Does Anyone Read These?

I'm not very good about keeping up with blog posts and I wondered if anyone even read them anymore when I do post them. Let me know if you do. Seems kinda pointless otherwise.

What To Do About The State Of The World

So I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. This is a tough decision. Well actually a series of decisions. First of all I need to figure out what I'm doing after this summer. Sometime in August I hope to have a job and a place of my own, preferably in Indianapolis. I'd like to be out on my own, I miss the semi-autonomy of college life. The thing is, with crappy dial-up internet here at home I can only do so much job and apartment hunting when I sit and wait for 10 minutes for each page to load. That may be the epitome of frustration. I've recently discovered that Monster.com is a useful site, and so I will more fully utilize it when I get the opportunity. Then comes the even bigger question: what am I going to do with the rest of my life?
This is a question that has haunted me for the entirety of the summer. My undergraduate degrees were in classics and archaeology, neither of which are practical or conducive to living in anything better than a cardboard box. So the question becomes, what do I want to do if I don't want to do those things? I got interested in classics to begin with mainly because of Greek and Latin. I'm fascinated by languages. The cultures intrigue me as well, but the languages are my primary interest. All throughout high school I took Spanish and was pretty good at it according to my grades and comments from the teacher. That was the start of my love of languages. Most recently I started to learn German by taking entry-level classes my senior year but that attempt was marred by a high level of apathy known to most physicians as "senioritis", meaning literary the inflammation of the senior. Of course this disease has many symptoms such as skipping class, not doing homework, and just not caring. This very disease is to blame for my average performance in my endeavor to learn German. And even though it was hard to care about it, I was still interested in learning the basics of the language. All these examples make me wonder if maybe I should go into linguistics in grad school. I don't know what I would do with it, but it is a subject I really enjoy so maybe that's a start.
Another field I've been contemplating is history. I would want to deal with Greek and Roman history, which may very well still fall under the large umbrella of classics still. So maybe that does me no good, because one of the reasons that I want to get out of the classics field is because there isn't much of a job market in that, or so I've been told. I just want to find something that is interesting and that I enjoy doing, but can also make me money. Otherwise I'm just pursuing a hobby until a go too far and find out that I've gotten a degree and can't reallly do anything with it.
You might be wondering what the title of this blog has to do with anything. After all, I've really only been talking about my world, not the world at large. But I'm getting to that. Everyday I've been realizing more and more that the world is in a sorry state and needs help. Looking at the news even casually you see reports in any given country of political unrest, civil wars, famines, floods, earthquakes, illiteracy, poverty, rape, murder, genocide, and the list of humanity's struggles and evils could go on. Looking at all those things I want to do something, but I don't even know where to start. I wish that I could do something to right all of the wrongs in the world; however I realize that I am only one man with definite limitations. I can't single-handedly provide food for all of the hungry; I can't stop wars and spread peace on my own; I can't abolish poverty, nor can I erase the loss that comes with a natural disaster; again, I am only one man. But I want to do something, anything that I can to help anyone who is in need. I'm trying to discover just what I can do for humanity in my own way. When I look at how little some people have and what kinds of injustices many people have to live with, my own personal struggles seem to lessen in comparison, and I get a somber reminder that I have it better than most. And as Uncle Ben once told Peter Parker: "With great power comes great responsibilty." Which is why I want to do my part to help humanity. I just have to figure out what I can do and how I can help. That is my dilemma.

Good News For Obama Supporters Like Me

I'm very excited about how much closer to the nomination these 2 primaries put Obama. Both candidates have fought hard, and mostly admirably. But read this article and then try and tell me that Clinton does not sound more and more petty everyday. I'm an Obama supporter (if you couldn't tell from the title of this post), but all throughout this race I haven't entirely dismissed the possibility of voting for Clinton of she would happen to get the nomination. But after all of these primaries, the more and more I see about her makes me rethink that scenario. If nothing else, the issue of the Florida and Michigan delegates makes Clinton sound whiny and petty every time she brings it up. "Why aren't those states being seated?", she says. Because they broke the rules! They moved their primaries without the sanction of the Democratic National Party, but yet they expect to still get the thumbs up?! Clinton is grasping at straws at this point. She knows that she has very little chance of winning, and so she is trying to come up with whatever scheme she can in order to take the nomination by force rather than by electorate. That's a great precedent to set, letting people break the rules and get away with it if it helps her case. Granted I'm not saying Obama is perfect. He's got his baggage and faults just like she does. It's just that when I see the way Obama has carried himself all throughout this election, I see a more honorable candidate in him than in Clinton. I still have some respect for her, as she is probably better than McCain at this point, but still, her methods are questionable and I'm not sure if I would chose her as the next president. And that's my $0.02.

The Unexamined Life

unexamined, So here I am at the end of the year, these are the last few days in my undergraduate career. It is both a happy time and a bittersweet time. I'm happy because for almost a year I won't have to do anything academic, which I desperately need. I've discovered this semester that I just don't have the energy or desire to do much scholastically. I need this time to just get into the habit of a 9-to-5 or whatever kind of job I can find and be a worker-drone. So the end of papers and tests and studying (ha, as if that last one ever happened anyway) is a welcome one. It's the social part I'm going to miss. This past year and a half has been an interesting one. Ever since getting back from Harlaxton, it seems like there have been a lot of changes. I've gained new people in my life, and some of them have become the best friends I could ever ask for. Other friendships seem to have grown apart. People come and people go, but the important ones will always be around. I think that in essence my entire college career has been one big transformation for me. I came into college a backwards, shy, mild-mannered reporter, well, or maybe just the backwards and shy parts. I was a pretty strict conservative fundamentalist with regard to politics and religion. I never questioned what I believed in, I just believed what I thought that I was supposed to. But throughout these past few years I've been challenged to examine my life, questioning what I believe in and why. I think it's an interesting coincidence, but I was thinking about something the other day. I started college reading Plato's Apology as the second book in the reading list of World Cultures. One of Socrates' most famous quotes from that work is that the unexamined life is not worth living. Now here at the end of college we translated the Apology in Greek class, and thus I revisited that same quote. When I came into college I wasn't true to that motto. My life was thoroughly unexamined and I didn't much think about it. But here at the end, there's been a great amount of examination, and I think that I'm a different person than I was when I first read those words. When I came to college, politics and religion were connected for me. I was a Republican because that's what my church told me to be, somewhat indirectly. I've gone through lots of changes, however. First on the chopping block was religion. I'm not exactly what you would call a religious person anymore. I believe that there's a God, I believe that Jesus was a good teacher, in the same vein as Socrates, but there are a lot of questions that I don't feel are adequately answered through that route. Now I'm more interested in actually helping people, not just praying for them and hoping that their problems go away. I'm not saying that religion isn't authentic for some people, I think it can be. But not for me. Maybe that makes me a heretic, but I'm willing to do the best that I can to be a good person and help my fellow human beings and then leave things up to God. My politics was then the next thing to change. As I said before I was a Republican because that's what my church told me to be. I'm not saying that all Republicans are religious nuts, that would be an untrue extreme over-generalization. I just feel like the Democratic party is more in line with my views at this point, with the most important thing being the common person and their well-being. I'm not saying I'm tied to the Democratic party forever, if their views ever change and don't meet up with mine, I would be with whatever party embodied my views. In all of this, I've seen that the words of Socrates are more true than I understood them to be four years ago, that the unexamined life isn't worth living. Everyone really needs to know who they are, what they believe in, and why. Otherwise I don't think that you're being true to yourself or anyone else. What the future holds, I don't know, but I do know that I will always be trying to understand myself and sorting out what I believe. And more importantly than that, I will always try to help people in anyway that I can, because if we don't help each other, who will?

Stairway to Grown-Up World (not Heaven)

If anyone actually still reads these (other than Olivia, my one faithful reader, even though she probably already knows everything that's gonna be in here before she reads it, lol), here's what's going on in my life.

So I took my first steps today entering into the grown-up world. They may seem insignificant to anyone else, but I feel like it's a big deal. I'm talking about apartment hunting. Now maybe I only sat in front of my computer and looked at Rent.com for 15 minutes, but I still feel like that's a big step towards becoming an adult. It made me feel adult, anyway. Although maybe it didn't, because according to all of the signs we saw on the way down to Florida on Spring Break, "adult" only refers to the dirty sex shops that you see along the interstate. See I'm not talking about dirty interstate sex-shop adult, I'm talking about 9-5-no-more-homework-live-on-my-own adult. There's quite the difference there. So my plan thus far has been come graduation (on May 10th), I will move back home for a little while, work at my summer job that I've had since summer 2005 (Jay-Randolph Developmental Services where I work with young men who have physical and mental disabilities) for a month or two, and then move to Indianapolis for the rest of the time until I would go to grad school in the fall of 2009. Why Indy, you ask? Well, because I like to think that there will be more opportunities to find a job in a city of almost 800,000 people rather than in Smallville (Winchester) with a gigantic population of about 5,000. Also, maybe I'm just out to prove to myself that I can survive on my own. Granted, I'm sure I won't be entirely financially independent, as I will have to start paying off my student loans until I enroll in grad school. Also, my grandparents and cousin will probably be right around where I end up living, so help won't be too far away. But in a way, I'll feel like I'm on my own. This adult world is a scary place. You have to do things like maintain a budget, pay rent, go to work at the same time everyday, go to bed at a decent hour, and (shudder) do your own taxes. But I guess it won't be so bad. I'll only live in the Grown-Up World for a little under a year (if all goes according to plan), and then I'll be whisked back to the magical world of higher learning, where I can hide in Academia and not actually grow up, as I told a friend recently. But maybe, just maybe, I can be ready for Grown-Up World, if only for a little while.

Insomnia

So I'm not sure why this is happening or what I can do to stop it, but I can't sleep. I've been sleep problems for a few months now, but in the last few days I've discovered that even when I am physically and mentally exhausted I cannot lay down and go to sleep. This past Monday I only got 2 hours of sleep that morning. I thought for sure that in the break between my 9am and 2pm class that I would be able to take a nap like I usually do. Nothing. I laid down, and I just couldn't fall asleep, even though I was exhausted. Then that night (last night) I felt sure that I would be able to go to bed and sleep for a while. I laid down at 11pm and tried to go to sleep, only having had 2 hours of sleep before. Still nothing. I laid in bed for probably an hour and a half before I got up and read some and played a computer game. I then feel asleep around 2:30am. I don't know what's wrong with me. Even now, when I had about 5 hours of sleep last night, you would think I would be so tired that I would just go to sleep. But that's not happening. Whatever is going, I am fated not to go to dreamland, at least not for very long. Maybe I should become a nocturnal crime-fighter like Batman. At least then I'd have something to do with the time during which I couldn't sleep. But I'm out of shape and I have no money to buy expensive Bat-planes and such, so that probably a no-go on the Bat-idea. Oh well. I'll figure something out.