twenty-one

I turned 21 on February 3rd. Since then, I have eaten my weight in Korean BBQ, Chinese restaurant randoms, and Mediterranean pasta. I have had both ice cream and mango mousse cake. I have purchased three alcoholic drinks and have been carded once.

Birthday highlights:

- my boyfriend (unsuccessfully) surprising me by showing up after chem lab

- a date with Spago and Dine LA

- cake, margaritas, Apples to Apples, and crying through A Walk to Remember

- realizing that nothing can really top family, food, and spa treatments

I love my birthday. It's my second favorite day of the year (the first is Christmas because in a sparkly match between Christmas and my birthday, Christmas would win). I'm glad I enjoyed my birthday without thinking too much about the consequences of doing absolutely no work. I'm now realizing just how much I have to do this week, and the list is pretty scary: 2 midterms, 2 pre-labs, 2 post-labs, 2 CPR classes to teach, and 1 social event to plan. Which explains why I'm procrastiblogging.

work in progress

4:13am and I just finished my Philosophy of Political Thought paper... almost a full 9 hours before it's officially due. (I should really start taking my GEs more seriously.)

Philosophy is kind of funny. My TA helped me revise my paper and taught me how to "write philosophically." Essentially, we cut all of my sentences in half and crossed out all of the big words that I so carefully chose. I called this dumbing-down of my writing, but she called it philosophical writing. Either way, this paper was strangely difficult for me to write, but I'm happy with how it turned out. I wanted to post it here, but didn't want my plagiarism report to be 100% on turnitin.com. I should actually find out what exactly turnitin.com does because I've never really known.

Anyway, while learning how to write philosophically, I may have started to think philosophically. This paper got me thinking about freedom. About freedom and private property and homelessness and life in general. It made me thankful to have a home (two, actually, if you count my apartment) and thankful to be free to do things like take winter ski trips. Or rather, to not be unfree to do these things - because they are apparently different things. Still working on disambiguating the two.

But maybe that's the thing about philosophical writing. It's so simple that it's difficult, and so difficult in its simplicity that it makes you think about... things. It's a work in progress.