Jason Brent Johnson is a piece of shit

And I know that is libel, but whatever.

So I had this teacher for newswriting last semester who I thought would be great, because he's a full-time staff writer for the Chronicle and has a truly impressive resume of jobs and internships. Unfortunately, he was a terrible educator. And what's worse, he was completely unwilling to improve his skills. Okay, if a staff position isn't hacking it and you want to make a little money on the side, do what everyone else does and freelance. Don't teach a college class -- full of intelligent adults, some of which will be as old if not older than you are -- unless you truly enjoy it.

So I spent three a hours a week last semester in Mr. Johnson's class, supposedly getting an introduction to the art of newswriting. Things started off well enough, but then he announced that we'd have a weekly quiz of ten questions taken from the Chronicle. That's right. We were to read the Chronicle cover to cover every day and then be quizzed on it. Aside from that fact that I was taking four other upper division classes, working, and reading the stupid text book for this class already, who even remembers EVERY SINGLE article they read in the newspaper? Needless to say I tanked these quizzes. He also gave us an AP style book quiz on the second class meeting, without ever having explained to us what the book was. He didn't tell us to study it, or even tell us, "don't forget, AP style quiz next week." Nope. He wrote it on his inaccurate syllabus and that was the end of it.

He read my first writing assignment in front of the class. So apparently, it was good enough to be published. I had taken journalism in high school, but he didn't know that. Did I mention that he assigned this first story to us without first practicing writing a full story in class? Yeah. We had written a couple leads, a couple nut graphs, and then it was, "ok kids, 500 word story. And I want interviews, but I'm not going to tell you that before you turn it in."

So after I received a C+ in this class because I hate reading the newspaper, I was pissed. I got A's on every single writing assignment and turned in all of my homework, but apparently that wasn't the ass-backwards point he was trying to prove. I managed to swing an A- in fucking statistics, but got my ass kicked in J221.

Up until now, it may seem that my grade was in proportion to my effort. However, it must be mentioned that in our review session for the final, he was still clarifying to several people in our class that a lead was supposed to contain about 50 words. As much as Olaina is a bitch, in that journalism class we learned how to write about 5 different kinds of stories and put together an 8 page newspaper in the time that this guy couldn't get across how to write a lead, let alone an entire story. Granted, I'm sure there were some idiots in that class, but if he hadn't wasted so much time on news quizzes and pod casts and other extraneous stuff, we might've actually mastered NEWSWRITING.

So I ran into Erna Smith, chair of the department and former Wall Street Journal reporter, in the pub lab yesterday and she asked me what I was doing for the summer. She asked me what I got in newswriting, I told her, and she said, "yeah, I saw that, and I thought, 'that can't be Meghann'." So there you have it. This woman has never seen me write more than a 2 page book critique and she knew that I couldn't have screwed over newswriting so badly.

So good riddance, Mr. Johnson. I'm sure I'll have a great time explaining the only C of my entire college career in my grad school interviews.

Travelling soldier

I am easily disoriented. For the past few years, every time I got home from a week at camp, I would feel anxious and depressed for a few days until I adjusted to summer. I thought maybe it was because school would end abruptly and I would immediately be whisked away to an alternate universe of constant excitement, only to be dropped back into reality without a new game plan. Last year I felt it a little bit more, because instead of going home, I went back to a new apartment and a new internship, not yet adjusted to the new lifestyle.

This year is particularly bad. And it's funny because after I made it through my ordeal and moved into my new apartment, I was so comfortable and at peace with it. When I first got back to San Diego, I was bored as hell and a little frustrated that I had left my new apartment, where I was having such an easy time adjusting. But I adjusted back to my San Diego life and I was having a pretty good time despite the fact that I wasn't really doing anything. So now I'm back in this apartment that I love but I am depressed and anxious because I don't know what to do with myself. There's no TV to waste hours, my friends have all gone home for the summer, and I won't be working for another three weeks. I start school tomorrow but I don't know if that will do the trick. I have lived three different lives in the past month and I don't know how to adjust.

The shittiest part about this anxiety is that there really is no treatment except time. I could be working and going to school and hanging out with friends all day long and it wouldn't make a difference until my brain catches up to me. I can't even remember what I did before I was home. School seems like forever ago. All I want to do is go home and work at the bakery and hang out. It's weird how that is the most comfortable scenario I can think of.

What the hell am I going to do when I get to Paris? And when I get back? I'm going to have a freak out when I leave Paris and my home base is gone. I don't even like to think about it because I get sick to my stomach. Maybe I need a Xanax prescription.

Whatever. I'm going to the gym :).

Serve me the sky...

So. Remember about seven months ago when I posted a little entry that looked like this?
Well. Seven months and a lot of stress later, I'm standing on my own two feet and I've finally figured things out:

I'm a Global Studies major, an Art History minor [I'm trying to get a job at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art this summer], and ladies and gentlemen, I am going to Rome next spring.



I win.

A few pearls of wisdom for you

And if you've never watched Real Time with Bill Maher, I suggest you download it or something.



On the French:

"New rule: Conservatives have to stop rolling their eyes everytime they hear the word 'France.' Like just calling something 'French' is the ultimate argument winner. As if to say, 'what can you say about a country that was too stupid to get on board with our wonderfully conceived and brilliantly executed war in Iraq?' And yet, an American politician could not survive if he uttered the simple, true statement: France has a better health care system than we do, and we should steal it. Because here, simply dismissing an idea as 'French' passes for an argument. John Kerry? Couldn't vote for him, he looked French. Yeah, as opposed to the other guy, who just looked stupid.

Now last week France had an election, and people there approach an election differently -- THEY VOTE. 85% of them turned out. You couldn't get 85% of Americans to get off the couch if there was an election between tits and bigger tits and they were handing out free samples. Now maybe the high turnout has something to do with the fact that the French candidates are never asked about where they stand on evolution, prayer in school, abortion, stem cell research, or gay marriage. And if the candidate knows about a character in a book other than Jesus, it's not a drawback. The electorate doesn't vote for the guy they wanna have a croissant with, nor do they care about private lives.

In the current race, Segolene Royale has four kids but she never got married. And she's a Socialist. In America, if a Democrat even thinks you're calling him a liberal, he grabs an orange vest and a rifle and heads into the woods to kill something. Mme. Royale's opponent is married but they live separately and lead separate lives. And the people are okay with that for the same reason they're okay with nude beaches -- because they're not a nation of six year olds who scream and giggle if they see pee pee parts!

They have weird ideas about privacy. They think it should be private. In France, even the mistresses have mistresses. To not have a lady on the side says to the voters, 'I'm not good at multitasking.'

Now like any country, France has its faults, like all of that ridiculous accordion music. But their health care is the best in the industrialized world, as is their poverty rate. And they're completely independent of Mid-East oil. And they're the greenest country, and they're not fat. And they have public intellectuals in France. We have Dr. Phil. They invented sex during the day, lingerie, and the tongue. Can't we admit we could learn something from them?

So, from now on, all you high-ranking Bush administration officials, because the French are righter than you on some things, when France comes up in conversation you are not allowed to roll your eyes. The only time you get to do that is when your hooker from Ms. Julia's is blowing you."

On George Bush:

"And finally, new rule. Jimmy Carter must be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay. Last weekend, former US president and current Al Qaeda operative Jimmy Carter launched an unprovoked attack on democracy itself by telling an Arkansas newspaper that the Bush administration has been the worst in history, and people were shocked. Arkansas has newspapers?

But once again, we were sucked into a phony controversy about who said what and how it hurts George Bush's feelings. Cuz when you hurt George Bush, you hurt America's feelings, and when you hurt America's feelings, you hurt the troops. And when that happens, Tinker Bell's light goes out and she dies.

Now as for Carter's assertion, I was up all night on Wikipedia doing an exhaustive search on former presidents and, while other presidents have sucked, Bush is like a smorgasbord of suck. He combines the corruption of Warren G. Harding, the warmongering of James Polk, and the abusive power of Richard Nixon.

Nixon got in trouble for illegally wiretapping Democratic headquarters -- Bush is illegally wiretapping the entire country. Nixon opened up relations with the Chinese -- Bush let them poison your dog. Herbert Hoover, who was literally named after a machine that sucks, sat on his ass through four years of the depression. But he was an actual engineer, and if someone had told him about global warming, he would've understood it before the penguins caught on fire. Ulysses S. Grant let his cronies loot the Republic, but he won his Civil War. Harding sucked, but he once said, 'I am not fit for the office, and never should have been here.' So at least he knew he sucked.

He never walked off stage like Bush does, after one of his embarrassing, language-mangling press conferences, with that smirk on his face like, 'nailed it!' Or maybe that's just the look you get when you have a showdown with the Democrats and you win, like he just did with Iraq. You don't get to be the worst president ever without a little help from the other side.

You know I like Jimmy Carter, but when the Republican fake-outrage machine pretended to be so upset at his remarks, Carter did what Democrats do and he backed down. He said his words were careless and misquoted, and the sun was in his eyes and his hearing aid went out, and he was molested by a clergyman. Instead of looking them in the eye and saying, 'no! I meant what I said because it was true. And speaking as the first citizen of Habitat for Humanity, let me take out my Jimmy Carter tool box and build you a house where we can meet and you can BLOW ME'."