Today I woke up wondering when the point in my life came when I decided I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a cowboy anymore. Before you chuckle to yourself, think about it. We all had endless imaginations as kids and then one day… BAM all you can think about is what obstacle of life you have to tackle next. It’s crazy when you realize it. Why can’t there be room for both? Maybe it’s the school system, maybe it’s our parents, or maybe it really is just life.
There’s always that one kid in high school, keeping to himself, never feeling that he could amount to anything, but it could be simply because of the current structure of society. The basic outline of the typical person from today’s standard is: go to school K-12, continue your education in college or further to get a well-paying job, pay back your school loans with said job, get married, have kids, and continue working to put them through the whole cycle. Obviously there’s exceptions to this, not everyone follows the same path. But this is what is deemed as “successful”. It’s sad, really, that money is the hypothetical ball and chain that is the root of may people’s issues. A quote that has stuck with me is: “What if the cure for cancer is trapped inside the mind of a person that can’t afford an education?” - Unknown Realistically, I am only in school because I am following that aforementioned path above. If I could, I would still ride out in the Wild West, hang out at saloons, and search for gold. Woody was my favorite character from Toy Story. If you’re a Buzz Lightyear fan leave the site now. Sadly, no place like that exists, and if you’re not working, you’re freeloading. Don’t get me wrong, I love the opportunity I have to be at a great university so far away from home but school is draining. The closer I get to graduation, the more I look forward to the day I close my last biology textbook. I do feel I have done decently well at keeping a strong creative spirit and imagination. The day I become the business man, working a 9-5, only to come home already dreading work the next day, is the day I book a ticket to a remote island. Sometimes you have to sit and think back to what inspired you to draw those scribbles that only you saw as an epic battle between a shark and a t-rex. We weren’t meant to be slaves to paper and coin.
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Ever think back to a time where solely one decision you made completely changed your life? I still remember the day I submitted my application to transfer to UCF. I was just sitting around my house and my mom casually said “hey, I’m applying to jobs in Florida. I think you should apply to some schools down there.” At the time I didn’t take it seriously but the more I thought about it, I got more excited thinking about living in Florida. I never lived outside of New York and New Jersey. Jersey sucks. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Screw it, I applied.
The funniest part about me ending up here is that I only came across UCF by searching “schools in Florida with late application dates.” It was June at the time. I didn’t tell a single person, I didn’t want to jinx it. That next month I waited, and waited. Not going to lie, I began doubting the decision (not that I had any commitment) but I started thinking irrationally. “Don’t gators come out of toilets down there?” “I heard hail there is pretty bad.” Worst case scenario, I didn’t mind my original university, I just felt trapped. There was only 3,000 students. My high school only had 600 less students. July was ending and my mom decided to not take any of the jobs. Then August came. That little application status on the site changed from pending to accepted. i kid you not I can’t remember a happier time in my life. Maybe when I got accepted to college the first time. I contemplated it for the next few days and made my decision. That Tuesday I booked my flight for that Wednesday. No one knew I had even applied to another school at this point. So what do I do? I announced my transfer on Twitter. The amount of “WTFs” I got following that tweet was unreal. On top of that, telling people my flight was at 10AM wasn’t any easier. I didn’t care I had to do it for myself. You gotta live a little once in a while. My first time in Florida was two weeks before, mind you. Never Orlando. Pretty sporadic, I know. Thinking back now, if I stayed at my other college I would have been looking forward to the end of college. It was in Chester, the second worst city in America, and I was only 30 minutes away from home. Now, I’m at the second most populated school in the country in Orlando. People vacation here. I’ve only had a few friends visit me but every one of them has asked how I get anything done here. My answer is always “very difficultly.” It could be due to the fact that I’m running off three hours of sleep for Entomology, studying for my lab midterm tomorrow. It could be due to the fact that I get asked practically daily why there is a picture of me with a net, fanny pack, and giant beach hat on the internet. Today I thought I would talk about one of the requirements for one of my classes: bug catching. First off, peep the picture below to get an idea of what my attire is like during one of these outings. There’s also a picture under the “Zealot” setting in the heading my site. I look great in both.
Entomology is the study of insects. The ones with six legs. If you ask me why I took an entire class devoted to insects I wouldn’t be able to tell ya. I needed an upper level biology course but I could’ve taken mammalogy. Not that it would be easy by any means but at least I would be handling animals I’ve heard of before (an insect technically counts as an animal). There’s so many bugs out there you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. There’s people who devote their whole lives to these little guys. That’s probably the craziest part to me. If you want a detailed description on how to go about one of these bug safaris continue reading this paragraph. If not, carry on to the next paragraph but you’ll be missing out. You start off by using that giant net you me holding there and gaining in a swift figure eight motion through brussels of grass. Next you swoop it up really quick, squeeze the part of the net closest to the net shut and check out what you got. That’s the boring way. I like to prey on the biggest insect I see running, hopping, or flying around as if I’m a lion in the savannas sneaking up on a gazelle. It’s all about the technique. I wouldn’t say either is necessarily wrong, but mine is definitely more fun. That’s all that matters, right? Once you gather your specimen in the nets you carefully move them into a tube. Now, this tube may have ethanol in it to preserve (you are killing them) for later observation and study. If the insect has soft wings, such as a moth, you keep it alive …until you get back to the lab and freeze it. Then it’s dead. At the lab various pinning techniques are used to observe the bug in your collection. The goal is to get twenty five different species, you get more points if they are from varying orders. It’s a ton of your final grade. Somehow, even after learning so much about insects I can’t say I don’t still swat any mosquito or gnat coming my way. I don’t think those count though. Nobody likes a mosquito. I know this class sounds like all fun and games but when you have to know the insects by there full order, family, genus, and species name it loses the glamour. Let’s just say a butterfly is really called a “butterfly”. There’s even reasoning behind why butterfly is one word and not two, like honey bee is. Wild, I know. As much as I joke about this portion of the class I actually kind of like it. It’s different, I’m not sitting in a classroom for three hours, and I’m learning a lot. Try something new for once, you might like it. Just watch out for velvet ants. Those hurt. A lot. Fall, Autumn, potato, potatto. Does anyone actually say “potatto”? I didn’t even realize it was fall until it was time to start dating all of my assignments as October and not September. What they say about Florida is true: the only months here are summer and spring. That’s cool and all during the winter months but fall is all about foliage, football, and the start of the holidays. Obviously Florida has football and Halloween/Thanksgiving but it’s as if those things just kinda happen here. Halloween is the one thing I will admit is better for warmer weather because of the costume possibilities. Get your head out of the gutter, I’m referring to anyone. Going out trick-or-treating as a kid in the cold sucked. Not that it mattered because I was too excited to get my candy to notice, but as you get older cold weather just becomes one of those things that can be an inconvenience at times.
My costume choices throughout college have been interesting to say the least. Most people my age use the holiday as an excuse to show off (that goes for girls and guys). I’ve been a sailor, a retro 80’s dancer, 12, and Rihanna. The excuse “I lost a bet” applies to that last one. And before you search my name on Google Images, no, there aren’t any pictures on the internet of me in any of these costumes. I made sure of that. Also, I genuinely forget to take pictures of good times I’m having. Personally, my favorite was when I was dressed as the 12 year old. Partly because I got to wear jorts, and partly because I got to wear one of those helicopter hats. I’ve wanted one since I was about five. There was a costume party at one of the local bars that night, with a prize going to the best costume, so that’s initially what got me stoked. The prize was $100, cash. In addition to my jean shorts and helicopter hat, I wore suspenders, tall white tube socks, sneakers, and red/white striped American Eagle shirt. To say the least it was a conversation starter that night; for the better or worse I’ll never know. Inside the bar you saw the usual girls dressed as bunnies or cats, dudes dressed in the first sleeveless costume they came across at the store. My one friend proposed we take a shot for every girl we saw in an animal costume. Terrible idea. That game ended after five minutes maximum. For good reason. I’m the type of person to fully embrace whatever I do, so I was loving the attention I was getting from the hat alone. It was time for the contest and by this point the bar had filled up quite a bit so there was more diversity in the costumes cycling through the bar. As we approached the stage I noticed one kid dressed in a transformer costume he seemingly made himself. “This guy is gonna win for sure,” I thought to myself. He won. If someone put that much effort into their costume you just have to respect it at that point. He wasn’t even going for functionality around the bar, he solely came out to win. The rest of the night carried on as a typical night at the bar would. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that fall is great. Maybe my favorite season. Halloween is awesome. You get to be someone else for a day. Life is too short to take everyday seriously. |
Blurbs:This is where I speak about random life instances that could be a story with something to be gained from. Or, it may simply be that, a story. Archives
November 2016
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