This week is definitely the latter. This week is finals week.
The end of my second semester is coming to a close.
On Tuesday, I get to spend the afternoon making a cream soup, a basic vinaigrette which I will turn into a nicer vinaigrette, hollandaise, and mayonnaise, and write a written report on my procedures. I get off Wednesday, which is awesome, because it's my 19th birthday. My early morning Thursday class was cancelled, so I'll be able to conserve some brain cells. (So far as I'm concerned, spending 10-20 minutes telling fishing stories is not teaching) On Friday, I have a final for Nutrition (I already have the small amount of material memorized and posted on my wall, so no worries there).
Then, I get a 3 week break, in which I am going to be looking for a job.
After those 3 short weeks, I will be returning to school for summer baking classes. Now that my best friend is not going back to school, school has lost most of its shine. Don't get me wrong...I absolutely love cooking. Like writing, like painting, like dancing, like music, it is an art. All arts relate to each other, but this is art under pressure and I love it.
You concentrate so hard, and your mind is comprehending instructions faster than it can turn it into actual, audible thoughts, but the mental track explodes when the person next to yousighs, puts away their cell phone and moans, "Ugh, what am I supposed to do? What did the chef say?"
And when you actually have the patience to explain it to this person, they reply with, "Yeah, well, I'm going to do it a different way."
So, I have low patience and a fast temper, I'm completely self-absorbed and tend to think too highly of myself and too lowly of those around me, but anymore I'm trying to break from this stupidity and I feel as though I have excelled above all these lazy students whose cell phone screens are steaming up because they hold their phones over their pots of soup.
And after I get through classes that sometimes feel like a continuous replay of stupidity, my week ends with my favorite class which I spend with my best friend. She gets everything I tell her--we're on the same line of thoughts sometimes it's surreal--and I hate to think that from here on it'll just be me.
Yes, there are other people that I get along with just fine. But I am a homeschool graduate who was raised at home, am not willing to move out of home because I love and get along great with my family, do not partake and discuss in obscene drinking habits, have never even seen drugs up close (much less have ever used them), do not have a boyfriend and prefer to wait on God to find one for me than find one for myself at a bar, do not talk about having a low stock of condoms or an overstock of lingerie, do not brag about breaking the law, do not brag about starving myself because real men like girls with no fat, do not brag about over-eating because real guys love "fat chicks", and because I am going to school to learn something useful.
Because of these things, some people see me as different species. They ask me questions and then purposely laugh, as if it's exceedingly ridiculous and entertaining to listen to a person who has fun without partaking in self-destructive activities.
And the one person who shares the same values as me, who is my partner in bursting out into song, and who is the only one of my classmates that I can really talk to will no longer be at school. And I am afraid I'll be stuck with these idiotic morons who explain to the chef that using the keychain end of a whisk is better because it allows them to stir "a little" when they feel they don't need to use a entire whisk. True story. The woman is in her 50's. Don't do drugs, people.
I am fully intending on seeing my best friend a lot outside of school, and I already miss her, but school just won't be the same anymore. You cannot have an intellectual conversation with a person who stops you when you say a 3-syllable word, and says to you, "Ohhh....! That's a big word."
(Actually, for some reason, it popped into my head and I think the word was "deliberately" that this 30-something year old woman was so intimidated by. No, it's not 3 syllables, but that's not my point.)
I wish school could just be school. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't come home after these classes and wish I was homeschooled again. I can see that God allowing my parents to homeschool me was no mistake. How fortunate I am that I haven't had to deal with these (insert insulting adjective) people stepping in on my education until now.
I actually wish that these people won't pass their finals and will have to repeat these classes. Then, there will be more of us more serious-minded students who can move ahead and learn something without that baggage. Is that bad of me to say?
There is one thing that I like about those people at school. Let me just say this first: my brother has always seemed several feet taller than me. When I was 10, he probably really was several feet taller than me. We used to wrestle all the time, and he'd teach me defense tactics and I learned to bounce back from him tossing me on the couch or pushing me to the ground with his one foot. We still fight sometimes. He's 6'4 and a not a small guy. (I'm now 5'8.)
So knowing that, consider the 6', 125 pound culinary student who stands a few yards away from me and loudly tells his friends that he prefers to beat up women because they are more "responsive". Then he says, "Like those first years. I could totally beat her up." And he and his 2 friends turn and stare at me.
Knowing he can't do anything (not only because a chef is nearby, but I know the minor legal grounds for what can be considered assault and battery and am not afraid to run upstairs to the police department branch), I say without a second thought, "Go ahead. I have a spatula. I could take you on."
The look on his face was worth a hundred bucks.
I didn't even have to think about what to say. I shut the door on him, and there was nothing he could do about it.
So, I thank God for making me tough enough to withstand the more threatening people. I only pray that I will have patience to cope with the others. On my bed is The Idiot's Guide to Dealing With Difficult People. I'm stepping closer. My goal is to be able to shut the door on stupidity and learn. Maybe this is God's plan for me, instead of me bottling up everything and then releasing all the stress when my best friend and I get together.
He has blessed me so much by sending me my best friend, but maybe we've clicked too much. Maybe I'm supposed to become more reliant on Him.
