Poisoning pigeons in the park

Spring is almost here, people. In the two weeks I was off of work and school, the time completely changed. On Thursday morning I went to work and by the time I was on the train between La Défense and St. Cloud, it was full-on daylight. I can still see the monuments obviously, plus the domes of the pantheon and Les Invalides. What doesn't make any sense to me is that if I remember correctly, when the time changes in the fall at home, it gets brighter in the morning and darker in the evenings. Right? We move the time back one hour, and then what it looked like at 8 am becomes what it looks like at 7? Here I think it gets darker and lighter in both directions -- during the winter the sun comes up at 8-ish and goes down at 6-ish, in the summer it comes up at 7-ish and goes down at 9-ish. Essentially, it makes no sense.

SFSU finally posted the summer school schedule, and let's just say I'm less than pleased. For one thing, this whole summer school venture was created by the head of the journalism department, who told me to take reporting last summer and then magazine writing this summer. Well, magazine writing isn't being offered this summer. There are only 3 journalism classes compared to last summer's 6. At least there's an advanced writing class, feature writing, which is the requirement I need to fill. I won't graduate with the magazine sequence, but whatever. Feature writing covers magazine writing (it's all long-form) and then I'll take contemporary magazines and get enough practice there. The other class I need to take is something about politics for GE. I wanted to take the women's studies class but the time doesn't work. I would have class every morning which is no good if I want to work. So instead I'm going to take the lame American politics class online and not even worry about going to campus.

I am really not ready to go back and buckle down. It's my senior year. I need to take these classes, I need to get some sort of internship. But I still need my job? Can I find a paid internship? I would feel really weird asking my mom to finance my clothes and entertaining so I could get an unpaid internship. Especially after three years of supporting myself there. I dunno. Second semester I want to take the news bureau class (in lieu of writing for the school paper) again, so I can do writing and fact-checking and stuff for real Bay Area papers and get some experience there. I've pretty much accepted that I'm going to stay in San Francisco for a little while after graduation. And actually, I'm okay with it. Unless some magical job opens in New York, I think it would be worth it to cultivate myself a little bit in a smaller market, then move to New York and hopefully be in a graduate program so I won't have to be full-on working in New York. I'm really going to try to visit Matt in New York this next year, if only so he can take me to NYU to talk to the journalism department. And stand in line to get into a taping of The Daily Show, of course. That's about all I want to do.

Other than that stuff, my first week back in grind went pretty well. Only five more weeks of work, four and a half if you count the day after Easter. In my American civilization class on Tuesday, this guy passed me a note (in English) with his email address(es), saying he wasn't sure if I spoke French or not but he wanted to "keep in touch." Before class, two girls standing about 10 feet away from me were whispering to each other and I thought I heard my name, but I always think I hear my name. Then this guy went up to them and whispered too, and I heard my name again. Woo look at the American girl! I feel like a zoo animal. Anyway, I think that's how he got my name. And you can never really tell whether people want to date you or practice their English, but I'm pretty sure this was the former. I showed the note to Keisha and told her it was from some gangsta in a fuzzy-hooded jacket, and immediately she goes, "Oh, honey, no." My thoughts exactly. I really like taking that class and my translation class, but I do get the feeling that the French students are a little territorial. Which is bullshit because Laetitia (French girl at SFSU) was always having these deep conversations with professors about whatever dumb poem we were reading and it wasn't fair to wonder what the hell she was doing there if she already knew French. Besides, I've learned stuff in American civilization that they would have never told us in America. Like we're full of religious nuts and think we're god's gift because we were founded by crazy Calvinists.

So there you go. I'm not a circus freak.