Overwhelmed

I writing this from the AUP library where I’m having a hard time focusing on my many papers and assignments at hand. Most prominent is a paper for my Impressionism/Post-Impressionism class about whether Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte” is politically charged or not. I’m putting so much pressure on this paper because if I don’t get a good grade on it, I fail the class. It’s so difficult being scientific about something that should be enjoyed, like art. Mainly, I just don’t want to do it. But I need to do all these papers (and make a documentary) right now because I have a friend visiting me this weekend—the week that four papers are due! Everything right now is just magnified by the fact that I’m (hopefully) going to be graduating at the end of this semester, and then having to find a job, and I have no idea what I’m going to do or where I’m going to live. It’s becoming much more of a reality to me that I may have to move back home to save up money, which I understand is normal, especially for this economy, but it just feels like failure. A month from tomorrow is my 22nd birthday. Twenty-two? How could this be? And I think I’m going to fail school! Why did no one tell me how hard AUP is?

And also while we’re at it: Why did no one tell me the sheer amount of ham I’d have to eat here? Someone really should have warned me about that.

But on another note, I love spring in Paris. Simply being outside is a legitimate way to pass your time here, whether it’s with a cheap bottle of wine on Pont Des Arts or what have you. Being able to drink outside is probably my favorite thing about Paris. That, and the excellent people watching. You can drink on the subway—my first week in Paris, I was drinking with my friend on the way to our location, and as we were exiting, policemen were checking people’s ticket stubs. I handed him mine, took a sip, he handed it back without problem and was on my way. I’ll never be able to sing the praises of outdoor drinking enough.

Today I dragged my friend Jess to Montmartre to help me film for my horrible documentary project, and it was beautiful out. Such a weird place, like a little village within Paris, yet can be so overwhelmingly consumed by tourists. I interviewed local artists there and filmed weird stuff I saw around, like a middle-aged man in the middle of the afternoon completely wasted and heckling a really lovely violinist.

All the tourists make me feel better about myself. I don’t know a lot, but I know more than them, and that’s all the satisfaction that I need.