Aleksandra the Great’s Exploits

I walked through Washington Square Park today on my way to dinner and Japanese, and as usual I was stopped by someone. This time it was a woman, probably in college, who stopped me very politely. [I haven’t decided yet whether it’s better to kindly refuse people and walk past, or to stop and listen and then refuse them (since I’m rarely interested in what they’re saying). So, I listened to her proposition.] She said she was doing a film project that required people to talk about something traumatic that had happened to them and how they got through it.

So I thought for a moment. I didn’t really want to stop and help her—possibly because it would require my being filmed, and I can’t really deal with that—but I wasn’t in a rush or anything, so I could have. Except there was one problem: I couldn’t think of anything really traumatic through which I had gone. Sure, my parents are divorced. I thought about that, but all that probably caused life to be a lot better for me than it would have been if they were still married. And anyway, it isn’t like I even knew the details. That was their trauma, not mine.

I told the girl that I couldn’t really think of anything. She tried suggesting possible, common situations that I could relate to her future audience. She asked if I had ever had boy troubles, namely if I had ever liked someone who hadn’t liked me back. Well, sure, I had, but in my mind those sorts of problems were too trivial to bother recording. I guess if she wanted commonplace, average troubles, those stories would be great, but how much of that could anyone really listen to? I know it is unfair of me to judge “boy problems” as trivial. They very well may not be for some or most people. In my experience, however, even my serious romantic difficulties do not seem so horrible in retrospect, so how could I deem them traumatic enough for her film?

I finished reading Sister Carrie yesterday. It really makes me worry about homeless people, and the sad paths that lead to their reaching that state. So, when I talked to the woman today, none of whatever I have gone through seemed so bad at all. And I know it isn’t. I thought about a woman I had seen earlier walking with her head so far down you couldn’t see her face, pushing a cart with around twenty plastic bages fixed to it. She might take offense, but I think the story of her troubles would be far greater than that of mine. I don’t think the young woman with the film project was looking for Dreiser’s sort of problems, though.

NYU has a number of alluring extracurricular programs. I went to the club fair (which took up the entire open half of the fencing salle—there are a lot of clubs here) and put my name down on far too many email lists. The first table in the fencing salle was for some socialist club of sorts. That’s pretty telling about the political nature of NYU students. There was a surprisingly large number of fraternities and sororities; their tables took up probably 15% of the salle. Since I walked up and down the rows, and since there were a lot of people, I often had to go right up to a table to find out what it was. As soon as I saw Greek letters, I backed away quickly before they tried to get me to pledge.

I signed up for some literature things, but I probably won’t be able to go. So many of their clubs meet at the same time. I gave some clubs my email address simply because their representatives had gone through a whole excited explanation of the club’s activities, and I felt bad just walking away. I got an email about the fencing club, and it was like, “If you’re good, join the varsity team. Otherwise, there are some classes you can pay for.” So probably no fencing for me this semester. I might be part of their Hiking Club. They basically just go places in New York City and walk around.

I am part of their martial arts club. It offers free Tae Kwon Do three times a week (but one is an advanced class). The opening meeting last night was fun. For the first half of an hour, the club officers were just answering questions and getting these white cards from everyone. The white cards want to know such silly things as hometown newspaper. The boys sitting next to me were wondering aloud why they wanted to know that. One said in case you get famous, another said in case you die. If you want to test, you have to buy a uniform and pay for the tests. The boy president said that kids in the club would only test about once a year, but a girl later confirmed that students who want to test can usually get two belts (yellow and green, I believe) in freshman year. They only have five belts, she said. They kept us there for almost the full hour and a half last night, despite our starting late. My muscles didn’t even hurt that much today; I haven’t decided yet if that’s good or bad. There are lots of unexperienced people, and quite a number of girls, so it’s nice and not intimidating. The only downside is that I, as a beginner, can only go two times each week, and the Friday class conflicts with another club.

NYU has these Speaking Freely classes to teach kids (and maybe teachers, too?) basic communication in various languages, and there’s of course cultural stuff thrown in. I had Japanese on Monday. I’m not sure how much Japanese I learned there because she didn’t have a set plan for teaching anything, but she did go through some basic phrases. Supposedly there will be handouts next week. The Mandarin class on Tuesday was much more organized. I really liked it, too. There were lots of handouts with pronunciation guides on them. I figured I would take Japanese and Mandarin in preparation for this (required) World Cultures course I’ll try to take next semester. There are lots of World Cultures classes, but the one I really want is on China and Japan. That’s only offered in the spring.

Greenwich Village really is a good place to live. I’m near Union Square, and it’s very nice up here. It’s about 13 blocks, give or take a few depending on the exact location, from “campus.” I like my dorm. It feels like home. And my roommates are all very nice people, though there is a small, silent, and ongoing war over the thermostat. The food is good, too. Some of the places are All You Can Eat, which means get a sandwich and other food and take the sandwich back to your dorm. Plus, every meal comes with at least one piece of fruit. I’ll really have picutres of the area, et cetera, soon.

So that’s basically what I plan to do this year with NYU that has nothing to do with actual school. It all works in to a nice schedule, for the most part, but I won’t publish that here. I’ll put something up about my classes after I actually go to all of them. Until then.

[Note: Posts won’t always be this long about very self-centered things. Just this once, I promise.]

Welcome to my real blog. Aleksandra the Great’s Exploits is made possible by Mike, Christina, and readers like you. Seriously, though, none of this would exist if Mike hadn’t set it up. The amusing title and tagline are his doing, as well. They’ll probably stay that way for a while. Christina very kindly let me use her website as my subdomain. I feel much more like a real person, now. Thanks a lot, guys!

Three things: 1. I will have photos from college on flickr (link coming soon, when I upload the pictures). It seemed a really good idea to have the photos in a blog setting, but Christina has already done that, and I don’t want to copy her too much. 2. It appears I already am copying her title style by not capitalizing every important word, but that goes back to Spanish and the good old days of The Acorn. 3. Right now, and it might stay this way, the category for my non-blog links is Sites, like on Mike’s blog. I’m not trying to copy him, either, although I’m sure it was subconsciously ingrained in my head that Sites serves as a good name for such links. If either of you (or anyone else who feels I’m cramping his or her style) is upset about how things are so far, let me know and I’ll consider changing it.

Eventually, Christina might come all 103 blocks down to my dorm to help me change the way this page looks. Until then, I’ll probably have the default settings. See you next time!

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