on my other work.
That doesn’t go to say to not credit the artist! Please do! There’s a lot of unnoticed things that they did to get the art to what you see and post on social media. It takes way less time and effort to tag them than it does for them to make a fix you will never notice they made.
Moving on.
Another thing that’s really been on my heart lately is the fact that I’m not doing the best in my classes. Don’t worry. I”m still passing and will most likely pass, but my grades aren’t where I want them to be.
For the past two years, I have made the Dean’s List each semester I have been enrolled. My freshman year, I was surprised. Last year, I expected it. This year, I made it a point to keep it up.
Welp. That ain’t happenin’.
This is because of a lot of reasons, most of which are out of my control.
First, I am taking classes outside of my element. I am enrolled in five classes and a single lab. This is a normal amount but only one of those classes are closely related to my field but it is a writing intensive class and, like I mentioned earlier, it puts the “intensive” in “writing intensive.” It is also because of that class that this post is late.
Next, my classes are pretty test-heavy this semester. They are either made up primarily of tests or they are more project-based and the few tests we do take end up weighing a lot more in the gradebook.
Also, I have test anxiety. A lot of the time, I know the content. It’s the fact that I’m put under pressure with a time restriction and someone watching me that keeps my brain from functioning properly. The test anxiety is bad enough to have a significant effect on my grade, but not enough to have testing accommodations made for me. Even if I did, I’d still be stubborn and want to take the test normally. I don’t like people going out of their way to do things exclusively for me like that.
One of the biggest things that’s keeping me from keeping A’s and B’s is that there are just things that I am not going to learn, and I’m realizing more and more what those things are. Most of the time, I do the reading required for the class and, when I get done, I sit there and think about and try to remember what I just read for the last hour.
Not much.
First off, I can’t really learn from a textbook. I’m a visual, hands-on, and conversational learner.
I learn best when I can see what I need to do and practice it myself. It creates muscle memory for what I am doing.
I also can’t remember things unless I see a why. If I don’t get a why, then my mind won’t remember to do it. If something was important, there would be a reason behind it. If it doesn’t see that reason, it won’t think it’s important.
Kinda following the last one, talking through things helps me learn as well. I get someone who knows what they’re doing and talking about and can ask them questions as we go along. It’s not the greatest way I learn since there are a lot of unknown variables but this one typically works best in conjunction with the other two.
This semester, several of my classes are textbook reading-heavy. Typically, I read the chapter the day we will be going over it in class. That way, I get an overview of what I need to know, and then the essentials the professor goes over in class.
That hasn’t been working this semester.
No, we had a mid-term that was said to cover half of the semester’s material. I asked specifically what they would be and he said we did textbook readings and class lectures. So, we were to study both. I studied. A lot. I mainly studied my notes since I thought that’s what he deemed important, and used my textbook to review the things he talked about.
When we came to take the mid-term, every single question was based on the reading. Most of my studying was useless. Every class period we had was useless in comparison to the test. I was upset. What was worse was several questions were history-based and were detail-oriented and built upon the previous question. History is my worst subject since I don’t get a real why to remember what happened. I remember things that are more conceptual or mechanical in nature compared to fixed facts or opinions that merely exist.
Needless to say, I didn’t do very well on the exam.
Neither did most people. They either didn’t do the reading or focused their studies on there class notes, similar to me. I was surprised when this professor gave us some points back to help make up for it. He is typically a strict, “this is the way it is” kinda guy, cold-hearted HR guy. He is the physical embodiment of Michael Scott’s jaded view of Toby.
But not that day. That day he showed grace for no reason other than he saw that we all struggled through it. Granted, a lot of the reason was most of the class didn’t do the reading and barely pays attention in class anyway. So, I was genuinely surprised and grateful for that decision. It definitely helped my grade. Let’s see if I can keep it up.
All of this goes to say that I have limitations and I am realizing them more and more everyday. People tend to put me in the “smart person” category, and while I never really liked it, compared to other categories such as “athletic,” “mechanical,” or “physically strong,” that was the one that best fit me.
It also put this pressure on me that I thought I had to be smarter than everybody else. If I didn’t know more about something than someone else or couldn’t answer a question because of lack of knowledge, I would beat myself up for it.
Not literally. I’m not that strong.
But I would feel like I couldn’t be what people thought I was, what I thought I wanted to be.
Being the smartest person in the world also has a negative connotation to it as well. Typically, people associate the smartest person in the room as one who thinks they are better than everyone else who is there. While this is normally the case, it isn’t true with everyone.
I’m not saying I’m the smartest person in the room, but I do admit I try a lot to be that person.
When I look around at people, I constantly see all the great things they excel at. Sports. Socializing. Work. Music. Stuff like that. And I can’t help but feeling left out, like I need to excel at my own thing.
So, I focused on school my whole high school career and half of my college career. I figured if I couldn't play a sport or an instrument, the least I could do was focus on my main reason for coming to college: academics.
The problem is that was all I would do. I would never go to social events because I always had an assignment I excused myself with. I busied myself with my schoolwork.
And the worst part about it was when I would put in more work than most of the class and ended up getting grades equal to or less than those who just did the assignment on a whim.
At first, I thought it was unfair, that the issue was with the professor. If we got graded on effort, I did way more than what was required.
But that's not how college works.
They grade on product alone. It doesn't matter if I spent all day and all night every night on an art project, if someone else can do it better than me in the 15 minutes before class, they're going to get the better grade.
The truth is that some people are just better at some things than me.
I knew that.
What I didn't know was that it was okay. I saw it as a competition. It wasn't a competition to be better than everyone else. It was a competition against myself to be better than I was since there was room for improvement, as proved by the people who did better than me.
Yes, that is true. There is always room for improvement.
But what I was missing was the fact that I am human. I am finite. I have limitations. And I’m simply not like everybody else.
And that's just reality, one that is taking me a while to realize.
I am used to working one hundred percent one hundred percent of the time to the point of working all day and well into the night single everyday.
Well, those days are catching up with me, and I am getting burned out.
It is time to step back and refocus. I need to take a look at my goals and how I can realistically achieve them.
At the end of the day (or my college career), it doesn’t matter if I pass with all A’s and B’s. It doesn’t matter if I make the Dean’s List or complete the Honors Program. Those are goals that I would like to achieve, but are they really that important to stress and overwork myself for?
What matters is if I learned what I needed to learn from my experience without working myself to death.
And that’s what I wanted to share with y’all. It’s something that’s been eating at me for a while now but I have come to terms with myself about it. It is a difficult journey for sure, and I’m not very enthusiastic about the results, but it’s a learning process and I am going to learn what I can and not cry too much over what I can’t.
Before I click ‘Publish,’ I want to take a moment to moment for TobyMac and the rest of the McKeehan family as they deal with the loss of their oldest son Truett, who many of you may recognize as truDog from Toby’s solo albums. I wrote a thing on Genius about it if y’all wanna check it out. That’d be cool.
It’s just crazy to grow up with someone, hearing them change over the years despite never having actually met them. It blows my mind.
I always wanted to meet him and, of course, Toby and the rest of the family. If not in this life, I’m guaranteed that chance in the next.
So yeah. That’s about all I have.
Peace.