Friday Stream of Consciousness

So it's Friday, there's a foot of snow on the ground, and I'm going to the Feve for happy hour. Then I'm going to go home and write a paper and go to bed. Because everyone knows that cheap cocktails are conducive to paper writing. I know this because my friend Cynthia told me.

I like Cynthia a lot. We both have best friends who are abroad, both are learning how to write grants, both have frustrations with Oberlin boys. She comes over to my apartment and we sit on my couch and do homework and talk about how stupid boys are and do homework and talk about how much the people in our classes who seem to be majoring in acting pretentious suck and do homework. She is frustrated that there are no good boys here, and I am frustrated because there are plenty of good boys here but no good men. And she makes me laugh and I make her laugh and at moments like those I think, "I should be a stand-up comedian."

Because sometimes I feel like everything I say is part of a comedy show and I get to where I'm going laugh-a-minute. It's a defense mechanism I've developed to mask academic incompetence. No one wants to be in a group with the girl who loathes SPSS and doesn't remember anything from statistics, but everyone wants to be in the group with the girl who cooks big pots of soup for the group and finds humor in stressful situations and is really really good at answering e-mails. The other day in my adolescent psych lab I was giving a presentation, and seriously considered starting with "I just flew in from Firelands, and boy are my arms tired!" What?!? I didn't probably because I'd just been in the Student Union and not in Firelands and because it wasn't a presentation about bad jokes it was about national surveys and why didn't I make a powerpoint so people could focus on that instead of the fact that I was wearing the same clothes I went to the gym in earlier in the day.

But it all turned out well and I think I made people laugh for the right reasons and I remembered that there isn't much market for a straight, shy, female comedian. At this point, I guess I'm counting on charisma and networking to get me a job. But lord, ain't it hard.

And after my meeting with my grant-writing teacher today, who indicated that she thought I was fairly competent today, I went home to my apartment and did some homework but first ordered makeup online, because everyone knows that owning slate grey nail polish and eyeshadow called "Swimming Pool" will get you far in life.

And I'm going to the Feve for Happy Hour with Cynthia and I'm gonna write a paper and it's Friday afternoon.