Writing Class, Post-Secondary

Well, I handed in my assignment for that creative writing class. We were supposed to write one to two page(s) using one of the following initial sentences:

1.The most frightening person in my childhood was...
2. If I were prime minister...
3. Whenever I find myself in a pensive mood I remember...
4. Place? I’ll give you a “place”. The most affecting place in my life is...
5. Was I anxious to grow up?
6. If I ever get a chance to avenge myself upon X...
7. Another letter from the Emperor!...
8. Hey? Don’t ask me nothin’! Like, hey, man – what do I know about...
9. The person I wish I could bring back is...
10. School, school, school, I wonder if....

We were supposed to put each sentence in the middle of a blank page, and write down any connecting thoughts that jumped to mind, then choose a series of connections and write a page without thinking.

Well, I did do that connections thing, and I got 21 stories out of it. Here are most of them:

-A person thinks everyone should be free, but also puts down utilitarian laws against certain harmful people, confusing the philosophy.
-Magical forest gets cut down but person still comes to it's remains.
-A crippled ex-athlete teaches a new person how to play.
-A veteran teaches a prospective soldier of the horrors of war.
-A kid gets bullied, gets revenge, gets in trouble.
-A soldier slays a noble dragon and regrets it.
-A political figure tries to cauterize a plague infestation.
-A guy doesn't know how to advise his friend about girls.
-A great mime is asked about the murder of a mime.
-Wants revenge against a person who desecrated his homeland
-Wants revenge against a person that harmed him.
-Wants revenge against a person that harmed a loved one.
-A person moved away, gotta bring 'em back.
-Work toward stopping a disease/accident.

I eliminated a few options, and this is the most intact list I have. If I wanted to find them all again, I'd have to go over my rough notes and re-analyze the plots out again.

The difficulty I had was, I didn't feel I had enough knowledge in any of the departments to write an actual story on one of them. And the stuff I did know about were too personal for me to want to present to the public with my name attached.

My end story was pretty bad, if I do say so myself. It's a plot class, but it focused almost solely on characterization. It was all I was comfortable with doing. The plot itself was cliched and overdone, plus it wasn't one of the ones I got using the method. Also, even though I worked on this project consistently all week, none of my work counted toward the creation of the end product, and I was still almost late.

I have confirmed my classroom size, however. There are three students, including me. I was the last one to post. It's evident that both of these classmates are already graduates from this school and at least have an extensive knowledge of play scripts (it's an acting school, primarily). I'm at the highest disadvantage, and since I published my story, I've been too embarrassed to return to the forum.

And it's that time of year again... The time to apply for university. Well, not really. It's past the deadline now. But people feel like this is the appropriate time of year to put the pressure on me to apply. But I can't do that unless I get some official to tell me that my grade average is good enough to get in, and that they're still accepting applications, or else nobody will shell out the $300 application fee.

Thing is, when I applied for university the first time around, I thought I had a high enough grade average to get in. I thought I was told that you only needed 6 “M” or “U” courses with an average above 70%, and that the average between those selected courses was how they judged your total average. It's true, they had me fill out a form selecting six courses, and I applied to the universities that had the lowest expectations, but I was refused by each one.

Applying as someone who is not a mature student, but still outside of high school is a bit different. They don't have you fill out that form, but I know they don't negate your high school grades until you are a mature student. So that's worrying, because my grade average for just 11 and 12 isn't good enough to get me in. And my average over the course being a high school student is DEFINITELY not good enough.

And there's reason to think that it's your full average that is taken into consideration, too, because everyone was always making sure to drop courses before the course drop deadline. Because if they didn't, the failed course would be put on their transcript, which would hurt their chances of getting into university.

I could apply for college. The deadline for that is not over, and the application fee is cheaper. And they say that you can get into college with only a high school diploma. And the graduation percentage is higher in college. I only tried for university because I was taking university courses. And I was only taking university courses because they were harder than college courses, and I wanted to be living up to my full capacity.

In the US, I believe that college and university are interchangeable words. I think that's probably a good thing. There's no real reason to segment them, I don't think. It just complicates things. I can't say I really know the difference between a college diploma and a university one. Every course you can take in university, you can take in college, and vice-versa.

And what's up with application fees?! You shouldn't have to pay to APPLY for a position! That doesn't make any sense!

And what happens with Katimavik if I apply for post-secondary? If I do get in, I don't want to just pass it up on the chance I get into something else. But I don't want to shell out money for something I'm going to dump if I get into another program.

But I'll tell you something... These post-secondary forms used to blast my mind to smithereens... Now they're nothin'. After those Katimavik forms, these are a breeze.

And why do they call it post-secondary? First you have elementary, then you have secondary... then... post-secondary? Shouldn't it be tertiary? Why dumb-down the term used for the most intelligent level of education?

Hey, you know what I discovered recently? You know how I was asked to mentor someone from the children's class by a blackbelt that had achieved sensei status at my dojo? Well, that child was the blackbelt's son. So... honoured!