{"id":7450,"date":"2016-03-18T00:20:52","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T04:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=7450"},"modified":"2016-04-21T17:36:47","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T21:36:47","slug":"passions-vs-the-real-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2016\/03\/18\/passions-vs-the-real-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Passions vs. The Real World"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s that time of the semester.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you are currently in college, you know what I mean. Today in class one of my professors spoke openly with us, telling us that professors hated this time of year. After months of snow and winter and general gloominess, the effects are starting to show in students. They raise their hands less often, they feel more lethargic, and he described it as just a general atmosphere that all professors dread. <\/span><\/p>\n

As for me, I can definitely feel it. It\u2019s not only the lack of warmth and sunshine (that we seem to finally be getting here in Michigan), but just the <\/span>everything-ness<\/span><\/i> of this time of the semester. It\u2019s not just having to do schoolwork, it\u2019s having to do schoolwork, and find time for meetings, and friends, and jobs, and summer plans, and family, and – for some of us – graduation. It\u2019s a list that goes on and on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last night I read through a short story I wrote this semester for the Hopwood Awards. I didn\u2019t write a blog post about this, but it\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve been brave enough to submit anything I\u2019ve written. I decided screw it, I\u2019m a senior, it\u2019s now or never, and wrote a 20+ page short story in the span of about three days, which, if you are a writer, know how incredibly short that is. I even got up at 9 a.m. to finish it up before the deadline, shocking my roommates who typically don\u2019t see me up and awake before 11, sometimes even noon. <\/span><\/p>\n

But I was thinking about how much joy that gave me, even in the midst of the crazy semester around me. I banged out a 20+ paper because it was something I\u2019m passionate about. Writing, for me, has always been something I\u2019m passionate about. And at the moment, I\u2019m working on a research paper for a class..and yet I\u2019m not. I can\u2019t work on it, because I have so many other thousands of millions of things to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inspiration and creativity are some of the most elusive characteristics of writing. A lot of advice I\u2019ve been given in college surrounding my writing is to keep doing it, even when inspiration doesn\u2019t hit. <\/span><\/p>\n

But I never seem to have trouble with inspiration – it\u2019s always the time. I get so frustrated that I have other things I could be doing besides working on a short story or writing Part 2 of the blog post about albums (I promise, it\u2019s coming). And then this frustration gets worse whenever I realize that I have to do things I don\u2019t want to in order to do the things I love, like write and read and watch TV (and think critically about watching TV). <\/span><\/p>\n

But sometimes, life doesn\u2019t work that way. I don\u2019t like it, but it\u2019s the truth.<\/span><\/p>\n

This message is brought to you by a stressed college student who knows she shouldn\u2019t be stressed but is anyways.*<\/span>
\n*never stop writing, even when you\u2019re stressed <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s that time of the semester. If you are currently in college, you know what I mean. Today in class one of my professors spoke openly with us, telling us that professors hated this time of year. After months of snow and winter and general gloominess, the effects are starting to show in students. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[432,162,989,420],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7450"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7450"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7604,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7450\/revisions\/7604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}