Rising out of the sadness

I’m HAPPY! I’m happy I’m happy I’m happyyyy.

That doesn’t sound like a very happy song, right? In fact…it’s a very, very sad one. But I want to focus on the part of the song where he’s so earnestly trying to fix you.

It’s that part where you know that no matter how down you are, somebody is there to lift you. I’m feeling lifted right now. I’m feeling happier than I have felt in weeks.

It’s the first time since I started writing Controlled Derangement that I haven’t been able to write about my sadness. Maybe I didn’t want to make you guys too scared of all my angsty poetry 😉 I’m not sure why I hid from my own blog. I promised myself never to apologize for anything I wrote. And for when I didn’t write, so this is not an apology. Just an acknowledgment that I avoided writing about sadness and I avoided talking about it with my closest friends too.

But, like I said, lately, I’m feeling a lot happier. Not because I “talked about it” or anything, BUT because I’ve found somebody that lifts my spirits. A voice that makes me happy. Even when we’re talking about completely nonsensical things.

I finally feel like I can conquer all things again, and honestly, ever since I got my less-than-expected LSAT score, I haven’t felt that way. I really haven’t. And as much as I know I have friends I can talk to, I just don’t want to talk about it.

I’m rambling again, aren’t I? I do that a lot here. I do that a lot in real life too – just talk and talk and talk. You sorta get used to it 😉

I guess what I am trying to say is, just listen to this song. And watch this video now.

I’m happy. Because having somebody paying me just a little bit of attention has revived my confidence a lot more than any amount of pep talks can.

Do you know I should have submitted applications to law school back in November? I SHOULD HAVE. Right after I got my October LSAT score.

Instead I’ve been SO demotivated that I did nothing. And now it’s nearly January. I know deadlines are rolling, but if I’m going to go to law school in September (And I will), then I need to get off my whiney ass and just apply.

Reality check? I mean c’mon, I have wanted to be a lawyer SINCE I WAS IN FIRST GRADE. Legit. Since then. My goal never wavered. I loved it. I’ve interned, I’ve worked in firms, I’ve done all the work a paralegal does. I WANT THIS. It was getting a little hard to remind myself of that for a while, but I remember again.

I will conquer all things.

Back to the LSAT!

The NYU Pre-Professional Advising Office just sent out a batch of e-mails this week, and one of them forwarded a schedule of Kaplan LSAT classes from now till the June LSAT (And for some reason, a little bit after). I’m not taking the LSAT in June but it is good practice regardless, and a reason to wake up and study and get myself into a routine.

Plus, the word “free” in the e-mail title helped.

So here they are, a list of dates that Kaplan will be offering 2 hour long free LSAT prep courses!

• LSAT 10 Question Challenge, Wednesday, 5/30, 7-9pm, Kaplan Headquarters (395 Hudson Street, New York, NY)
• Free LSAT Prep: Logical Reasoning with Jeff Boudreau, 6/5, 7-9pm, Kaplan Midtown Office (131 W, 56th St., New York, NY)
• Free LSAT Prep: Logical Reasoning with Jeff Boudreau, 6/6, 7-9pm, Kaplan Headquarters (395 Hudson Street, New York, NY)
• Free LSAT Prep: Logic Games with Jeff Boudreau, 6/12, 7-9pm, Kaplan Midtown Office (131 W, 56th St., New York, NY)
• Free LSAT Prep: Logic Games with Jeff Boudreau, 6/13, 7-9pm, Kaplan Headquarters (395 Hudson Street, New York, NY)
• Free LSAT Practice Test, 6/19, 6:30-10:30pm, Kaplan Village Office (16 Cooper Square, New York, NY)

YOU CAN SIGN UP FOR THE CLASSES BY CLICKING ME.

Be aware that you might need a University affiliation with either a CUNY (City Universities of New York) or another NYC based private college (NYU, Columbia, Fordham, Pace, etc)

Awesome. I’ll add these dates into my HTC’s calendar so I don’t forget 🙂

Off to do some household chores and kill time, bbl. With another post! Hopefully one that is more in the form of a standard blog entry.

 

xoxo
Pryanka

Catch UP!

Hey everybody!

I’m experimenting with moving Nail Spark* around again. Right now, I’m posting on a Blogger (nailsparks.blogspot.com) but I have no idea what will ultimately pan out. I can’t run two active blogs, I simply can’t. I’ve gotten so overwhelmed with the things I want to say that I end up shutting down and not posting anything at all, and that isn’t fair to the readers of either blog.

I’m going to go back to doing things my way then – slow and steady. The pact I made was that I would never apologize for not posting, because these blogs are like my personal diaries, and if I don’t have time to write in them, then I simply don’t have time and there’s nothing that can be done about it.

That’s fine for Controlled Derangement, which is my personal blog, but that’s not as okay when it comes time for Nail Sparks. A nail polish blogger is only as famous as her followers, and right now, I can’t say that I have too many. Nope, don’t have too many at all. And I want to gain more followers there, but just don’t have the time right now to post actively, blog, do my homework, study for LSAT’s, work, and maintain an internship. IDK what to do yo. There’s a lot on my plate right now.

These dilemmas aside, life is pretty good overall. I’m enjoying my time hanging out with friends, and sometimes, I catch myself with a goofy, silly grin on when reading texts from a certain person. It’s great and I’m happy and I’m all smiles when I’m thinking about that. But then there are times when the reality of my GPA sets in.

Let’s face it….At this time next year, I will know what the next three years of my future hold. I’ll know where I’ll go to law school and I REALLY, REALLY DON’T WANT TO END UP ON LONG ISLAND. I know St. Johns and Hofstra have great law programs – nothing against them at all – but I just don’t want to attend a law school which’ll make me commute from home. I don’t want to end up back home with no freedom after I’m finally 21 and when I’m ready to pursue a real, meaningful, lasting relationship. You can’t do those when you can’t stay out past 10 -.-

Minor details though, hm? Right now, there’s a lot of uncertainty and it’s taking me a while to accept that I don’t know what my future holds. I mean I know the far future – I AM going to be a lawyer. I really will. But the process of getting there…I have no idea how that’ll pan out and that is terrifying me!

I knew I wanted to be a lawyer fairly early in elementary school. I had a brief bout where I wanted to teach but my lack of patience made me abandon that idea fairly quickly. From 2nd or 3rd grade onwards, law is all that I’ve pursued.

I knew I wanted to go to NYU fairly early in high school. NYU was my dream, but I knew it was obtainable. I think I have the ability to step back and rationalize pretty easily when it comes to knowing my limitations. I applied to Princeton and Dartmouth but I knew I would be rejected. I knew I could get into NYU – I had the GPA, the AP scores, and the application. That isn’t arrogance, it’s just knowing where I stood in the application pool. And I did get in, and of course I didn’t get a full ride but I got enough to make that goal of mine a reality.

This is where I’m scaring myself. Right now, here’s the breakdown of what I really have to offer.

An overall GPA of 3.34
I don’t foresee it going up (by much) within the next two semesters, if at all.

Let’s face it. In HS I had a GPA of 4.0 and I still didn’t get into the Ivy’s. My SAT  score wasn’t phenomenal, but it was above average, and that’s probably the only reason I got the money I did for NYU. I also made it pretty clear that I would only attend if I had enough financial aid to make it possible, and that NYU was my dream school.

I came here three years ago all starry-eyed and full of dreams. Thought I’d do great since I’d picked the two majors I loved and a great minor to boot.

Now, here I am as a senior writing pretty bitterly about my love-hate affair with this school.

Do I love my NYU experience as a whole? Yeah, I do.

Would I have gone to another college if I had the choice? I think about it sometimes, and wonder why I didn’t apply to Emory or Loyola or Temple or even University of Michigan. Maybe that would have given me a different perspective, visiting these other colleges and comparing what I could have to what I already knew NYU was like. But overall, I don’t think I’m that unhappy that I wish I could take it back. NYU changed me for the better, and it has left me with too many priceless memories to count.

But if I could have foreseen my current situation (and unhappiness), I WOULD NEVER HAVE DECLARED A MAJOR IN POLITICS AT THIS UNIVERSITY. I should never have done that, and I have been regretting it since the day I took more classes than necessary and couldn’t justify dropping it down to a minor.

I’m now eight classes in at the end of this semester, out of the ten I need to take. I am also completely miserable.

I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed a single politics class at this university. The department has great, renowned professors who are undoubtedly great, charismatic people as well. But they simply cannot teach for shit.

The easy ones…it doesn’t matter, because the TA’s are the ones who grade, and an easygoing professor just means you’re going to do horrible on your papers because the TA will want more specificity than you were given during lectures.

Then there’s Power and Politics in America, quite possibly THE WORST CLASS I HAVE EVER TAKEN AT THIS UNIVERSITY. OR EVER. FROM THE PAST TO THE FUTURE, NOTHING WILL COMPARE TO THE MISERABLE WRETCH OF A SYLLABUS THIS CLASS PROVIDED.

I have a separate rant about that, and I should probably have mobilized my classmates and lodged a formal complaint within the Politics department but I was just so frustrated I didn’t want to deal with the Red Tape and the bureaucracy. So I’ll have my two cents on this here blog, and if somebody wants to tell me to kindly take it down and pursue the matter in private, I will gladly do so. It’s too late now, my grade is what it is and I have nothing left now but to be disappointed and disdainful that yet another politics class has failed me so cataclysmically. I’m starting to sense a pattern. This department SUCKS. Avoid. AVOIDDDDDDDD.

I think my misery is compounded by how glorious, helpful, caring, and GREAT the English department is, especially in comparison to the COMPLETELY CRAPPY Politics classes I’ve had to take.

But then I need to face the facts and realize that my writing skills are nowhere above average on the NYU Scale. Though I may have gotten A’s (or their equivalents) in HS, I’m never going to be an A student here. Everybody is better, and I’m stuck with the B+’s.

Well that isn’t helpful when you’re trying to build back up a GPA that’s been disastrously ruined by the choice of the wrong major.

So overall. I’ve fucked myself over and made the wrong decision, and realized it so late that I can’t take it back. I can only pray and hope that I’ll do well enough on my LSAT to counterbalance my low GPA. I’m sure it can be done, provided I have all the other things in the application package. The extracurriculars, leadership, etc. All of that can’t hurt, right?

So now you understand why I am SO, SO, SO stressed about the LSAT?

I don’t just want to score above a 170.

I need it!

The LSAT Powerstudy Weekend!

This time, I’m not talking about my past weekend, where I probably studied ~15ish hours between Saturday and Sunday.

Nope.

This time, I’m talking about PreProBono, a free LSAT Prep/Study program for college students! They have a couple “Law Weekends” every semester, and this semester, there will be one hosted in coordination with NYU LAW. NYU Law being so close to home, I was tempted to check it out when I saw the program pop up in the Pre-Law ListServ e-mail this morning. I usually trash those – I’ll have to start taking a closer look at them, it seems.

Ready for the power-study part? Here’s the program description, for the weekend at NYU Law. April 21 & 22

Program Schedule:
Saturday:
8:30am – 9:00am Registration
9:00am – 1:00pm Class
1:00pm – 2:00pm Lunch Break
2:00pm – 6:00pm Class
6:30pm – 8:30pm Reception & Keynote

Sunday:
11:00am – 1:00pm Class
1:00pm – 1:30pm Lunch Break
1:30pm – 6:00pm Class
6:00pm – 6:30pm Dinner Break
6:30pm – 9:00pm Class

There is a  $45 refundable deposit but the catch is that you only get the deposit back upon proper completion of the course. That means you’re on time, you stay for all of it, and you take it seriously! I plan on doing all of that anyway, because at that point, the LSAT will be 20 days away.

Damn. Shit’s getting real.

PS. I will, of course, let everybody know how the program goes. And if I get my money back ^.^

LSAT Commitment!

I was extremely iffy about when I was taking my LSAT. After an ensuing period of panic and frantic (omgwtfwhyamidoingthis) moments, I have finally come to terms with it.

The LSAT is a big, bad test. It is harder than the SAT, and I need to get at least a 170 if I want to have a good shot at getting into my dream law schools. If I want to stay in this area (which, due to recent developments, I do), then NYU Law and Columbia Law are really my only two viable choices. I might, however, go to a more feasible law school for a year, maintain a *stellar* GPA and then try to transfer into a nicer college.

That is probably the route I’ll have to take. Since my GPA right now is so crappy.

Le sigh.

But anyway, that isn’t what this post is about!

I’m taking the LSAT this June guys! JUNE 11, 2012, to be exact. THAT’S LESS THAN THREE MONTHS FROM NOW! But you know what, that’s alright. I’ve been studying daily since I made the commitment, and I have three months of solid studying to teach myself how to ace logic games.

So far, I’ve gone through about  50 pages (out of 229) of the Logic Games Bible in the past two days. Not bad for progress, eh?

This past weekend pretty much brought about an end to my short span of Spring Break procrastination haha. I was just in that slump where the sheer amount of work was overwhelming my capacity to get anything done. But now I’m over it and studying my ass off!

Here’s what I plan to finish this break –

[ ] 4 responses (3 pages each) for a Politics class

[ ] The Logic Games Bible

[ ] 1/4th – 1/2 (as much as I can get through) The Logical Reasoning Bible

[ ] At least 2-3 full LSAT exams.

[ ] Grade, comment, reason through mistakes for all the diagnostic LSAT’s taken

[ ] Register for a free exam through Kaplan. Probably for afterwards, once I’ve mastered the Games section more

 

PRODUCTIVITY! COMMITMENT! DETERMINATION! THAT’S WHAT PRYANKA HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT.

And the nerd…is totally back.