The Reel Life of Josh

I knew this day would arrive, but I never thought it would actually come.  -- I’ve said this a lot lately.  Although everyone points out, it’s not an end, but rather a beginning, one would be remiss to not acknowledge that it is really an end.  It’s an end of something important.  A monumental life stage.  College is really the time when you develop who you are.  You make friends that will be with you for the rest of your life.  You grow and adapt and change and learn.

Each step of the way makes it harder and harder to leave.  Ending classes is a RELIEF, but you realize that it’s all over.  You have fulfilled all of your requirements.  You have no more classes to sign up for.  Your exploration here is finished.

You say GOODBYE to your professors -- mainly the ones that have really aided and influenced you.  You sneak out of the half-hearted goodbyes for the most part.  Some are hard to say goodbye to though.  Some of mine have become close friends or even like family to me.

You become NOSTALGIC all the time about very specific actions.  You realize that “this may be the last time I walk back to my apartment passing the lacrosse field on this side during the day with a backpack on”.  Every moment with friends is HEIGHTENED.  Being alone is not an option.  But every second you feel the clock ticking closer to the end.  It’s a weighty feeling, but it gives meaning to every instant.

You meet new friends.  People that you haven’t seen in years or ones that you haven’t interacted with suddenly become important.  Especially during Senior Week.  You give up friends from other classes and concentrate on a COLLECTIVE experience of seniors on the precipice of a life change.  It’s a week of total immersion.  You forget that days exist.  You DISTRACT yourself from your own existence.  It’s a week based wholly in interactions with others.  There is no more artifice of having to be someone else.  You meet people as your established self, rather than the contents without content that you enter Hopkins with.  On top of that, you have no reason to pretend to be someone else or waste time talking to people you have no interest in.  You become selective in your friendships, which are always better with quality over quantity.

The time between end of classes and graduation is an entirely new venture.  You make lasting memories in this short period of a few weeks. It is almost impossible to describe how free from time you are in that PRESENT, but how locked into time you feel because of the FUTURE.  It becomes a set number of seconds, minutes, and hours that flow, rather than days that pass as usual.

You RESIST.  You hate this push toward graduation and try to stop it -- to stop time -- but you can’t.  You want to stay in this LIMBO forever.

You resist your parents.  And with the best intentions and with love.  You are torn between the people that love you absolutely and have given you so much -- and those who have been your lifeblood for your time away from the former group.  Family becomes FOREIGN and OUT OF CONTEXT in this environment.

You graduate.  It should feel like an event, but it doesn’t.  It feels SURREAL.  It feels like it never happened.  It feels like too much happened without you knowing.  It feels like SLEEPWALKING.  -- Up on stage, it’s all a blur.  They rush you to do so many things.  Walk now! Shake hands! Look this way! Shake another hand! Walk down the steps! Get your photo taken! Make sure you never trip! Make sure you keep your hat and stoll!  Did anyone cheer? Did they say my name correctly? — It happened but all together.  From the outside, I’m sure it happened in sequence, but from my angle, it was all at once.  A fated assembly line.  A metaphor of constant forward motion through time.  When it’s all over, you get your $200,000 receipt -- which is the size of one of those fake cardboard checks -- and you all collectively gather.

The proceeding days are like a SUPERNOVA.  Everyone gathers together so closely.  A CLUSTER so tight nothing can stop it.  And then it RELEASES.  And people SCATTER.  It happens in waves.  The first wave is the easiest to experience and the hardest to comprehend -- the former point being directly related to the latter.  You expect them to come back in the fall again.  It still hasn’t set in yet.  It all happens so QUICKLY though.  In high school, you have the summer to ween yourself off of your friends, your experiences, your life, your home.  Two days after graduation, people had vanished.  And now memories stand where they once were.  I walked past an apartment where 3 of my friends USED TO live.  The blinds were pulled and I could see inside.  I felt what it was to be myself in that moment.  It was UNEASY.  A place isn’t the same without the people who were there when you constructed it.

You remove THINGS from your life.  By things I mean physical objects.  You move out.  I’ve learned that I have way too much STUFF.  I can’t possibly live like this.  I’m going to simplify.  Little furniture.  Less clothing.  Fewer things.  Although, I found myself in that scene from The Jerk where I kept telling myself I needed this or that.

My roommate refuses to pack things.  It makes him too sad.  He tries to distract me when I pack.  He tries to distract himself when I pack.  Each day there is less and less out in the open.  Most of it is in boxes.  But you soon realize that STUFF doesn’t make a PLACE.  Although you attach significance to these items.  A friend of ours took our end tables and my dresser among other things. And as they left the apartment, I felt like they were robbing me.  RECOGNITION and RECALL of events are triggered strongly as you watch things leave your life.  I think you try to re-store those moments in your brain. You can’t afford to let the cognitive triggers for these events in your life disappear with the material objects.  But I remember thinking about silly things when they left.  Like how I kept certain items on top of my dresser.  Or how I organized my clothes within it.  Why I remember these things, I will not know.

You put on a HAPPY face.  And I don’t mean this pejoratively.  You genuinely enjoy the moments you experience, but there is an undercurrent of nervous excitement.  There is so much in store, but you can’t forget what has passed.  What is being LEFT.  What is LEAVING.

I’ve never established myself so firmly in a location that I wouldn’t be coming back to.  I’ve never really had to leave HOME yet.  It has always been a base.  And it will always be there unless my parents decide otherwise.  But this is NEW.  I won’t live in Baltimore again.  At least not for a while.  And if I do, all of my reference points will be different.

I’ve never felt older than I feel right now.  I understand I’m not that OLD yet.  But I have never really felt my age like this before.  Age was about getting older before.  The MOMENTUM was good.  It was getting me to a certain point.  Now age becomes a deterrent.  Maybe if I wasn’t so zealous to grow older when I was a child, time would be moving slower.  I don’t feel old enough to be a college graduate.  Before I got here, I would watch television and see COLLEGE aged people and think that I don’t look like them.  Now I still have the same reaction.  Maybe television adds years to the face, but I just don’t see myself like I see them.  I have a fear that people will look at me next year in grad school and think that I’m lost walking into MFA classes.  I look at grad students now in real life and don’t think I am anything like them.  I need a pipe or something distinguishing.

At least in this whole process, I’ve FELT something.  That’s the best you can hope for in any situation.  Faulkner closes Wild Palms (a.k.a. If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem) by saying “Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.”  I am not depressed, although this may inspire depression upon a reader.  I am happy to have experienced this all.  Everything.  It can’t last forever, but deadlines are a godsend, for they give meaning to time and meaning to experience.  When we unpack these memories sometime in the future, we won’t have what we did before, but WE will still have each other and ourselves and a place.  I can’t truly imagine a world beyond the present, but I can only hope it’s half as good as the recent past.

***

I’m very thankful for every experience that comes my way.  Good or Bad. And this blog has been one of them.  Saying goodbye to it is hard to do.  But I want to thank anyone who has read it over the past few years.  Or those who have ever read anything that I’ve written.  I hope that I have been entertaining or interesting or at least a non-regrettable waste of time.  No matter where you are headed in life, I am glad we crossed paths.

Signing off:Josh

This is the first part in a two part final entry on this blog.  This one is on the lighter side.  Part two is more of an existential rumination and final goodbye so if you aren’t into that sort of thing, feel free to skip part two, although I strongly encourage you to read it if you are in the mood to think deeply.

Here is one more set of lists for you:

Things you want to forget about college:

1. Exams (and useless recall information)

2. The cost

3. The downtime

4. People you don’t like

5. Communal bathrooms

6. Frat parties

7. Old relationships

8. Times with nobody to shack up with

9. Awkwardness (occurring at various stages along the way)

10. Embarrassing moments (occasionally those that take place when drinking)

Things you will forget about college:

1. Exams (and useless recall information)

2. The downtime

3. Awkwardness

4. Daily routines

5. Building names

6. Those fringe people (not the ones you like or hate)

7. Minutiae of many events

8. The times when you were too inebriated

9. Classes you took

10. GRADES you got

Things you will remember about college:

1. Friends

2. Moments of inspiration and enlightenment

3. Great professors

4. Growing and maturing as a person

5. Learning from your mistakes

6. Learning about responsibility

7. The convenience of having everything you need at your fingertips

8. Popular songs

9. The last few weeks before graduation

10. Graduation

Memories are funny things, but they never come back quite the way they went in.  If I don’t forget a thing, for better or for worse, I’ll take it.

*******

If you are interested, and in the Twitterverse, my roommate and I are moving out to California for grad school in the fall.  As part of the journey, we have formed a Twitter account and you can follow us along the way.  Its named after our joint artistic venture, DOS ANGELES.  So follow us: @dos_angeles

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To be continued….

this blog is kind of different.  these are scanned in pages from a book of [bad] essays i am writing.  the titles right now is “things and thoughts I once had and then lost while writing them down but regained focus at the end”.  I thought these pages describe my state of mind right now as I leave Hopkins and as you all leave high school.  So read away and enjoy.

I’m in a similar situation as you.

I’m looking at schools – graduate schools – and deciding what to do.  It’s a crazy experience.  Going into college it wasn’t this strange.  Part of it is that when going into college, everyone is at the same point of their lives. Seemingly everyone goes to college nowadays.  Graduate school is different.  But back to similarities.

By the main lobby of CalArts. Was asked if the background was real. It is. As real as southern California can be at least.

Application recipes:

How to choose where to apply

Ingredients:

• Guidebook
• Internet access
• Email address

First, look at programs you are interested in.  SEE ALSO ones that you are not aware of.  Pick which ones you like.  Choose a location that you want to live in.  Next, do a lot of research and ask professors about programs.  Finally, disregard rankings.

How to get through the application process

Ingredients:

• Time
• Computer
• Pen and Paper
• Coffee
• Snacks
• Movies
• Trusted Friend/Parent
• Attention to detail

First, make sure you figure out how to manage your time correctly.  After mixing hard work and thought, let your application sit for a few days.  During this time, be sure to find ways to relax.  Next, go back and make some revisions.  When you are satisfied, send the application in and wait.  For best results, have someone read through your application materials.

How make your decision

Ingredients:

• Acceptance packages
• Moral support
• Guide books
• Professors/Teachers/Guidance counselors

Step one would be to find out where you got in.  Next, let your favorites rise to the top.  Compare those by looking at location, size, class style, field of study, professors, financial aid packages, etc.  One the perfect mixture is found, select that school.  Once finished, apply school’s sticker to rear window of car.

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Luckily for me, I didn’t have a huge decision to make.  I applied to 3 schools.  I got into one.  My theory was to apply to the 3 schools I really want to go to and apply again next year if I didn’t get in.  I got into CalArts though which is a huge feat.  It was a program I almost didn’t apply to.  But after researching it more and more, I fell in love with it.  The program fits my ideology and style really well and I’m happy to have gotten in.

I wasn’t 100% so I went to visit though.  I met the professors and realized how different grad school is than undergrad.  You are hand selected by the faculty at a place like CalArts.  The facilities there were very nice and the school is just a cool place to be.

Grad school is a huge step.  It’s terrifying and exciting.  Going to a part of the country in which I have no contacts or context is a daunting thing to think about.  Moving out there and starting anew adds to it.  But the thought of a new adventure is thrilling.  The new memories I can create, the new people and things I will be exposed to, and even turning my world on its head will all enrich my life.

(Disclaimer:  This quickly turned into a sort of partly Postmodern essay-blog)

Feel with me, not for me, as I’m sure some of you are experiencing this with high school right now.

My days are numbered.

I feel like I’m in a bad action movie (or MacGruber sketch) with the time bomb ticking down.  Only it is more like a MacGruber sketch because I get distracted for a quick second, and it’s all over.

When I was a freshman, everything was the best thing ever.  Now everything is the last thing ever.  With less than 11 weeks until graduation, I’m constantly grabbing to hold on to the days prior.

****

there is nothing that I want to do more than stay:

I love Baltimore.  It is possibly the best city I’ve ever been to.  The people, the music, the neighborhoods, the art, the charm.

Hopkins is home.  I notice differences in my routines from year to year.  This year, especially, any differences are apparent because I’m living in the same apartment.  Let me be concrete for a minute.  I walk home from class/work/everything by passing through Homewood Field.  Last year I walked on one side of the field, this year, I inexplicably have switched.  These are the kinds of things I won’t have next year.  I won’t have that comfort level either.  After four years of really getting to know the place that I live, I have to start over again.

The people are here now and I know them here always.  First, I want to say something about my professors.  I will miss  them deeply.  Not all of them, but most of them.  They (thinking of particulars in my head, but not naming names) have really made an impact on my life, and I cannot  even begin to describe how indebted I am to them for my future successes and development as an artist.  Now I can say this: My friends will scatter across the world and redistribute themselves among society.  Some going to grad school, some getting jobs, some moving back home.  I know I’ll keep in touch with some, but it get hard.  Think of all the high school friends I keep in touch with – not many. :: like Oscar Wilde said “I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones ::  So it scares me a little bit that they won’t be at my fingertips for real, human social interaction.  I will always associate being here with those people and expect them to be here upon my return.  It’s hard thinking about losing touch with these wonderful friends.

I don’t want to be an adult yet.

there is nothing I want to do more than leave:

The wait is killing me.  Walking around here when you are reminded that you have to leave can be pretty depressing as you could imagine.

Life awaits me.  It’s scary, but it’s exciting.  I get to do something new and something interesting next year.  Move to a new place, meet new people.

I’ve had this experience, now it’s on to the next.  There is nothing left here for me anymore.

I don’t know how some people stick around this place for years after they graduate.  Sure I have friends that will still go here. But ::  Let me tell you this – I’d rather die first than watch everyone die around me.

****

Next year, my future is uncertain.  But I’m on my way and there is no stopping that.

In lieu of ending on a fatalistic note, I’ll end with a hopeful eye.  This is one of my Dance for the Camera films that was just awarded Best Cinematography at the American College Dance Festival.

Spotlight from Joshua Gleason on Vimeo.

Living with a roommate is an eye opening experience. Being around your best friend all the time can be a burden but also has its benefits. There are things I never would have experienced without my roommate. Here are some of them:

1) Foods -- I was exposed to Clementines and Spam (both of which I hated, but can now hate them with due reason). I was also forced to switch to Strawberry jelly instead of my usual Grape for the past few months.

My roommate and I at the bus stop during Snowpocalypse

2) Expenses -- My roommate is possibly the cheapest person on the planet. And I’m not somebody who likes to spend money. But I have learned to become even thriftier. His Costco card and our penchant for thrift store shopping have kept costs down.

3) Cleanliness -- I learned that if you never clean and your roommate never cleans, things get dirty.

4) Video games can be social – I’m not a huge video game person, but I do like playing sports games and have since high school. Since then, it has always been a solitary experience, but having my roommate play Madden with me adds a new dynamic to the game. It also makes you feel some sympathy for the other person when you are beating them (and hopefully visa versa) rather than when I play my brother at home and reel no remorse.

5) 90s references – This is something pretty specific to my roommate situation. My roommate and I love to make pop culture references, especially from the 90s. It’s rare that you could go a day without a sing along involving something in the vein of “Two Princes” or “Follow You Down”. (I hope people reading this know what I’m talking about. Otherwise I’m really starting to date myself. But I don’t want to be like adults who explain things to me that I was alive for – like when people say, “Oh, you don’t even remember what cassettes were like.” Rant over) Without my roommate, how would I constantly remind myself of these things?

6) Vitamins – I now take vitamins daily because my roommate is constantly sick.

7) Diet – Having a roommate around makes you realize what you eat, when you eat, and how much you eat. With someone there to judge you for your 3 AM UniMini run for a Chicken Parm, you may think twice. Try and open that fridge in the middle of the night too without waking him up. It’s tough.

8) Fighting isn’t always a bad thing – My roommate and I have lived together for 3 years now. And we lived down the hall from one another freshman year. We’re bound to get under each other’s skin. And living together only makes it worse. We tend to bicker a lot, but at the end of the day, we can still laugh and have a good time.

I think living with a roommate is a great learning experience. It teaches you a great deal about how to deal with others and about yourself. One day soon, I’m hoping to be in a place of my own, but for now, I’m happy where I am.

Here’s to hoping you enjoy your roommate experience like I have.

We all know what we want to accomplish in life.  We all have hopes, dreams, goals.  Fairly recently, the idea of a Bucket List has become a way to neatly set out our goals an accomplish them.  But rather than tell you what I want to accomplish – which at this point might just make me depressed or frantic to try and complete it in the next few months – I decided I’d give you a more universal Hopkins Anti-Bucket List.

Anti-Bucket List – The things you should try to not do in your four years here.

1. Die
2. Get pregnant
3. Fail out Gain the Freshmen 15
4. Skip class for a full week
5. Take classes only in one area
6. Try to actually join the 30 groups you sign up for at the SAC Fair
7. Wait until you have no underwear left to do laundry
8. Have a hangover the day before an exam
9. Make a name for yourself as the person who sleeps around
10. Make a name for yourself as the person who has a very strange characteristic (Crazy Legs, Duct Tape Girl, Awkward Jeremy)
11. Eat at the FFC every day
12. Pet an animal at the petting zoo during Spring Fair
13. Become addicted to caffeine (or anything really)
14. Spend your rent money in one weekend on food and drink at Spring Fair
15. Become obsessed with getting perfect grades
16. Set off the fire alarm while cooking in Charles Commons (harder than it seems)
17. Take a 400 level class in a subject you have never studied before
18. Take 20+ credits
19. Take a Friday morning class
20. Slip on the marble after snow/rain
21. Get hit by a biker
22. Make eye contact with the evil squirrels
23. Use up your dining dollars within the first month as a freshman
24. Have $500 dining dollars left the last week of classes as a sophomore
25. Doing almost anything you see college students do in the movies or on TV

What is on your Anti-Bucket List?

College is a wonderfully exciting time.  You learn a lot in and out of class.  With one semester to go, I figured I’d give a run down of some of the finer points of life that I’ve learned while at Hopkins.  I’ll be sure to update this list at the end of the year, but for now…

Things I’ve learned at Hopkins – Pt. 1:

1. If a professor says attendance is mandatory but doesn’t keep attendance, people will stop showing up after the third week.
2. As a guy, you will unintentionally understand fashion trends.  For example, understanding what jeggings are when brought up in conversation.
3. If your TA isn’t fun, your class will be harder.  Know your TA.  You can really hit or miss with paper titles like my paper on the natural factors contributing to global warming called “Some Like It Hot”.
4. When people say that an event is free, they are really just saying you already paid for it with your tuition.
5. No matter what time you walk past the Freshman Quad, there will always be lights on in the AMRs.
   

   My trusty backpack

6. If there is some bit of news or pop culture (this includes every viral video) that is floating around on the internet, you will know about it within an hour.
7. 9 AM in college time = 5 AM in real time.
8. This is obvious: The M level challenge is harder than the D level challenge.
9. People who were overachievers in high school are still annoying in college.
10. If you are in a relationship, add 3 credit hours to your semester total.  It will give you a more accurate readout of your free time.  Plan accordingly.
11. Free/cheap tshirts are easier to find than Olin Hall.
12. As much as you try to prevent it, you will eat the same things in the dining hall pretty much every day.
13. Marble is slippery when wet.
14. The gym looks nice from the outside.
15. The quality of a class is determined by professor, content, and classmates.  Too bad there is no ratemyclassmates.com.
16. On a related note, there will alway be one person in class who raises their hand in a large lecture.  Many of them tell personal anecdotes before asking awful questions.  Many will do this at the end of class when the professor asks “Are there any questions?”
17. Appointments with professors work much better than going to their office hours.
18. Freshmen think they are the first ones to do anything they do at Hopkins.
19. Seniors think about everything as the last time they will do something at Hopkins.
20. A roommate is your best friend and worst enemy.
    

    Unrelated, but my father trying to get the Yule Log on our TV on Christmas morning.

21. Every college student graduates with a comprehensive knowledge of how to BS.
22. Humanities majors will get thorough instruction on how to be pretentious by learning philosophical ideas, literary and historical references, and figuring out how to relate everything back to Marxist ideas.
23. People will go to anything if you offer them free food.
24. The shortest route between two points does not involve the brick pathways.  If you are in a hurry, don’t follow the red brick road.
25. Hearing someone complain about getting an A- is a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

As with the other lists, any other suggestions from the HI team?  Or any disagreements?

The absurdities of college life are slowly becoming apparent, but it’s worth all the craziness.

I’m at a crossroads in my college career.  On one hand, I absolutely love Hopkins and can’t imagine myself leaving.  But on the other hand, it doesn’t seem like there is much left here for me.  When selecting classes for next semester, I realized that I’ve taken most of the class I’ve wanted to take.  I have been to most of the on campus events.  And I hardly know anyone here

anymore.

I’m not in a state of despair.  It’s just a confusing situation that I’ve never been in before.  I think it’s similar to how I felt in high school.  There was something about moving on from what had become routine for several years that is unsettling.  But honestly, I hated high school and was more excited for college and moving forward.  I’m definitely ready to move on, but I just don’t want to.

I love being in college.  I love the freedom, the crazy sleeping and eating schedules, the learning environment, the proximity to my friends, having a job and not a career.  There are some things that I’m excited for.  For instance, with grad school or a job (whichever path I choose), I can concentrate on doing something that I want to do with my time.

The biggest part about knowing it’s almost done is knowing that I’m leaving a huge chapter of my life behind. Something that I spent so long waiting for is not past.  It’s like I overran it.  It went by so quickly.  And every semester seems to get shorter.

It’s hard not to look back at this point.  But I’ll forge forward into the unknown.  I’m not scared or nervous.  I know that I won’t end up a bum.  I’ll make something of myself.  It’s not fear that’s driven me into this existential crisis.  It’s just looking around and feeling like I’ve accomplished all I’ve wanted to.  That makes me realize I am really done here.

I will make the most of my last semester. There is still a lot to be done.  And I still enjoy it here.  I don’t mean for this to be terribly depressing.  I am not sad or stressed.  I’ve just reached a fork in the road.

I’ll just have to take it.