A time capsule

A year ago, I was applying for jobs, trying to keep up with a vlog that I kept finding harder to remain interested in, hoping for good news on my GPA, and playing through Final Fantasy XII after getting frustrated with Metal Gear Solid 2 on Extreme difficulty.  I went to Disney World for a week in May and kept a journal about every day I spent there.

On July 5th, I had my gall bladder out, which had a rather painful week of recovery attached to it, and also necessitated the shaving of my entire chest in order to let the hair grow back in evenly.  The reason I had my gall bladder out was because the doctors pinpointed it as the source of extreme pain I had when I went to the emergency room one day in March.  I had gall stones because of my blood disorder.  After about four days' recovery, we decided to go to Shadow Lake and see what the Red Robin there was like.  I had the chili, and later that day discovered exactly what a migraine did to your entire body.

In the meantime, I remained at home waiting for something to happen when one day I got a phone call from Culver's asking me to come in for a job interview.  This happened no earlier than July 20, four weeks or so before the semester was going to start, and I ended up having orientation but not getting the job.

My GPA came back, and with it came my scholarship information.  I was losing $5,000 (half) of my academic scholarship.  Also, since I didn't find a roommate, Doane was charging me for single-occupant status in the face of a room shortage which basically pushed other students out of getting a room in the dorm they wanted.  My mom suggested that I take a semester off and stay at home until I was at UNL in the spring.  Luckily, this didn't end up happening.



So why am I writing about things that happened an entire year ago?  Because of what's been happening this summer.

This summer, I applied to eleven jobs around Bellevue, am trying to keep up with a vlog that I don't know whether or not I have the energy to do as frequently as I ever used to, went to Virginia Beach for a week in May and kept a journal over every day I was there, got good news on my GPA (a 3.4), and have recently quit playing Metal Gear Solid 3 out of frustration with Extreme difficulty.

Come June 19th, I'll be visiting a hematologist (somebody who knows a lot about blood) to decide what to do about my spleen.  I had an incident of jaundice in January that lead us to discover that my spleen is having trouble regulating my blood, which is, of course, part of my blood disorder.  I'll obviously need surgery to have the thing out, which I've been told will keep me in the hospital for at least a week, and then at home for at least another week.  Of course, this means I'm probably going to be shaved again.  I'm probably most upset about that... I don't know why, though.  I mean, the hair will all grow back, and after that it's not going to be noticeable that I even had my spleen out.

My GPA came back already, as I mentioned before.  It’s actually a great deal higher than I thought it would be at this point.  Of my five classes (Microeconomics, Art of Writing, Mass Media, Aural & Visual Literacy, and German 102), I expected only to get an A in one class, a B in only two classes, and a C in the other two.  Instead, I got an A in two of my classes and a B in the other three.  This resulted in a final GPA of 3.415.  Unfortunately, I already know I’m not receiving scholarships for this upcoming year, which means that I’ll be paying all $17,000 out of loans.  

The only conclusion I can draw about this is that, save a minor change in nouns, this summer is almost completely identical to the last one.  There are no stark revelations to be had; no planned trips to see anybody special; no breaks from the monotony I thought would be broken this year.  I’m being forced to read through the an old chapter of my life once more, and there are no stark differences between this time and the last.  Yes, I have a job now, but I guarantee that I’ll still be waiting for something to happen from now until something does.

William Goldman wrote The Princess Bride in the 1980s, but he did so in a way that made it sound like he wasn’t the author at all.  In his story, he was a sick child when his father first introduced him to the book, written by S. Morgenstern.  When he realized how great of a book it was, Goldman wanted to get it for his son, and after a painstaking search, finally found the original book, and discovered that it was an encyclopedia compared to what his father had read him.  It was the same book, but bogged down with accounts of events that had no bearing on the overall plot of the book, and so Goldman sought to cut out all of the boring chapters of the book and give us readers only the “good parts.”

I’ll bet the original manuscript was full of summers like mine.