Suppose I should finally get around to this. I'm not a very interesting person, and so I've had to think to figure out ten vaguely interesting facts about me.
1. I have a speech impediment, that being stuttering. It's the worst when I'm nervous, excited, happy, or angry, and as a result, I have trained myself to keep calm, level, and deadpan as much as possible. I have also developed a love of writing, even if it's just to talk about mundane things, because it lets me speak without a voice.
2. Oddly, I decided to be a translator. I actually would have preferred linguistics in terms of researching the origins, movement, and development of languages, but there's really no money in that career, and so I went for something marketable. My major is Spanish, my minor is French, and I took Japanese for a year (and would continue had I more time). On a good day, you might actually catch me speaking one of them.
3. I have never had a party or celebration for anything in my life, nor have I ever been on a vacation.
4. Some people would disagree with the last statement, because they would say that doing a semester abroad in Spain was a vacation. Fact: it wasn't. It was schooling that I had to do well on for my major. Amazing fun and culturally enriching? Absolutely. A vacation? Not even close.
5. The last time I drank was in August, and the next time I will drink will be this month (no, not for my birthday or ACen; something else). Intervals of this length are pretty normal for me. I'm not social at all and have little interest in alcohol otherwise.
6. Despite having my driver's license since the usual 15.5/16-year-old range (that's "usual" for Americans, I mean), I have only driven, at most, two dozen times. (I will be twenty four years old this month.)
7. Bakadeshi was my idol back in the day. I told him once that I would only ask for his opinion on my work when I felt as if I had edited something that was worth it. I still have not collected on this.
8. I am a complete geek with videogames. If there is a special boss to be beaten, I will beat it. If there's a glitch to be abused, I will abuse it. If there's a super secret ultra hyper rare item drop to be obtained, I will obtain it. I often say that if schoolwork could be put into the form of a videogame, I would have graduated valedictorian.
9. I decided my major for college in the most logical way I could think to do it. I made two lists: one of things I liked, and one of things for which I had talent. I eliminated all of my items for which I had skill, but no interest (who wants to spend the rest of their life doing something they hate?). I got rid of many of the items which I liked, but wasn't particularly skilled. This left me mostly with things I enjoyed and had talent to do. Biology, psychology, art, music, English, creative writing, and Spanish were the final choices. Bio was gone because of needing too much math. Psych would have become too frustrating with its many gray areas. Art and music were crossed off because I'm not talented enough to make a living and I didn't want to be a teacher. Creative writing was eliminated because it's too difficult to make a living if you are not massively talented or you don't produce what's in vogue. This left English and Spanish. I have spoken English all my life, and therefore decided it was too boring to be my major - hence, Spanish.
10. This will be somewhat controversial, I'm sure, but I am not against suicide - at least for reasons NOT having to do with depression. I believe that since I was not given a choice whether or not I wanted to be born into this world (a selfish act on my parents' part, technically) that it should be my choice whether or not I want to leave it (also selfish, but a fair response). However, this decision can only be made through logic, not blind emotions. To this end, I have a list of questions that I periodically ask myself. (It's a long list, so I'll omit them here.) If ever the answer to all of them is "no, and it isn't a possibility," then that would be the day when I would decide whether or not to continue living. When I say this to people, the first response I get is, "so what about so-and-so? Would you tell them to commit suicide?" My answer is that my criteria for making this decision is going to be different from everyone else's criteria. I would never be so arrogant as to say that I can decide who gets to live and die, because everyone's reason for doing so differs.
Not the most cheery note to end on, but it
was interesting at least.
- Jen