Why did I think summer school was a good idea? I can't even procrastinate with unfiltered joy by going on Facebook anymore since all I see anymore are pictures and statuses of the people who made the decision to go abroad or travel or do other more worthwhile things than I did. And then I'm filled with despair and envy and am even less able to concentrate on academic reading while I dwell on the disappointment of what has happened compared to what could have been.
I can no longer make inferior choices and lie to myself that they were for the best. I really wish I had gone abroad to study (or party) or at the least done something productive with my summer, whether it be seriously conducting some research or getting a job or any kind of internship. I don't know if I'll get the chance to get away after I'm done with school so I should have taken advantage of my opportunities as a student now, but foolishly I put it off, like I do with everything else in my life. I can't wait anymore to do everything I want to, refrain from partaking in life, put off learning things and taking certain classes, while reasoning that I can and will do it in the future. Well, the future isn't looking so bright right now, and it'll be too late soon if it isn't already, and I'll just end up with more regrets on my conscience.
My woes with summer school stem from the fact that the classes just aren't as interesting and informative as I thought they would be. First, I was dead set on summer school this year because I was finally going to take Chem 3A and succeed in it. I was absolutely devoted to the idea that I was going to take Chem 3A and finally do well and learn. Quickly I realized this wasn't a good idea since I was planning on taking two other classes in addition and participate in two labs, though the work there isn't so strenuous. I felt I wouldn't have the time to devote to doing endless problem sets and didn't want to risk spreading myself too thin so I opted to not take Chem 3A and chose Cognitive Science 1 instead, a class I should have considered far earlier in my career at Berkeley. If I had chosen to stick with Chem 3A, perhaps I wouldn't feel like my summer was so wasted. The main reason I chose to do summer school was after all to take Chem 3A, and without this to class to give meaning and importance to my summer school schedule, the whole endeavor just seems pointless.
I always rationalize that I should enroll in summer school to learn more, to seize the chance to take as many classes as I can while I can because there are still so many I haven't had the chance to yet, but the way my classes are going, I'm not learning much of anything. The topics of Cognitive Science 1 and Psychology C120 were of real interest since the brain sciences are what I think I want to pursue, but both just turned out to be broad overview courses, and frankly I'm sick of overviews and surveys of topics. I want some depth! I want something substantial to show I've truly learned something worth knowing! These classes are fine and dandy in moderation, but nearly every single class I've taken seems to be this way now, and it's just not cutting it anymore.
Actually I don't mind the American novel class I'm taking. I hadn't taken an English class in ages, and I was going to take English N132 because I had heard it was a good class, and I thought I'd regret not taking it, but while it's a nice class and the professor does have some great insights into classic American novels, perhaps I expected too much or hyped it up too much to myself because I honestly don't think I would've missed too much if I hadn't taken the class. I regret being in the class and not doing something else more than if I hadn't taken it at all.
The last rationale for me to possibly stay in Berkeley again would have been to do research, and I finally found the opportunity to do some even though it's only data entry and menial tasks so far. It's a start, I suppose, but I wonder if I would have been better off searching for other opportunities elsewhere. I don't know, perhaps if I hadn't been away in the beginning of the summer, I would've gotten more responsibilities, and the situation would have been more fulfilling. Either way I'm not overly whelmed with how things are going.
Thanks to research (and the other classes I'm taking), I decided not to take Chem 3A, and that decision collapsed my entire reasoning to go to summer school in Berkeley in the first place and deprived the decision of usefulness and meaning. The opportunity cost of choosing to subject myself to another summer here has been immense, more so than I ever would have imagined. I didn't even realize the folly I was committing until far too late, until classes had already commenced, until it was too late to change anything. And so I'm stuck, frustrated, discontented, disillusioned.
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