A late night diary entry. A stream of consciousness musing at 5 am. 

Dear Bwog,

It’s been another long week and a short weekend. Saturday’s gone, and Sunday’s sunrise is near us. I meant to go to bed a lot earlier tonight, but that didn’t happen. I slept 14 hours last Saturday; I wish I could do that every week. I physically can’t keep up with that “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” attitude, because I’m not functional without 8 full hours of sleep and a cup of coffee. My class schedule will be more lax next semester, though, so hopefully, I’ll get more sleep. Even 10:10 classes are too early for me, honestly. I wish I could be a morning person but I’m so much more productive and alert at night. Is that so wrong? Why does our society covet morning people so much? What about us night owls?

I was at 1020 earlier, as expected. I saw a lot of friends, some enemies, people I wanted to see, and people I didn’t want to see. Typical of 1020, you know. The person I most wanted to see wasn’t there, though. It’s okay, I still had fun. Before that, I was at a random EC party that Idris brought me to. I haven’t gone to one of those in a while, and I forgot how stuffy and smelly they get. I didn’t enjoy it much at all. We left almost immediately after we entered, even though we walked many blocks to get there.

Personally, I don’t think I’d want to live in EC as a senior. Sure, it would be cool to have a suite with my friends, but I’m not about screaming people all up in my space every weekend. I’m a huge Woodbridge person, myself. My lottery number disagreed, though, and I’m in Nussbaum next year. I’m okay with it though; Omar and I have a nice walk-through double on the 5th floor. I think that’s high enough to not have rats and low enough that the slow elevator shouldn’t annoy us. It’s like a Streeteasy ad! We have a private bathroom, we’re right next to the kitchen, and there are only eight people in the suite. I’m frankly quite excited. Anything to leave McBain! This building is absolutely disgusting and I’m so tired of being in this shaft. I miss sunlight.

Today was a sun-filled day, though. I went to bed a lot later than I expected last night, too, because of a spontaneous trip to JJ’s with Nino. I had two eggs over easy with some guac, and a thing of cold fried chicken. He had a quesadilla and some chips, I think. CNN was on, showing me some depressing news that I didn’t want to see, so I was staring at the bottle of ketchup on the table, thinking about how many grams are in a tablespoon and how many tablespoons are in a bottle of ketchup. I never reached a conclusion, because I can’t do math like that in my head. I wish JJ’s had the Heinz ketchup again. You know, the kind that supposedly has corn syrup and is bad for you. It just tastes better, in my opinion. But health or whatever, I guess.

Anyway today I woke up later than expected and went to Columbus Circle to buy a wristlet from the Columbia Free & For Sale Facebook group. I dropped and broke my phone on Thursday night and wanted an extra layer of protection: something more to put my phone in than just my flimsy case. The glass on my screen was intact after I dropped it, but it just wouldn’t turn on. I was pretty upset about it. I couldn’t study very much for my Greek quiz on Friday morning because I was trying to figure out a solution and talking to Apple’s customer support. I ended up doing horribly on the quiz, and I’m sad. The actual GPA component is a part of it, but I just want my professor to be proud of me, and she would not be proud of that grade. I am ashamed.

On Friday, I stopped by the Apple store on the Upper East Side and they told me my phone’s done for good and I needed a new one. They actually even specifically said that it wasn’t a screen problem, even though their diagnostic said “no issues” (with the phone itself). The guy at the Genius Bar pointed to “water damage” in my charging port and told me that’s why. So then why does the diagnostic say no issue? Anyway, I went to a guy in midtown who fixed my computer before, and he told me my screen is broken. Which makes sense: everything else was fine, according to the Apple diagnostic, but the screen wasn’t turning on. He fixed it in 15 minutes, and now I have a phone again. Nino came with me all the way to midtown because he’s great.

Then, with my newly functional phone, I went to Rachel’s birthday celebration. She’s turning 22 in a few days, which is super exciting. My beautiful mother! The only EC party I enjoyed. All my favorite people were there, from Bwog and NYU Local alike. We got some cute pictures that I will post on Instagram on her actual birthday.

So then today, I went to brunch with Allison. Or rather, we meant to go to brunch and we ended up having a very late lunch at 3 pm. We went to a Chinese dry pot place near Bryant Park and it was great. I told her that we can’t talk about job or career-related things today because it’s a low-stress day. The sun was shining, the temperature was perfect, and the dry hot pot was really good. Then we went to a Le Pain Quotidien nearby and did homework. I wrote a Bwog post, and worked on my Latin final paper a bit. I really did not think I would be writing a 12-15 page paper on Augustine a year ago when I was reading him for LitHum. I love that he says in Confessions that he was less tempted by Greek pagan stories because Greek is harder to learn. I totally relate. I love those “sinful” literatures that Augustine is ashamed of having enjoyed in his youth, though. I’m not a big Aeneid person myself, but I’m all about Ovid and Catullus. Augustine would be scandalized.

But being a Classics major at Columbia, I have to learn Greek. Although it’s hard and I’m absolutely horrible at memorizing principal parts, I’m glad it’s a requirement, in a way. I did take three years of Greek in high school, but I restarted at Intensive Elementary Greek last semester in order to build a more solid grammatical foundation. I really feel like my Greek has improved a lot; I understand the grammatical and syntactical structures of the lines in Homer in ways I didn’t in high school. Going back to the basics was a good idea, even if I had to take one more semester of Greek here for it.

I’m really excited for this Greek lyric poetry directed reading I will be doing with Finn next semester. Fortunately, our schedules worked out well for it, and I love Greek lyric poetry. It will certainly be challenging, but I expected nothing less when I came to Columbia to study the Classics. I much prefer poetry over prose in both Latin and Greek, because of the nuances and meanings that are packed into every line. I love the kind of detailed analysis that poetry allows. (Not that prose doesn’t allow it; I just think poetry is rhetorically more interesting.) My other option for a Greek class next semester would have been a prose class, and I’m glad I will have the chance to study poetry in-depth for my last semester of Greek here.

I have pretty solidly defined areas of interest for Classics, but I feel like I don’t for French, my other major. I also enjoy French poetry for the same reason I enjoy Latin and Greek poetry, and I like literature, but that’s so broad. I thought last semester in Intro to Literary Studies I that I didn’t like medieval literature, but I changed my mind a little after taking Eloquent Animals in Medieval Literature this semester. I like the fables and fabliaux; I just don’t like the knight stories (King Arthur etc.). Just a personal preference. I wish I could take the Molière class next semester, but it conflicts with Latin prose composition, which I have to take next semester.

My registration was an absolute nightmare, but I’m too tired to get into that. That can be another rant that I may post on Bwog, but it will be less Youngweon-centered. This website it called Bwog dot com, not Youngweon dot com. This diary entry is okay to write because we talked about it during meeting and agreed that I would do it because a commenter apparently thinks I should keep a diary and that it would be “virtual panacea” for all my negative emotions or something. Well, dear reader, I do in fact keep a diary. Aside from Bwog, I mean. I have a physical diary that I write in. It’s leather bound, made in Florence. I bought it at a Barnes and Nobles in Boston in 2014 for about $36. It’s very thick and really nice. My deepest darkest secrets since my junior year of high school are all in it. I know many of our readers think I need help or I’m crazy or whatever, but trust me, dear Bwog, I’d be a lot more insane if I didn’t have my diary. I would share the contents of that diary with no one, not even Bwog.

Sometimes I feel like my identity at Columbia has become too focused on Bwog, but it’s honestly too late to fix that. When I write my senior wisdom in two years, my “claim to fame” will be Bwog. (Not sure if I’m “famous” but whatever.) I honestly don’t know what else people know me for except this. That might sound bad, but I’m fortunate to have found my niche here in something I love. It’s not always easy; in fact, it’s really hard a lot of the time. A lot of this is confidential, of course, but something I can share here is that our Instagram hasn’t been doing so well this past week. I’ve been too busy and tired to produce high-quality content, and especially with my phone breaking on Thursday, I haven’t been the best Social Media Editor that I can be. I want to finish the semester strong, though, and I got a great funny picture earlier tonight that I can post tomorrow. I’m already excited to share it with our followers.

I miss Finn and Amara a lot. My transition onto the editorial board would have been easier if they were here to help me out, but I can always chat with them on Facebook, so it’s not so bad. Imagine if it were the 90’s and I had to call them or write letters or something. I did send them postcards, though, because snail mail is cool.

I meant to go to yoga today but that never happened. I go once a week, on Tuesday afternoons, with Elsie. We get out of our 2:40-3:55 classes, meet up on a corner, and walk over. I always feel so peaceful after yoga and it helps me be more active than I would be otherwise, so it’s been great for me physically and mentally. I also love spending time with Elsie and having this be a part of our routine. We roomed together last year, so it’s weird to spend so much time with someone and then suddenly not see them much at all (because she lives in Greenborough this year). We go to yoga, then Ferris, and part ways. I hope we can do something like this next semester too.

Well, dear Bwog, I don’t know who would literally read this whole 2000-word rant about my life, but if you made it this far, I hope you enjoyed my late-night musing. Just a diary entry of a CC sadgirl at 5 in the morning. I should really sleep.

sad people in CC via Bwog Archives