2025 | University Blog Post - #2

I ended up missing my post for last week due to the already massive workload I've taken on with university. I'm teetering on the last bit of becoming majorly burnt out only a couple weeks in, but it happens.

I was able to finish a ton of stuff in that time. One thing I was most proud of was making a visual guide for my radio club, so now anyone should be able to use the radio station without fail. I spent a good week-and-a-half on that. Our meeting afterwards was great too. With everyone in a high mood (mostly because we all learned that P.O.S. got necked in Utah as soon as it started), we ate pizza and planned for the future. I was happy with it all.

The anime club's going along fine. We feel a little slower this year, but I think a big part of that comes with us being in a state of transition. We're all much busier, but we're trying our best.

Outside of the clubs that consume most of my time currently, my appreciation and understanding for teaching, as well as my personal experience with literature, continues to grow. I've decided to fill in my mornings by talking to my professors on a personal level, as one of my better traits is my golden gift of gab. I can get people going for very long periods, so I wanted to get into more personal thoughts on what my professors have on more niche aspects of teaching.

As I read a lot more Osamu Dazai and take in more serious tones in visual or written culture, I've run into an increasing number of people who refuse to address harsher topics: sexual abuse, domestic violence, murder/death, intense inter-personal relations, or even nudity or slight  lewdness, etc.. Maybe it's because of how I grew up, but I always saw these as important things to be able to approach, especially in art. I wanted to know how to talk to individuals who refuse this and help them understand the importance of it.

Thankfully, the one conversation I had with my professor was very fruitful, and I got recommendations on sources and personal anecdotes from their time teaching. What I figured is, this only started to become an issue (at least in her time being an educator) since around 2018—getting worse after 2020. This goes with some other theories I've had on social and general culture I've been speculating on for a couple years now, so it gives me more things to consider.

Yet, I digress, because she then told me of some situations of how it students refusing to participate with these topics has become much more frequent in the last couple years. The class right before mine has a student who will leave the room abruptly with any talk of abuse from or in the daily readings, so it was interesting for me to bring this up when it had been happening so recently too. I ended up being given a book by my professor, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions And Bad Ideas Are Setting Up A Generation For Failure by Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt. I'm curious to see if this would go at all with the running theories that Catholicism inducing a need for purity have poisoned the Western (specifically American) mind and its comprehension of art. 

In return, I brought up a short story by Osamu Dazai that I've been speculating on for months now, One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji. I asked for a more professional take on the story, and wanted to know what they found in it, so I lent her my copy of Self-Portraits by Dazai, and we went on our way. The conversation was full of many topics in the end: the AI industry, AI in teaching, student comprehension on hard topics, the preconception that artists need to suffer for their work to be worthy/good, comparisons between authors who committed suicide and how it's seen in their works. There was more, but I don't feel the need to go on to it all. It was a long conversation.

Anyways, back to the other stuff. Last night was nice in that club. Our school facilities wouldn't get back to me in time, so we were unable to play Phantasy Star Online like we originally wanted to. Instead I got to show a good portion of an anime I like called Aoi Bungaku Series 『青い文学シリーズ』. It went over very, very well as a last-second change. Next week I'll be helping the members learn elementary-level 日本語.

Outside of all of this, last night I played a couple hours of Saints Row: The Third with a friend of mine. Easily what I find the best in the series — Saints Row 2 wasn't that great — we go through my favorite opening mission (Party Time), and a bit into the story itself. All-in-all, we had a good time.

Tonight I'll be going out with one of my best friends to celebrate their twenty-first birthday. I hope to be able to unwind and relax for a bit.

Oh, also, I had to get Spotify again because it's required for use in my university clubs. I'll be posting song recommendations here once again. Unfortunately due to my continuously growing pile of work, I can't put a lot into these blog posts. Saying this is a bit ironic due to the length that this one has, isn't it?

But one last thing. I'm sure this will speak to some, and others might think they understand it, but they only understand the words. They create this idea they know what I'm saying — "I've experienced this! I know this!" — You might, but you probably understand it on the same level as a high schooler understands those memes of Tony Soprano with text talking about something with getting older in life when they only are about one-or-three years past graduation. If even.

Two days ago, I worked with my anime club secretary to find a better room for our meetings. Afterwards, I walked them to their first solo meeting for a club they're now running on their own. I meant to sit and watch them to make sure they got the hang of this stuff—both them and their VP did well with it in the end.

Just before we got to the door of the ancient hall that makes up the western end of our campus, I was called out to by an old friend. Given, I don't know if I can really say they're an 'old' friend. We were in high school together and had many of run-ins through mutuals, but we never had a moment alone from what I remember. It wasn't until I started university that we really started to form a personal bond: them working in information technologies at this point in their life, myself a student. 

Still, even with this connection, I won't waste a moment like it. 

We ended up talking about a little bit of everything at first. The club he advises, my clubs that I run, the perceptions of staff on campus on these clubs, technology, and me complaining about some issues on campus IT needs to solve. LOL. The kind of conversations most people will have when running into each other, especially when others are around. Slightly educated small talk.

When my secretary-now-personal-president realized their time was running low and they needed to go, the mood finally took us over. 

Standing alone in the town we both lived our whole lives in, the grey sky holding a slight chill over us, the sunlight dropping early, and the leaves falling early into autumn because of our summer cicadas. It set into us. They grey hairs we're both getting, the scruffy facial hair, and the subtle definitions being carved into our faces by time itself — "We're getting old now, huh?" — I've used this stupid cliche so many times since I've moved back home. Every time I do, I can see a slight flinch in the recipient's eyes, always followed by a forced smile and a small laugh to acknowledge that it's very much the case. 

He confided in me his recent struggles by staying up late into the night, staring at his ceiling and wondering where it all changed. If you think about the chronological parts of your life, it can all seem like a smooth ride that calmly delivered you to that exact moment. Did you really live any of it, appreciate it—can you even appreciate it after the fact? People talk about it often, like your life is a movie you're just observing. Unlike a carefully scripted film, there were no chapter-markers to carefully differentiate one era from another. Just like in this blog post, where if you were to just skim it you'd quickly come to find that the mood shift is major and quick. What was all of that which happened before? Where did it change? Did it really change or is just layered?

This happens to everyone eventually. You don't think on it as much when you're a kid. When they say you feel invincible as a teen, they don't usually mean that you literally think you can do stupid things to cheat death, but that your own morality just doesn't occur to you at that time. This isn't an issue either. I still remember my first panic attacks at the sudden realization of these things when I was in middle school. Silently slamming my arms and sliding my legs around in my bed, late at night, trying to figure out why my body was suddenly filled with this intense feeling of fear and anxiety. I'm sure you yourself can think of times where that took you over. You can try to defend yourself with some boring gothic junk about how you're not phased by these things and never were, but I know you. We're both humans.

My friend said this year was the first time he truly felt 'old'. I certainly was feeling the same. I think the main difference between us here is that I'm not upset about it, or at least that I'm not a bit intimidated over it. I'm an odd-one-out in this situation, because every time I've had a conversation with someone from my public schooling years, they all speak in a sense that says they're afraid of getting older and watching the last strands of their youth slowly break off and set them loose. These conversations are always draped in nostalgic talk about CRT televisions, how our schools changed, watching people we knew disappear into the Earth's population without a trace, and more.

Our conversation went on to talk about what the difference is which makes where we are so drastically different from those whom are several years younger than us (yes, boomer, we know that this happens to everyone too stfu and let me talk). We discussed it being the methods our parents raised us under, events through life, political things. Whatever it is, we finally feel old when talking to students on campus. 

For me, this happened in my freshman year when I got the anime club. For everyone around me, Five Nights at Freddy's was their entire childhood. Their graphic school backpack or lunchbox. For me, that was a single short blip of YouTuber slop in high school. They were the 'Skibidi Toilet kids' I was annoyed with back then. Now they were functioning adults who look back at all this stuff I thought was just boring junk for children with the same level of knowledge and nostalgia that I look back at something like the Nintendo GameCube and CRT computer monitors.

A lot of thoughts were running through my head when we were talking. Maybe I was also finally starting to understand my own words. Writing this stuff out, as I've stated before, is more of a catharsis for me to get my thoughts out in front of me. "You talk so much about this conversation, but most of the last few paragraphs were just pseudo-intellectual drivel on nostalgia. What was the point of it all?" 

I watched his body language the whole time. I always fear I'm overstaying my welcome, but we'd step apart a bit, knowing we wanted to get on with our days. To go home and sleep. Yet, every few sentences we'd step closer. These moments meant a lot. To meet with old faces and just talk. Similar experiences, mindsets. Most of the time we both stared off into the distance, not looking directly at each other. We didn't want this to end, and several times we mentioned getting drinks together soon. 

Isn't it funny how whenever you get to a certain age, reconnecting with others always comes to that? Just getting alcoholic drinks over a small dinner? I wonder why that is. I'll be doing it again tonight anyways. Then probably next weekend again with that friend.

I think I'm more hyper-aware of how finite the time I have left in the United States is. Trust me, I can't wait to haul ass out of here and never return. Yet, by that point in my life it'll be around thirty years I've spent here. That's a good chunk of my life, and once the plane's tires leave the ground all that time is virtually gone. 

But until then, I get to listen to catch up with old friends, and then listen to my club members talk about the MHA anime and think to myself...

"We're getting old now, huh?"

Anyways, the song recommendation this week is "Pasfotografier - Premix" by Nephew. A fantastic Danish rock band.