they're zombies!!! aaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!

<--- a typical day on a Miami street...

oh, it's that time of year again...

miami kids are experiencing the first flush of finals week anxiety, and you can already notice it in their empty stares.

nothing i like more than knowing half the people i see on the street probably don't see me. it creates an invisibility that could be really powerful, if one makes use of it in the right way. when no one sees you, you can play all sorts of non sequitur tricks on them, like intentionally standing in their way on the sidewalk, or faking a seizure mid-stride en route to class. or, if i feel the need to wake some people up: grabbing my bullhorn and reciting the pounding monologue from NETWORK from the steps of an academic building, or on the ledge of a bell tower. tho, on second thought, probably not a good idea. i hear it's bad to wake up a sleepwalker... i wonder if that also applies to the living dead?

anyway, i have several papers, exams, and group presentations to do these next few days. but it's all looking bright because as of tomorrow evening (Wednesday) at 10 pm EST, i will officially be done forever with social entrepreneurship and will never ever step foot in another business class again! no more thoughts of Bono haunting my darkest mind, and no more insipid business papers to write! i will be done and will immediately move on to more invigorating projects. i'll probably spend the whole of that evening celebrating and re-fortifying and replenishing my soul and spirit. (so call/email/write/telegraph/telepath a congratulatory note on Wednesday! remind me of those dreams i once had and spur me on to enjoy my life again!!)

finally, my Satiric Film professor is leaving Miami after this week and i am deeply upset, because she is the most brilliant person i've ever met at Miami. how do i know this? because she's the only one with enough grit to quit this place and leave to pursue real goals. as someone with a shared sense of heterotopian longing, i really admire the ability to abandon safety nets in the interest of pursuing an ethereal dream.

in a semester of worthless droning classes, her class sparked that fire i used to have burning in me, that passion that made me happy to learn and write and do things. it's funny, because i took her class on a lark, thinking i'd fill my schedule with something fun. not only did it prove to be deeply enjoyable, it opened my eyes to a way of enjoying my work again, and loosened me up to the possibility of dreams.

it's not so much a class as a way of reinterpreting my approach to classes and to schoolwork in general. it's made me active in a way no other class has, because i am not only engaging with the course material and the texts and ideas in a purely theoretical way, but i am wanting to put these passions into practice. and isn't that what school should be about? taking education beyond a thinking level to a doing.

so while i should be freaking out about this business paper i haven't started yet, i'm relishing the small revolution my apathy is taking.

and while all my peers are studying furiously for their meaningless finals, writing papers that don't matter to them, i'm smiling sideways at them, imagining the stress the SHAUN OF THE DEAD final must be giving them (which is ironic, since i bet Joanne gets such giggle kicks from having such fun playing with people's expectations and student habits. SHAUN is a satire of consumerism, and our silly bourgeois habits. Joanne's class is a satire of the school system and formal education, and those rote student behaviors we learn in school. people may get the satire in SHAUN, but i bet they still fall into the zombie-like steps when it comes to school. so hahahahaha)

-stephanie