Vimello.com

Where do we go now?

It’s been five years since I came to this rather small town, along with my parents. Here I have met some good friends, my boyfriend. It was here that I got my first frenchie, that I graduated high school, that I got into college, that I got into college yet again, that I got the first two Cambridge ESOL certificates that I’d always wanted.

But, as I said, it’s a rather small town. I miss São Paulo, where I used to spend every second of both my school vacations (adding up to more than three months an year). I miss Rio, where I grew up, where I feel at home. Heck, I even miss Minas, where I was born, even though I got to know it roughly only last year. This town is not for me, I don’t really like certain things and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to those things.

But what’s been bugging me is that São Paulo would be perfect for me now. There are two major advertisement colleges there that I would die to attend. There are two aunts of mine that are advertisers themselves, so maybe they can hook up an internship or something like that. It’s a huge city, but my grandpa lives a little bit isolated in an amazing house on this quiet neighborhood. I love that house, and I can see my frenchies there, puppies and the whole enchilada.

Okay, but then there are many money issues to consider, there is the fact that I’m not sure if my grandpa is going to stay at that house (he thinks it’s too empty, but if he let me stay there with a couple dozen frenchies, I’m betting he’ll never think that again), there is the fact that I’m not sure if I can get into one of those top colleges (although I’m IN LOVE with advertising and I’m always studying and I really feel happy doing just that, I guess compared to people there, I know next to nothing). And there is my boyfriend, too. What would happen?

I can’t deny that this is an idea I’ve been flirting with for quite some time now. God only knows where I’ll be in one or two years. And I kinda like that.

Grades are out

For the first time in my life I am happy with my college results.

8.3 and 8 in Portuguese I and Sociology.

Okay, average-ish. But it was to be expected.

10 and 10 in Introduction to Advertising and Computer Graphics.

Both had huge and important assignments, both are more like “hands on” subjects and I fell in love with both. I fell in love with my college major! I know what I want to do for the rest of my life, and it makes me happy, and I think I’m pretty damn good at it too, and I’ll be even happier if I can hone these skills and learn design-y stuff over the years, so that one day I’ll be making one hell of an art director.

After dwelling over college and computer science for four years or so, this is a pretty big deal. I feel like celebrating!

The Notebook

Today something really interesting happened.

I take the majority of my classes with an older woman. This would be completely fine and uneventful, except that she likes to talk. A lot. More than most of our professors, and sometimes just won’t shut up about the stupidest thing in the world. </vent> Anyway, she is the kind of person that has got an opinion on any and everything and is very stubborn. Well, she’s verry narrow and close minded. That’s the impression I got from her, being with her for four to five hours, every day, for the past couple of months.

So as I was leaving our Sociology class today, someone asked to photocopy her notebook where she kept tracks of all the subjects the professor had covered this term. She then laughed and said, snobbishly, “My son had warned me this would happen.”

These are the types of people that do not like to share. That claim their “work” as theirs only and want the rest of the world to go to hell. This is not an apology to the people who don’t copy anything or don’t come to classes and then want to do well anyway, because these people are going to fail sooner or later, so why bother? How can you keep private something that someone else shared with you and is not even yours to claim?

This is exactly the same fight about open source systems and people that don’t share their codes. When I was getting a degree in Computer Science, some people thought they were very much special and that all their work was theirs only and non-shareable, while others were quite brilliant, always helping us, poor unnerdy souls, always writing articles and tutorials. Interesting enough, these people grew much more than the others that didn’t want to “share the knowledge” and are now endlessly more successful than these other people. Not to mention they have many more friends.

Plan

I think I might have dropped out of college. Turns out I am not nearly half as geek as I thought I was, to endure 5 years of working my butt off to learn how to program or other joys of Computer Science. But as of yesterday I am now a Girl with a Plan. And the Plan is called Advertising.

Basically it all started some six months ago - no, wait. It all started some eight semesters ago, when upon failing Calculus I and Linear Algebra, a young and unexperience Vivz realized she got into nerdschool without even knowing what an algorythm was. Then, some seven semesters after that, after dragging myself through half the whole course in double the time it should actually take me, plus much desperation from my part,  Rafaella, a friend of Caleb’s, came home for a puppy. We started talking and she’s doing the exact same thing I want to be doing. This is it, folks.  It’s calling me like the One Ring calls the nazguls.

And all this time I kept thinking, thinking what was wrong with me, could I really be this dumb after getting into a decent college, after being so smart all the way through school, why the hell was I not able to code a calculator in Pascal on my lunch break on the first week. The doubts. It is safe to say that this situation is a direct result of bad college structure, lack of info about college majors, vivz not wanting to listen to herself (I actually did consider Advertising for a while but loads of people talked me out of it for the most ridiculous reasons ever) and vivz being way to immature some 4 years ago, when this all started.

I never took myself to be a college drop-out. I just thought that things would work smoothly after I got into one of the top colleges, so when I did get into one, I stopped caring. I know better now and I’m done with fooling around.

At least until July or so, which is when I can actually do something about my education. Until then, I’m seeking a job, building websites, having fun with my boyfriend and dogs, and trying to live one day after another.