The purpose of this post is twofold:

 1) To let my audience know that I have not forgotten about them, despite having put my blog in the backburner for the past few weeks.

2) To nullify the popular assumption that Geology is the easiest of all physical/natural sciences.

Spring semester 2008 came to a close about two months ago, and this prospect was met with great enthusiasm and excitement as many of my High School buddies arrived home from their distant campuses, rampant parties, and overwhelming schoolwork. Those three ideas are inextricably linked to form a formula for failure. Living away from home allows you to attend parties without the fear of parents smelling booze on your clothing when you get back home at 3 am, and the amount of brain cells you kill after one party would naturally make any task overwhelming, especially schoolwork. Perhaps that’s why they’re not on the Dean’s List.

I, fortunately, or unfortunately, as some of my friends would say, don’t have the “luxury” of going to parties. I live only fifteen minutes away from my campus and take classes back to back, typically on Tuesdays and Thursdays, depending on whether the classes I want to take fit into the timetable. When I’m finished with all my classes, I either drive straight back home, or go to work if I’m scheduled that day. Even with my rigorous school and work schedules, I have had no problems managing my time, even when I had three papers to write, two exams to study for, and a presentation to prepare for.

This all changed when I took Geology this summer. Like many naïve students, I’m sure, I signed up for Geology thinking that it would be a nice and brisk way to get my science general education requirements out of the way. Even better was that it was being offered during the summer, meaning I could take only one class, focus on it, and get it out of the way. Oh man oh man was I wrong. Never have I felt more stressed over assignments, more anxious about quizzes, and more fearful of tests. It’s truly amazing that only one class can cause so much grief. I don’t know if my anxiety is a result of taking it over the summer, considering that a whole semester’s worth of information is being forced down my throat in the course of five weeks, or if it’s because my mind can’t comprehend the super complicated concepts of our Earth’s processes. I like to think it’s a little of both.

It’s not just rocks. It’s river channels, mountain building, plate tectonics, coral reefs, deep sea trenches, volcanic formations, islands, the composition of the Earth’s crust, the four spheres, earthquakes, ocean basins, etc. each with their own chapter dedicated to describing even the most subtlest of nuances for each process.

You would think that we would be looking at rocks in boxes, right? That’s what I thought. Wrong. We actually go out to the field, to local rivers, creeks, beaches, poison ivy infested forests, and mosquito-ridden swamps. During the regular semester, students would never dream of going outside. To be fair, if I were a Geology major, or even a major in any psychical or natural science, this summer session would be a wet dream come true. I can’t say that I haven’t learned a lot in the class, and that it hasn’t opened my eyes up to just how complicated our planet is. I mean this is the definition of a liberal arts education, right? I just wish I could have experienced the class without the anxiety and fear.

I have always considered myself different than most students in terms of how I view grades, but it takes a class like Geology where there’s a strong likelihood that I may get a C, and that’s only if I’m lucky, to realize that I may not be so different than the typical student after all. Eh, the most important thing is that at the end of the day, I tried my best, learned some stuff on the way, and definitely know that I want to stay as far away from Geology for a career as possible.

Now you know why I haven’t been keeping up with my blogs regularly. That will change soon. But I have to say, I’m beginning to grow tired of politics. People are always going to believe what they want to believe, and the same goes for me. I mean my blog’s title is a paradox! It’s a human tendency to be subjective in our beliefs. I wish to keep an open-minded approach to the way I view politics, but when people tell me that they do not want to vote for Obama because their friends have told them that he is the antichrist, my faith in humanity diminishes a little bit more. Oh well, I’ll save topics like these for other blog posts, but I don’t think I’ll have a blog dedicated to politics as I originally planned anymore. I still have to focus on one topic, though, or else I’m going to go back to my random rambles. Maybe videogames? Film? Both? Interesting.