We made it!

I have finished taking all my finals. All that's left now is to pack up and move out.

This has been an interesting semester for me. My patience has been tried. I feel a little stronger, a little braver, and I feel humbled. This semester certainly has broken me down a few times to the point where I couldn't fix things all by myself and I had to ask for help.  It has never been that I feel too good for the help of others, simply that I don't want to put them out by requiring their assistance.

Many of my relationships with people have been strengthened, and others I have seen the need to work harder for.

As this school year draws to a close, it has really stirred up feelings in me that are unexpected.  For the past few months I have been feeling the senioritis big time, and I'm only a Junior.  I have felt anxious to be done with school. I've been so sick of classes and homework, and the dating life in Utah (which is impossible for me). There's things: people, places, events, that I just want to leave behind. But as the end of this week has gotten nearer and nearer, I have been realizing that I really do only have one year left, and that it's not all entirely a good thing.

My best friend in the whole world, Marqi, and I have only known each other for a little over a year. In that time we have hardly been separated. We both keep saying how we only have a few more days with each other until we're separated for summer. It makes us both sad, but I believe that the real reason we're sad is that we know that in a year's time, we will be feeling this same way, only I won't be coming back after summer. The goodbyes we say this week a just a preview of the things we'll be feeling next year.

In addition to Marqi, I have really become close to a lot of the professors and staff members in my department.  I'll have to say goodbye to them as well next year. It's hard when they've had such a big impact on my life. Not just through their lectures, but through the relationships we've built outside of class as well.

So while I am moving out of my apartment this week, I will be happy that I have one year left. Only one more year of classes and tests. One more glorious year I have with my friends. And you can be sure that next year I will soak in every moment, and take as many pictures to preserve the memories as I possibly can.

Here's my problem with pop culture:

Pop culture itself isn't the problem. Those who subscribe to it are.

Let me explain.  While they are very mainstream, and I don't like them as people, music artists like Lady Gaga and Kesha have found their way onto my Zune (for those of you unfamiliar, Zune is Micrsoft's response to the iPod) because their songs are catchy and I enjoy them.

I also have a number of other artists in my music collection, many of them I doubt any of my friends have even heard of.  I like A Fine Frenzy, Kate Nash, She and Him, Eel, The Knocks, and The Like just to name a few.  Their's is music I really love and really fits my personal style.

So here's the problem then...many people are just sheep following the masses.  If it's on the American Top 40 they like it, and they also make no attempt to discover their own taste in music.  Here's an example. When I was 11, I LOVED ABBA music. Loved it. Granted, it had already been discovered by many other people...in the eighties...when I hadn't been born.  Years later when I got to college, a movie called Mamma Mia was released, a movie based on the music of ABBA. Suddenly all of my friends were into the music I had been obsessed with and gotten over years before.

This pattern has repeated throughout my life.  My problem with pop culture is that it determines what people are interested in rather than people choosing for themselves what they are interested in and determining pop culture.