It only took two days to read through The City & The City. Getting immersed is not easy when the narrator is operating under a completely different frame reference of your own and then proceeds to not explain it until like halfway through the book. Luckily, I’m very used to jumping into the deep end while reading–an unfortunate result of accidentally starting too many series on the second book rather than the first, because the sequel was the first and only available option and was never clearly marked as such. That’s what reading this felt like.

What’s funny is I remember when China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun came out. I never got to read it (the downtown bookstore is shipping it in for me this week, though), but it had sounded fascinating. I didn’t even realize this was the same author until they mentioned “UnLondon” in the interview section, and that set off a “wait a minute…” line of thought.

I’m still not sure why this particular book was chosen. Was it perhaps to illustrate how properly explaining things helps with your audience? I fail to see how it connects to forming an argument on what you do with the future unless the point is that your actions can have unforeseen consequences. Or maybe it was there just because it was a good book, but that’s not how the education system works, unfortunately.

-Miriam

Finally, we can start The City & The City! I’ve been looking at it with longing for months now, deliberately putting it aside in favor of other books so I could go into it fresh with the other students. Now I can actually read it!

I also need to start on my third-section project. There are so, so many issues that I could tackle as a pharmacist, but I’m going to see about focusing on the immediate issues that I can directly affect: affordability and accessibility for lower-income patients and folks who have severe trouble with maintenance schedules for their medications. I’ll need to start looking for analyses on medication compliance in relation to poverty to start, then go from there.

It’ll certainly be an interesting project!

-Miriam

My essay needs better focus. During my meeting with Professor Relihan, we looked over my essay and determined that I had actually left out the hurdle to be overcome. The essay was more of a list of what I had already done rather than what I needed to do, though I personally felt that since I’m technically mid-process, more background was needed. There’s still no central theme.

Of course, instead of editing it at all during spring break, I just played video games, so rewriting this in under 36 hours should be fun, heh. I’ll need to link my motivations better with my backup plan, make a more concrete point, and actually think about the points of conflict along the way: money isn’t the only issue I’ll eventually face, after all. I’ve had to withdraw from Calc II, round four because I am still not performing well enough to pass, and that’s the current major hurdle.

Onward and upward, then! Time to actually get my ADHD brain to focus on a single thing!

-Miriam

Oh, right! I had to do one of these this week. In between everything that’s been happening, I almost completely forgot, so let’s get this in before the sleep medication knocks me out.

I was planning on organizing the essay chronologically, as that would be easiest on both myself and the audience, starting from a few years back when I originally kicked this plan into motion, going through current day, and fitting in the alternate plans (only a fool has a single plan) as they become relevant. Not only is this easier on the audience, but it lets me re-evaluate the game plan I already have in place. As the storyteller from 1001 Nights tells Scheherezade, “You start at the beginning, get to the end, and then stop,” and that’s generally been the summation of any and all writing I do. Everything else falls into place after that.

Now, organizing sources is going to be tricky. Are we doing this article-style, with no annotations? Are we going to provide sources for our statistics, if any, and in what format? I ask this of the teacher because my career (and point of interest, as I covered in the first unit) depends a lot on those details and statistics.

Honestly, I’m not sure why anyone would…organize an essay on how to get somewhere in any way other than chronologically.

I feel like I may have missed the riddle of the sphinx here.

Till next week.

-Miriam

I though for a moment my numbering was off and had a mini heart attack while looking at my grades. Luckily the syllabus has them numbered!

Anyway, in order to make my Unit II: What Do You Need to Do to Get There? essay a good, strong essay, I will actually need to write more than one really rough, thumbnailed draft before calling it good and turning it in. Doing things last-minute is unfortunately how I work best, it’s just never going to be super polished, and it should be polished if I want to have a good grade.

According to the professor, the fact that I already have a detailed plan of what classes I need to take and what backup plans I have already set in place planned out as well isn’t enough. I’ll need to look into building an interpersonal network, researching if retail is really where I want to go (it is, but the suggestion was worth noting and exploring), and basically trying to expand my plan. For me, this is not easy! I work best last-minute for a reason: trying to focus on the future is extremely difficult due to a lot of personal issues, and I know all too well that planning too far ahead means a greater likelihood that things will collapse unless you have a good series of short-term structures underneath.

We’ll see how that goes.

-Miriam

While we were doing our Unit 1 presentations, I noticed that quite a few of us, including me, were using money as our main motivator. Like, yes, these are things we like doing, but I found that both funny and utterly depressing that money remains such an issue.

I also learned that some people are still confused about the “why”, as a couple people didn’t actually…include that in their presentations. That was actually more disheartening than those of us who were listing financial reasons, because it seems like they don’t actually know why they’re on that path, either because their parents thought it was a good idea or they just…threw a dart at a career dartboard and called it a day.

I’m sure the “how” part will be a lot easier for them (and the rest of us, let’s be honest). It’s just strange how a simple question was completely misinterpreted.

-Miriam

This week we’re doing our presentations on the section “Why Do I Want to Be Where I Want to Be?” and I’m realizing that I haven’t actually made a video in the last, uh…

……..I don’t actually remember. Looking at my YouTube page my last upload that wasn’t a short video of my cat was of me singing and that was five-plus years ago. The last time I tried doing a video entirely from scratch was an AMV that promptly got taken down when I was like, fourteen, and I haven’t tried to do anything since. Hopefully I can get that passion back with this project.

And yes, I am absolutely doing an entire video, from scratch, at the last minute , because there ain’t no motivation like procrastination, and it’s already been a busy year for me.

In case anyone is curious, this is the first video in question. I’ve long lost the AMV since I’ve gone through about five computers since then.

-Miriam

Name: Miriam

This week, I hope to get my thumbnails into a more workable script. The fun part, of course, is that I actually have not edited a video in about 15 years, so I will have to crash-course learning how to do that. A Powerpoint might be more within my skill range, but where’s the fun in that?

I look forward to seeing what my group has done for their projects as well; all of them have interesting goals that I’d love to see them expand upon!

-Miriam

Checking a new tag system for class.