"...so i can be happier, to be safe up here with you" ~ björk

i've just been doing some late night reflecting on the past year.
it eats away at sleep time.

i could easily write a 10 page rant about the amount of personal growth i've achieved but i'll spare you the pain and make it shorter.

let's just say i'm really proud with what i've achieved so far, but (like everybody else) i still have a lot of work to do. i think i need a lil anger management and some more patience (i have it for children) when dealing with ignorance. i'm not necessarily talking about knowledge you find in books, but more of... social consciousness? can i call it that? our awareness of others, their situation and opinions. just a little sensitivity.

being a college student in a private institution, getting caught up in the academic track... it's a different crowd. we're generally talking about upper class citizens: wealthy, heterosexual, caucasian men. it's been difficult keeping true to my roots and offering the knowledge i hold - as a sexual/ethnic minority from a working class family - to deaf ears.

we're selfish beings at heart. we tend to fight for the rights of OUR PEOPLE, with a generally strict definition of that term. we go to college, higher education, reading up on texts spewing the ideology of the dominant culture. it's hard not to become somewhat elitist. i've seen it happen to many of my friends and professors and the value they place on the opinions of the working class. instead of acting upon my rage, i've tried to educate and relay these opions but it's amazing how easy it is for an academic person to claim to understand yet and brush them off as "uneducated" or an "overreaction".

it's fucked up. it sucks. it's emotionally exhausting. and despite my success in this institution/system, i have to spend so much time and effort just talking myself out of giving up. pushing myself again and again, one last budge to stick in there in hopes of one day affecting people in a positive way. sort of like a covert mission to infiltrate the system from within and helping those who have been robbed of the right to a voice and opinion. but i've yet to be satisfied. talking to these so called "educated" people... it's just so disappointing. these are our future researchers (science is heavily ideological), professors, leaders... and they have no clue... so reluctant to listen.

...it's frustrating. enough to make me wanna go out to the backyard and have a freak-out session... scream at the top of my lungs.

i'll wake the neighbors. i'm just gonna go to bed and be upset for a bit. "i'll be brand new tomorrow... a lil bit tired, but brand new" (björk).