Today I skipped classes and slept. I needed it from the weekend. I was awake and working for 3.5 days and had only 5 hours of sleep between pledging and work.

I can catch up tomorrow. Thankfully Dr. Baas sent a review for the test on Wed via email. I looked at that tonight and hopefully I can get someone to study circuits with me tomorrow because I'm gonna bomb that test if nobody explains it to me. It's crazy we only have one more month of school. I expect to have some pretty crap grades in my classes if this keeps up. I'm so far behind, and because of it I have really mixed feelings about my experience with AO. I only realized that my grades sucked when I reached the point of no return, and by then I was so close to the end that I figured I might as well finish up. I guess it's a good thing I only took 12 creds this semester, but my GPA just took a dive... It kinda hurts me to think about it, but it's a bad decision which I will have to learn from.

I asked God for wisdom, and I have learned that wisdom is gained from hindsight. It makes me wonder if I should stop asking for wisdom... but I think that things always get worse before they get better. When my wisdom grows, I will make fewer mistakes. I just pray that God allows me to finish school completely within the time which I have allotted myself.

Jess invited me to a concert, and the drive is gonna force me to repair the AC on my car. But my paycheck from the last period never came in. My boss is gonna hear about it tomorrow, because I'm broke. I recently learned how to mess with my bank account online, so from now on 30% of all my paychecks is going to savings as soon as I get the check, and once a month I will withdraw 1/3 of my savings and give it to God. However, for the first two months I will give 100% of my savings to God, because I have not tithed regularly for a long time.

God, help me to make good on what I have said.

"Your heart felt good. It was drippin pitch and made of wood"

In one hour begins the last day of pledging. They told me it might be this week or next, but I feel like if I let them push it to another week I'll be asking too much from my girlfriend... and also I've pushed lots of my schedule around this week to make room for pledging. I figured that if it lasted another week after this I "might" fail circuits, but since it won't I will have plenty of time to study. However, since I acted on that assumption, if pledging continues to next week I think I will definitely fail circuits. So whether or not this is the last weekend for Collin and Angel, it is the last day of pledging for me.

I heard the most marvelous accent yesterday in the computer lab. It was a Korean who had learned British English. The two accents complimented each other richly.

Pledging, Chowon, Grades, and God are the only things on my mind right now... not in that order. I cannot put my mind on anything else for very long at all.

Chowon's voice.... I want to hear it as soon as this challenge is finished....

I'm wearing her bracelet to pledging for the first time. I was afraid it would get ruined before, but I guess I'll give it up whenever I give up my phone. I was hoping God would allow me to draw some extra energy from it (as in... placebo effect).

It's about time for me to go load up on caffeine...

"All hail King Neptune and his water-breathers."

So I talked to Chowon about pledging and we agreed that I aught to quit... but then when I went to the house and told them about me quitting, they told me that it was ending soon and they said that since they don't want me to fail my classes and they really want me in the house, they would cut me tons of slack. They made pledging this Wednesday super easy, so I had some extra time to work on some signatures.

Sometimes I worry about Chowon's voice. It's taken me a while to decide for sure that something's on her mind. I know it's nothing that I have to worry about, except that it bothers her, which shouldn't happen to my girlfriend. I worry sometimes that my senses are dulled by my own stress, and I want to be attentive to her emotional state.

I'm not naturally empathetic, but I can actually specifically remember deciding to look for patterns in behavior and I can remember the psychological journey of finding them and adapting to them for the betterment of myself and the people around me. In short, after a few years of repeating a behavior it becomes natural, but some things never become a part of you; and if you pretend too much it is literally possible to forget who you are. It takes extra focus for me to notice her thoughts, because she is from a different culture than me. I've decided that our cultural differences excuse blunt questions like "What are you thinking about?" and "What does that face mean?" which make for a better relationship, but I feel like they make for awkward conversation sometimes. The cultural differences also force me to ignore cultural presuppositions which might hinder my interpretation of her personality -- IMO allowing for a more pure affection. The experience here, with a purely emotional (conversation and punctuality being the only things evaluated) relationship, has been and will help me to grow a lot..... I won't be able to talk to her this Saturday and it makes me sad, but it's the last weekend. Soon, everything will be better.

I could just die thinking about data structures. My plan for tomorrow revolves around me getting no more than 8 hours of sleep. It's very important that I don't sleep so much that I can't wake. However, I should sleep extra tomorrow night, because Friday is a big day.

"So sorry..."

Today I completely forgot to check into the fraternity house. I didn't show up to anything related to the society except for the time when they served us dinner, and I didn't manage to even notice Pledge President's messages within 2 hours of them being sent. I didn't thinkt here was a point to messaging back at that point, but maybe I aught to have.

HOWEVER, I finished my BST and understand it fully, so now I just have to read and understand the assignment. Conservatively: It should take about 10-15 minutes of studying to figure out what the assignment expects, then I expect 20-30 minutes of deciding a general path for solving it, and then about an hour for writing the data structure diagram and at least 3 hours for coding it. Then I have to study Hashing for the lab and write a quadratic probe. I'll figure that out when I get to it.

Oh man! Roger is online. I haven't heard from him in ages. I miss that guy lots, but it's weird because we usually don't have much to talk about.

So, seeing this awesome progress in a class which I was afraid might be a lost cause has made me realize that.... pledging is killing my grades. I talked to my adviser and he really laid it down for me straightforwardly. Basically, he told me that pledging, while it has some benefits, does not measure up to the benefits which I will lose if my GPA drops this semester. Also, he pointed out the fact that the classes I'm taking are incredibly expensive, so I don't want to fail them and have to pay more to take them again.

So basically, I've resolved to be a bad pledge this week. I had already agreed with myself, before AO said it'd be "hell-week", that I would prioritize data structures this week and get on the ball. So that's what I'll do. I'm going to talk with Chowon tomorrow morning about quitting, and if she encourages me to keep pledging then I will. If she says I should quit then I will. I'll pray tonight that God gives me and her wisdom and brings the best decision to me from my conversation with her.

Well, it's 2AM-ish. I had a nap earlier, so I should be able to round tonight to about 8 hours of sleep if I go to bed now. I just wanted to get that out there.

"I've just been in a sing-y mood today"

Pledging has been difficult lately as usual. It is especially difficult because it happens to interfere with two of my best opportunities to talk to Chowon. I have to refuse to think "I could be talking to Chowon right now" and instead think "this will help me in the future." I sometimes wonder how people can become a member of the house without learning to hate it. I mean... What does pledging do? We stand still and cold while they yell insults at us, and we work until our eyes fog up while they continue to yell. It's really twisted that this is expected to breed loyalty to the house. The process is logically flawed, yet it has worked for generations, hasn't it? I wonder sometimes if I can finish pledging without hating the house and the members therein by the end of it.
...
I think what happens is we learn to associate the masks and the nervous psychological preparation with that feeling of disdain or contempt, and it's the encouragement and the soft-tones between events that keep us positively disposed toward the house. Like in Lord of the Flies: when the kids' faces were hidden they were regarded as (and regarded themselves to be) different people. In that way, when we prepare ourselves for a pledging event we create within ourselves a false reality -- the only reality in which we could deal with the events while keeping our sense of dignity. In the new reality the people who we know and respect in the house are disassociated with their real identities, allowing them to be assholes all they want with minimal damage to character; the building and campus and world become a cramped underground chasm where we, the pledges, from fear of losing self-respect or being exiled from all humanity, do whatever is expected of us until our bodies fail. Here we refine the practice of finding pockets of energy hidden by our bodies. When the evening is over that world disappears, but our body remembers and fills us with anger and dread as we next approach the house, imagining the fun which the members completely intend to have at our expense. We aren't allowed to hurt them for their handshake, but regardless of how quickly we pry their fingers open we are insulted.

If a world such as this can be willed into existence and burned into the pit of our stomachs, then what does that imply for the rest of the world? Can I, by remembering the process which my mind goes through, generate a world in which I am an extrovert? Can I make the world a place where all the food taste good, the homework is fun, and my love will be near me satisfyingly "soon"? Can I make a world where the days are short and still productive? Can't I just skip the next 5 weeks and have everything done that needs to be done? Do I really have to do all this? Can't I just disappear from consciousness until the time when I needn't stress, while my body continues to efficiently learn material and productively deploy it.

I just want to skip life and be at the place where it ends. I want to look back on a life that I can be proud of, but I don't want to work for it.

It is better to think "There is no way for me to skip the work" than to think "How can I skip this work". Because even though I know that nothing is impossible, I know that God has design the world in such a way that the only way to be honorable is to suffer silently and to even have an appreciation and favorable disposition toward mundanity (as in the quality of being mundane) simply because having more of it makes you more favorably disposed toward it.

"See how dirt naturally generates filth?"

It's been a long time since my last post. Been really busy lately. Completely enamored, fulfilled by God's love, and watching the pendulum swing back and forth more quickly lately -- and more slowly.

Pond runs aren't as cold if you keep smiling.

I am too tired to elaborate much about what has been happening. Chowon is the most interesting thing about me lately, or at least the first thing that always comes to mind when people ask me about myself. I suppose that isn't a good thing, because she is still external, and God should be my #1 focus. Then again, he is my main focus; in that I believe he has Chowon and I together for a purpose (be it what it is) and thinking of her almost invariably causes me to think about God.

Chowon asked me to get specific about the future the other day. It was a little scary for me, because I'm kindof afraid to say the 'M' word (marriage), but I got it out in a flurry of quick ramblings when she asked. lol. She says she feels safe relying on me to keep the distant future in mind. I think that's good because she should focus on the present, and I'm happy to have that burden off her. I feel inadequate to be relied upon, but I think that this could lead to a good order of things. If I rely completely on God, and she relies on God also, then we are safe relying on each other inasmuch as we are relying on God by proxy. Maybe I'll bring that up in our next conversation just to make sure we're on the same page.

I wish I were writing every night like I used to. I guess it will just have to wait.

God blessed me today.

"Always choose option B."

So I'm up at 2:18AM because my roommate is giving gf advice. The situation is kindof hilariously ironic because me and Ben exclusively (in this room) have/had girlfriends, and we are not allowed to input in the conversation just on principle. Probably in part because most of our input is sarcastic. It's too easy to make fun of the advice they are giving each other^^ I don't mean that in a jerky way, just that these guys are so serious that it's hard to keep a straight face.

I will not do my circuits homework tonight because I need to sleep. My grade in circuits will suffer, but I intend to go to the TIs starting last Wednesday. The one on Saturday is probably the worst for me because pledging has me up all night and I sleep all day Saturday.

So the floor name is the Bombers, even though it has no story to back it up. I'm ok with it I guess. I hope we do something worthy of changing it soon. I have some T-Shirt ideas. I just hope I can muster enough time to perfect it before the end of the week.

My internet is broken again. I can't imagine why. I'm on my roommate's internet now.

I'm falling more and more in love with the situation between me and 초원^^ Being apart has produced a purely emotional relationship. I wonder what it will be like when I can finally see her in person and hold her hand and give her a hug. I wonder how long our first hug will be. I wonder where I will take her on our first date in-relationship... The nearest drive-in is a 4 hour drive from here..... which totally sucks. However, I wanted to think of something better than that anyway. Idk.... I'll come up with something.

I should really be getting to sleep...

Wow, looks like everyone is awake...

I'm gonna make a snack before I go to bed.

"They can smell fear."

Oh the power of prayer. Next time I should be more specific^^

Oh! So Gana just told me that she gave Chowon the flowers -- like, just now. I can't wait to hear from Chowon about it :D. I kindof intended them to be a birthday present, but by the time I figured out how to send flowers to Korea for less than 100$ it was getting close, and Gana was busy kkkkk. I will have to send Gana a postcard or something for that. She's a great friend.

Chowon told me to expect something soon. I wonder what it was^^ kkk she sent me some texts about it^^ God is so good to me.

I just sent Bryce an email with all that stuff I've been meaning to tell him, but I think I should have waited until the daytime to send it, because I know my writing can be noncoherent when I'm tired.

Speaking of which, I should go to bed.

"Wanna watch the worst movie in the world with us?"