University Life: Poet-like = Intellectual

I was talking with my friend in a noisy food court inside the campus last week after my Spanish class. I was lucky to have another friend who is really fluent in Spanish and for that I did practice a little bit with him.

But anyways, this friend of mine became interested in teaching English as a foreign language and I was making suggestions about where he can go if ever he decides to teach in an Asian country. I suggested Japan and Korea where English teachers, i believe, are still at a very large demand and are countries which are so rich in culture. China can be an option too since its culture goes all the way back in the time of civilizations, an era even way before the conception of Japan and Korea… yet the salaries for English teachers in China are really low. Then suddenly I also talked about Hong Kong because we were dealing with salaries. It came into my mind to actually say “In Hong Kong, the competition is super!” in addition to the fact that you can earn a lot of money being an English teacher in Hong Kong much more than Japan and Korea.

This friend of mine told me “you mean it’s daunting!” and I thought that’s too poetic to use then he told me that in order to sound like an individual, you have to use big words. I felt frustrated and defeated with the idea that I ended up telling him that I’m not a big talker.

But that brought me to the idea that intellectuals have to be able to express a lot of things and we are able to do so because of experiences in life. For me, I don’t have too much adventures in the outside world since I seem to be a family guy that all I do is stay at home, watch TV, surf the net, eat, pray with my family, go to Sunday Masses and sleep. I don’t usually get a lot of linguistic input from a lot of people really thus I’m not a big talker and I don’t seem to use poetic words to be able to sound like a smart person like what my friend told me.

I personally believe that being an intellectual is also being open-minded and I’m glad that a lot of my friends whom I acknowledge as smart and intelligent - of course including my good friend - do understand all of the things that I can express, interpret, assert, argue, infer, whatever it may be to the best of my abilities. They know what I’m trying to infer, they know how to answer them to the best of my expectations and if things get a bit uncomfortable, they know when to calm things down instead of flaming things up.

Being an intellectual is showing your interest to what people have to say as the best attitude rather than emotionally reacting to anything unpleasant you hear. It also encourages the better culmination of knowledge and knowledge do bring a person beyond bliss and brings with him some friends too.

I myself need to really grow up to this idea in spite of believing it.

Well, in my last item of this journal, is being an intellectual someone who uses big words? I only made it an issue because I felt so bad with my friend lecturing me on it which is good because I do get to grow up a lot more. We can’t grow up on ourselves you know. We need people around us to be able to know really whether we do well in life, in how we think and in what we believe in.

I intend not to answer the question in the end since there are a lot of ways to be an intellectual and to be admired or acknowledged as one.

To my friend, if ever he is reading this, I do hope you won’t mind me writing this journal though it may be a really, really small thing, and I hope you’re not laughing too hard that some parts of this journal doesn’t make any sense. I do want to reflect on it because my personality relies heavily on this.

University Life: Motivation

I believe that motivation can bring great outcomes and my professor in one of my linguistics classes just reminded me again of that. If you want to attain or achieve something, you should always be determined to reach those goals. It worked for me millions of times and it made me make new friends, learn a lot of things about life and society, have a creative lifestyle, and most of all have an open mind to everything that’s around me (though I can easily change my view of life from one angle to another, I believe that I can be flexible about it since I’m able to experience every one of those changes, I just have to be creative so that I won’t come out really boring among other people).

Why do we have to be motivated in life?

No motivation means no passion and enthusiasm towards your goals in life. If you just want to become the smartest guy in the world and you don’t show determination (determination particularly includes being able to use your mind in applied and practical ways in everyday life and it takes hardwork to be able to attain it), then you are just joking yourself.

To be smart is to work hard.

To reach your goals is to create memories.

To reach your aspirations is to feel your enthusiasm.

To become proficient in a musical instrument is to have made noise produced with your determination.

To be what you want to be requires a story, a diary, a biography, a history.

~

Always look for your motivation and never slip it away.

University Life: Coffee

Coffee has been one of the most important things that university students cannot forget to have - well for most of us that is. It has brought us through making decisions whether we should sleep tonight or not; whether it will help us in paying attention to lectures or doing diligently our homework without any kind of worries whether we are going to slam our faces on the table after half an hour and snore out like a member of a woodwind orchestra.

I remembered my first 2 years of being in post-secondary and i have to tell you that it was nice. All thanks to the strength giving power of coffee. I never felt too bad at all with drinking a cup everyday - well that’s how much my body can take to tell you the truth. I can deal with homework, understand everything that I am doing, not thinking that I’m giving in to caffeine but instead making caffeine my friend.

By the way, I don’t drink black coffee or double-double or anything of the sort. I go with the frothy ones. My favourite in particular is french vanilla. I had experienced having 2 cups of it and my body trembled like crazy on a test and I couldn’t stop from trembling. I can only have one cup of something that has not too much caffeine in a day.

But why did I come up with this now that I’m in my 4th year (and for sure I’m going to my 5th and 6th year) in post-secondary?

It’s hard when you’re a procrastinator. You have to understand every goddamn thing that you’re studying in a very short span. I’m very interested with humanities, history, psychology, philosophy and film when i was in my first 2 years. I was just so disappointed that I couldn’t pursue them when I transferred to another institution.

I instead decided to take a major in Linguistics, a new kind of field not related at all with what I have been doing in the 2 years that passed before that. I only took it as my major because I love learning languages - the problem is that the theories have are too detailed and the work and application of those theories are too tedious.

One thing that I found out particularly - I’m dumb cause I found this out only after 2 months - is that I fall asleep in all my linguistics classes. I was soooooo dozed off it’s not even funny. I feel dead in class. I feel that I can’t control my body. I feel that I want to drop on the floor. I wanted to shout out “TIM HORTONS!!! STARBUCKS!!!”

Sad to say it’s been a year since I actually drank coffee regularly just like my first 2 years in college/univ.

Well through this journal, I guess I know now what I should do if I am thinking of trying to survive in university in my last 2-3 years there before entering the world of ass-kicking and head-banging.