Heretic Pride

It’s been some time since I put up a real blog post, and I feel like now is a good time to do so because I can’t figure out a proper closing to my article, and I’m hoping that ignoring it for enough time will solve the problem. 

On Stanford:

I thoroughly enjoy it here. It’s a wonderful school and an even better resource. Everyone I need to talk to who I initially assume I can’t get into contact with is actually a Stanford grad, and once you say “Hey I’m at Stanford, too” they open up and basically ask you to hold their baby and come over to dinner. I seriously give out my Stanford email rather than my gmail because it holds that much more prestige. For the journalism program we have to go out and do real interviewing and reporting, and people don’t typically like talking to the press, but when you open with “I’m a graduate student in journalism at Stanford University” you get two reactions: 1) Dope and 2) Oh, he’s just a student, it’s not like he’s trying to do an exposé, sure, let’s talk. 

Learning to write for journalism is a difficult experience. I’ve been told by both my editor and my professor, “more Hemingway, less Faulkner.” That’s like telling me to tear out my heart and replace it with some terse, alcoholic heart. I’m getting better at it, but for every article I turn in that needs less revision, I fear I’m losing my style, piece by piece, and then, after enough time, I’ll probably forget how to write creatively all together! Make no mistake, though, I still think in impossibly long-winded, drawn out, over explained, adding words with not much meaning but a whole lot more sounding than is socially acceptable when breathed out loud trains of thought. 

That said, I think the Faulkner emulation I used to engage in served a greater purpose for the time being in which I was basically looking for a way to say what needed to be said, and I had never found any example of how to say it until I read Faulkner. I think I’ve said everything I need to say, and I think that I’m no longer looking for such a reliance on one form. 

That said, I only brought five novels to Stanford, and three are Faulkner. 

But back to Stanford—

Last night some of us were working on our podcasts and I was supposed to finish at 1:30 but obviously that didn’t happen, and I finished around 2:45, which isn’t so bad, and I waited for my friend because she was just exporting, and then this other girl was just talk talk talking like I fucking cared about what she was talking about, but I had no care whatsoever, and she kept giving wrong advice on Final Cut, and I don’t even know the program that well and I knew it was wrong advice, stupid advice, really, and then we’re all leaving at about 3 and this same stupid girl says “Woo, guys! Our first all-nighter!” 

GIRL, THAT IS NOT AN ALL-NIGHTER. THAT IS A “SWEET, I’M GETTING AN OKAY AMOUNT OF SLEEP”ER. And she had class at noon, so it wasn’t even like she was going to be missing that much sleep, IF ANY. ALL NIGHTER. Honestly. What kind of!? WHO!? Sometimes I think UC Berkeley is the only undergraduate institution that treats its undergrads like fucking adults, and every time I have those thoughts, I also think “We are such a better school than any other fucking school, ever.” I know Harvard and Yale and now, as a member, even Stanford hold this prestige to them in their name and the networking opportunities, but, fucking please, Berkeley grads are just better suited for the real world, where not everyone has a trust fund or a father in politics or an uncle who owns a law firm. Not everyone is on the positive side of capitalism. 

Also, never have I ever seen so many socially awkward individuals as I have at Stanford. Thankfully the journalism program is outspoken and fun-loving and we all get along really well, but today I walked through the engineering building and it was borderline eerie. I saw a kid get so god damned flustered today when ordering a sandwich. He actually looked behind him in desperation. Actually, all the grad students I’ve met are really well-adjusted. It’s the freshman that are just so strange and coy. 

Okay, time to neglect my paper while looking directly at it.