Enlightenment.

This week has been a very stressful week for me academically, mentally, physically, and socially. There are a lot of awkward tensions between myself and a few friends that I, for the most part, see no real reason in being friends with now or in the future. Socially, that is only hindering my abilities to act like a real person when I am in the presence of such people, but for the most part I can easily avoid that by harsh, biting responses like, "My life is busy. If you can synch your schedule to mine, then we'll talk." I see this as my way of saying, if you cared about seeing me you would call me. But you don't. You just run into me on the street and approach me after class. Pick up the phone, or realize that I don't give a shit. You were never really that cognizant of your surroundings/other's emotions anyway.

Academically, it has been challenging, as I have mastered the art of procrastination, but while reading Dracula and working on a few papers, I finally became aware of the link between the liberal arts and recognized the significant tie between the different humanities that I have been studying while here at NYU. Dracula, the sensationalist novel of the 19th century, not only helps establish the horror genre but it ties into historical and pseudo-scientific themes of the time period. First, in case you didn't know, Dracula actually uses racial theory to illustrate the Count as "other." Brilliant. Racial theory, in case you also didn't know, is derived from Darwin's Natural Selection/Theory of Evolution, which Darwin would have been enraged over, but he was dead by that time so nothing he could do. Finally, it hit me. This is why my Totalitarian Thought class is hitting me so hard. Racial Theory and History are everywhere. I always knew that but this time it actually hit me. Not only that, while I struggled and questioned the importance in reading the Origins of Species and Descent of Man, yesterday I was able to connect all of these things to Dracula and Stoker's clever use of themes. I felt so proud of myself and also so much more confident in my decision to attend NYU, which has been something I have been grappling with since arriving here two years ago.

I suppose now I can rest knowing that whatever I do major in, it all ends up tying together at one point or another. Brilliant.