[sigh]

The below is from Friday afternoon while I was waiting on an assignment at my internship:

I added up how many hours of baseline work I have per week. 65. This does not include projects, additional assignments, tracking Hollywood news, watching TV/movies or showering. I've made it through two full weeks of school and it might be several more before I settle into the pace. (For those of you who know me well, I can tell you I've become someone who eats out of necessity and not enjoyment, which, let's be honest, is the most shocking thing I've said so far.) There is not one minute of the day that I'm not working on something or feeling guilty for not working on something. There is not one class I don't feel behind in already. That's a lie. There's one class I don't feel behind in. But that's it. And no matter how much I kill myself during the week, I still haven't managed to build up enough of a foundation in movie news/knowledge to confidently join class discussions. BUT. But I'm not drowning. Not yet anyway. It does make me feel better that I'm part of the overachieving half of the class (the people with full course loads and internships)...granted I might be the lowest performing of that half. And I have no idea how these people are doing it. Magic? Hermoine's clock from Harry Potter and the Something, Something? It's truly mystifying. When are these people going to the grocery store? I've essentially been out of food for a full week now but haven't even been able to do anything about it. (My diet today has consisted of four granola bars and half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because I only had one piece of bread left.).

I was going to wrap this up, but now that I've scanned back over the above, I feel like I need to balance it out because Ikinda sound like a suicide risk. There's a lot of good stuff, too, I promise. I still have huge friend crushes on most of my classmates and I'm meeting new people all the time. And I've already learned so much-- more than I could have imagined, honestly. I feel really lucky to be here. As one of my professors said, "You made it into UCLA's film school. You've already won." (My other favorite line from him was, "It's TV, we're not curing cancer here. Let's keep some perspective.")

I'd also like to take a moment to apologize to those of you who have not received a phone call/email from me in far too long (or to those of you who've had to deal with my stressed, not always nice evil twin). Thank you for bearing with me and loving me anyway...assuming you do still love me, but I wouldn't know for sure because I probably haven't called you.