If you frequent my Tumblr, which you probably don’t because why would you?, you would know that the past few days have been a little rough on me. By that I mean, you have probably witnessed me whine whine whine, abusively, on that microblogging platform and/or I’ve bitched to your face in real life. In any case, I really have no excuse.

See, work’s been piling up. I am pretty stressed about my thesis, which is, theoretically, going well in my head. Meaning, there is progress, but only in the level of me thinking about what I want to do, and not really putting things down on paper. I’ve also been designing stuff for people, and because these obviously have to do with other people (hereafter known as clients), thesis and other school activities have been taking the backseat.

But, like I said, no excuse, really. A new sort of technique, I guess, that I have picked up from my daily Google Reader time is this practice that guestblogger on Yes and Yes, Gene, has suggested, which is to make a list of good things about the previous day, despite it being lousy on the whole. This way, you start the new day with a renewed sense of optimism in the vein of, “Well, at least, that didn’t happen.” Because I can’t really blog tomorrow (I think?), here is what the good vs. evil about today:

• I didn’t see the Leonid shower, but now I know what Universal Time is.
• I left my phone in Starbucks, but now I know, for sure (not that I didn’t before), that I have awesome friends.¹
• Our car got hit by a tricycle, but it’s great to know that my dad is waaaay patient, and that I probably should take a leaf out of that Patience Book, and hope that it is genetic.

And so on.

OK, so now, here is where I will post photos from last weekend until today. Just because they also cheer me up despite my “hormonal”² self. Enjoy. (!)

So, I went to this exhibit last Saturday.
It was by my parents’ friend, Reggie Yuson.
He made the pretty stone fountain/sculpture in High Street.

Pretty.

Awesome people are awesome. Paulina + me & me + Eira.
Pardon my face.

Jamie gave me these as a late birthday present. <3

Showing the Christopher Walken cover of “Pokerface” to people in school,
because everyone deserves to see its glory.

Paulina was drawing my profile, so I tried to draw her face.

Then we had a one-minute draw-off.

Workspace in Starbucks this morning.
Banana loaf and a tall Americano with caramel syrup.

Free green tea frappuccino = day got better. <3

And then it was really sunny and really rainy at the same time.
(It’s not so obvious in the photograph.)

Phone found! It came in this plastic bag.
I guess people leave a lot of stuff in Starbucks.

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¹ My friend, Evee, offered to check Starbucks if my phone was still there, because I had class. Then she passed it along to some other friends who passed it along to me! GMH.
² I’m probably not really hormonal, it’s just an excuse for my sucky personality. Plus points if you get that reference.

For my last first day of school, ever (or I am hoping), I decided to document it every couple of hours. I missed a few ~events~ but I guess I did alright. The photo up there is the set I uploaded on Flickr, which you can see by clicking this link: Carina Santos’ Last First Day, 2009.

Today was pretty fun. I met two of my professors, saw a few friends (I didn’t see so many, due to my 3-week hibernation), met up with people regarding design stuff, met up with high school people! Among other things. I also was able to do a little bit of thesis work (which I so desperately need to be doing but am not) and I ate so much crap that my body is like, “What the hell, man?” in whatever accent that so pleases you.

Anyway, my schedule is rough, and all I want to do is both to drink this cup of coffee in front of me, and also to pass out on my bed and sleep. I’ve been wanting a nap since 11:30 this morning.

Also, I’ve said this once, but I’ll say it again: Taylor Swift on Saturday Night Live is the best thing that has happened to my life. I luv this gurl~*~* I am not even joking.¹

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¹ OK, maybe a little hyperbolic. But I love her.

1. School on Monday.
2. I am looking for work. E-mail me if this information is relevant to you: yankee@nothingspaces.com.
3. I should really finish my online portfolio.
4. NaNoWriMo is not going so good.
5. Just because you can be a douche about something, it totally doesn’t mean that you should be. Yes, I am looking at you.

Also, a message for Julian Casablancas: BOO YOU WHORE.

What Ever Happened?

So, today, I stayed in and pretty much panicked the whole day until 4 p.m., which marked the last time that I will ever enlist for classes. It’s pretty frustrating because I’m part of the last batch of students in our year to “pick” our classes for our last and final semester in college. I enclosed pick in quotation marks, because we don’t really get to choose by the time our batch is allowed to sign up. All the good professors will have been taken by then.

I personally subscribe to the belief that what is important is that you get a good professor. Because no matter what time you end up getting, you will have a reason not to skip the class because you actually enjoy going to it. Because of this belief, this is the schedule that I ended up with:

Definitely not an ideal schedule, but I really, really wanted that Comm class. It’s reputed to be the “Buffy class,” and I’d been wanting to take this class ever since I stepped foot in Ateneo. There are rumors that the curriculum will be changed to Dr. Who, which I surprisingly do not mind anymore.

I’ve actually been meaning to write about grades for a while. See, prior to registration, there was the release of grades. And prior to that was the calculation of our class standing. In one particular class, Philosophy of Religion, I computed my grades and came face-to-face with one of my worst nightmares: my very first “D.”

I was devastated. The final oral exams had become optional (due to Ondoy) and I had a choice between attempting to lift my grades up (very unlikely because I pretty much suck at oral exams¹) and sticking with the “D” and accepting it for what it is. I actually set my status message on an instant messenger to some sort of plea to anyone to convince me that a D is not the end of the world. The responses I got were pretty surprising, both in number and content.

One of my friends, a classmate I had for another Philosophy class, shared to me how it was also his first semester to get a D, which shocked me because he was really the only person in our class to get an A. I looked up to him and while talking to him, it amazed me how he was visibly disappointed by the turnout, but also very at peace with the results. Another person also assured me that people still thought I was smart, despite the grade, that I was a “genius” in other areas. (His words, not mine.) Others comforted me and told me that it was O.K. because the teacher I took was what we call a Legend, and that it could happen to anybody. What is important, I was told, is that you learned and you absorbed and you put yourself into it. That’s the most anybody really can do.

I was pretty convinced (but not entirely), so I decided not to take the oral exams, so I could focus on finishing up the rest of the requirements I still had for other classes. And then, I tucked this semester away in a little box, did not really think of it much after and went on with my life.

I mean, I’ve always known the well-worn belief that grades do not determine or measure your intelligence. But this never was true for me until recently. See, I’ve been trying to draw fonts on Illustrator, and after hours of frustrated Failing-At-It, it dawned on me how I actually had an entire subject on Typography last year, how I aced it and how, ironically, I had no idea what I was doing. I did not know how to use the tools, what to call the parts; I did not know anything. It just really took me by surprise.

Then my mind wandered to how I practically failed Philosophy of Religion, but how deeply the class affected me, and how differently I see the world through the things I had been shown by my wonderful professor, and by my awesome classmates — most of whom I can’t really name, or have not said ‘hi’ to — and how learning about hope, actually experiencing hope has helped me talk to certain people more openly and, with more insight, and with more heart. (This is true. This actually happened.)

And this just made me realize that getting an A in something didn’t really mean you knew more about it all the time. That getting a D, just because you said stuff that the professor wasn’t looking for, doesn’t always mean that you “failed” the subject. And this knowledge of how petty it is to care about what I get as a grade, instead of just immersing myself in the text, and in the discussion, and in my own experiences, just made me accept that my (kind of dumb) dream to graduate with honors is probably gone.

But strangely enough, I was O.K. with it.

Even stranger, I got my grades and found that I got a C instead. Which isn’t loads better, but it still is better than I’d hoped. I have no idea how to end this entry, because truthfully, I really am kind of tired from all the panicking and girly trouble, so I’ll just end here and say that the best thing to do is to enjoy what you are learning, and to put yourself into it, because the experience of learning is really all that really matters. Not the grades or the numbers, but what you learn from what you have been told.

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¹ No kidding, I am terrified of oral exams.

For real. It is the worst!

So, I technically only have two days of school left, if I finish everything by Wednesday. Seeing as this is unlikely, I will probably have to go back to school two more times than is necessary. So that sucks for me, because my brain and my body is in full-on sem break mode, I am not even kidding. This semester is probably the only time I will settle for a D as a final grade.¹

In other news: my friend Raymond asked my what my bigger plans are for this website. Seeing as I’ve been updating pretty rarely, and not as extensively as I’d initially planned, I’m going to say that I have pretty big plans, and chalk up the inactivity to schoolwork and other distractions. But for real, please believe me when I say that this is going to be full of stuff you can click on. Mostly because I know how ADHD-ridden our generation is, and because, truthfully, I am pretty wordy and I would like moar hits and a lower Bounce Rate.

Also, in the past week, I ran into friends in real life (?) who have told me that they’d been visiting this crap hole (jk, I love Nothing Spaces) and I just wanted to say that you can actually comment without having to sign up. The field for e-mail is just so that you don’t have to enter it again, in the event of you wanting to comment again. And also, so that it knows that you are not a spam bot.

Aside from my nose pimple, I am happy to say that I’ve finished a 3′ x 3′ painting. It’s nothing special, but I haven’t done anything that huge before. I feel pretty neat. That is all.

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¹ In my defense, it was a philosophy class under Sir Calasanz. If you are/were from Ateneo, you would understand.

Reasons Why I Have Been MIA:

• ONDOY: Ondoy, or Typhoon Ketsana to the rest of the world, has been keeping me busy. When I’m online, I’m usually posting on Tumblr or Twitter or Facebook about Ondoy and news on relief operations.
• That’s mostly it.

It just seems like whatever I do choose to update about, it would seem callous to post, when all this ridiculous crap is going on in the world. The Ondoy posters that I made, I posted on Tumblr and social networking sites because my ‘readership,’ so to speak, is bigger there. I mean, the only people who read this are people I know in real life, people who get here from links by people I know in real life and the occasional random stranger who clicked something and ended up here. (By the way, I appreciate you all.)

Anyway, I’ll be making a lessons-I-learned-from-Ondoy-type post in a while. I just wanted to get everything else out of the way, so things are more organized. Or something like that. (!) So, in the time I was away, here are a few of the things that happened:

1. I turned 21. I was born on 29 September 1988 & this year I turned 21.
I feel like a little part of me has died, because I do not feel like 21 at all.
But I am hoping for the best. Maybe I will catch a break this year, y/y?

2. Been makin’ some art. (!) I started this website with the intention of
posting works in progress, current projects, et cetera. Obviously, did not happen.
But let’s change that! This is for Redefine. (a close up!)

3. CCF Relief Operations. I’m the smallest person in this photo. c/o Isa!

4. Watched Game 1 of the UAAP Finals. This is a photo of Father Dacanay,
who is pretty much my favorite. (If you don’t know him, you are probably not Atenean.)
He brought this jersey and wore it over his barong towards the end of the game.

S’more photos from the game:


Me & my dad, and me & my sister.

5. Panic-buying. We went to SnR yesterday to buy stuff since a new typhoon is a-brewin’.
Here is a photo of my favorite coffee brew of all time. (Of all time!) No lie, DD is the best.
It costs twice as much as what we buy (Folgers, ugh!) but we got 3 bags.
BECAUSE IT IS THE BEST. Was tempted to get more since it’s hard to come by.

O HAI. I’ll be making some changes to this website, so I guess watch out for that. I hope? Yes? See you guys later & stay safe, wherever you are.