Philip Glass composed incidental music for two separate theater productions of the story of Metamorphosis by Kafka. These two themes, along with two themes from the Errol Morris film The Thin Blue Line, were incorporated into a five-part piece of music for solo piano entitled Metamorphosis. ~Wikipedia

The thing about hanging out with seniors who are graduating is that I play as much as them, and don't study as much as I need to. Like right now, I should be reading Hannah Arendt or at least sketching my Hum essay outline, but I can't bring myself to do work, so I'm doing something which my superego approves as being productive such as blogging (compared to watching Survivor or playing some old grandmother's game). Well, undergrad life is about playing, enjoying life.. I'm not so sure about the going through boys like snap part.. but I'm not complaining about the playing part.

Friday. Grad dinner. Little Italy is a happening place at night. It's very pretty, a very quaint feeling, a great place to hang out if I'm a tourist, nothing like quiet La Jolla at all. Food was ok, service wasn't bad. We wouldn't mind slowness anyway since all we're doing is sit and chit chat. So many people are graduating. It won't be the same next year.

Sat. Kayaking at La Jolla Shores. Wow it was fun. Kayaking in the Pacific Ocean, in a marine reserve, seeing orange fishies swimming around, going through caves like Disneyland rides, trying not to open mouth towards the sky to prevent birdies from pooping into undesirable places, laughing at the noisy sea lions, admiring the giant kelps, having a surfer dude guide, enjoying the sun, sea and company, and best of all, riding the wave back on land. It's like surfing on a kayak. =) Just try not to fall into the water, it's cold.

Sun. Ultimate unproductive day. Went La Scala and signed a lease. I think it's done in a moment of impulse, my impulse, but it's done. I don't want to spend too much energy on this. People ought to veto me when I do impulsive things, but since no one said anything. Well. Went home intending to read about antisemitism, and ended up playing Simpsons road rage trying to hit lampposts and radioactive wastes and logs and so on.. Did minimal reading, went out for dinner, and rented The Prestige to watch. Magicians are brilliant. Obsession is an understatement for these people. Tricks are their lives. So much sacrifice is made for the climax trick.

Some stats to see where you stand.
US
High school graduates, percent of persons age 25+, 2000: 80.4%
Bachelor's degree or higher, pct of persons age 25+, 2000: 24.4%
Singapore
% of P1 cohort who
Sat for GCE ‘N’ or ‘O’ Level Examinations and had at least 5 ‘N’ level passes or 3 ‘O’ level passes, 2005: 86.9%
Admitted into university: 23.1% (I don't know if this figure considers those in universities outside the country)

So conclusion, if you're in university, you're among the lucky 1/5 of your batch that made it/ want to be there. Even if you scrape through college and barely graduate, you'll still have a higher qualifications than 80% of the population.

I don't know if I mentioned this, I liked John's philosophy of teaching because he believes that everyone has the capability to get an A. I don't feel like it's impossible to get As, even though my As are few. Looking at the stats, at how uni admissions/ process filters out so many people, is the assumption that everyone can make it present? Just finished grading/ scoring the midterm, some people got pathetically little points, I feel sad for them. Some of them really wrote a lot of stuff, nice and neat, but wrong. Do they not care about this class? Or some people just can't do it? I guess so far, I've been able to do reasonably well in classes, I wonder what it feels to be be stuck getting 50% all the time, unable to improve. Well actually I know.. After my long series of Bs, I just give up on that class and just go get Bs.. Can I do something? Anything?

Getting out of point. My point was that so far we've been able to surf through school, bobbing up and down near the top easily. Shouldn't I stop where I'm still good in before entering and sinking in the next phase of education? I'm most certain that grad sch isn't for everybody. If only a quarter of the pop makes it through college, I'm sure only a quarter of this, or even less, makes it through professional and grad sch. Am I among those?