This is the end of the first week of classes and I am already overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do to stay on top of it all. I took the liberty to calculate the total minimum amount of hours of class preparation time required and it turned out to be over 50 hours a week, including studying, reading, preparing presentations, and writing papers. If I also include into this total minimum amount of preparation hours the amount of class time, it increases to about 70 hours a week. Oh and my commute plus time walking to/from class equals about 8 hours a week. I had hoped to work/intern this quarter or at least have some semblance of a social life, but those are out the window now.

I can tell this quarter will be a particularly tough one. I'm used to having one or two hard classes and the rest easy ones but I have three hard ones this quarter plus a semi-hard one. This situation is extremely difficult for someone with a learning disorder who happens to be too proud to get it documented. Sometimes it is tempting to save oneself from a pain this great though. The worse part is watching other people be able to do what takes me twice as long to do.

Rob and I are doing well. The wait time for a Time-Warner cable internet installation appointment is around a month long so it'll be awhile before we can video chat again. The philosopher Rousseau believes in the concept of distance making the heart grow founder and I hope he's right on that. Of course, he also believed that women should stay at home and be "chaste" but that was right before his mental breakdown in his later years.

A girl on the bus today asked me what I wanted to do with my political science degree. Because she seemed impressed that I'm going to UCLA, I half-lied and said that I'm looking into the nonprofit sector. The truth is, I'm getting this degree to complete my own concept of myself. I'm proving to myself that I am able finish something important and dedicate my whole life to it because I believe in it. People are totally tuned in to everything that would make money including the idea of learning. If learning something is not profitable then it is a waste of time to them. This is a line of thinking that I completely reject. Furthermore, when people are jaded by the idea of government these days, they are only seeing the surface and only seeing the bad things (as is human nature). It's unfortunate that the word "politics" has generated negative ideas in people. I've heard countless times the horrendous "politics" at the workplace which essentially means illegitimate power or force coming from an authority figure. Politicians are likened to criminals in the worse case scenario or to greedy bastards in the best case. I'm not advocating for them but I am advocating for those of us who are trying to make things better. We may not end up being politicians or getting law degrees, but we are dedicating our lives to doing what's right because it is the honorable thing to do. Americans may no longer value honor but we can rediscover it on our own individually.