There’s a guy who sits next to me in my Film lecture who reminds me so much of Taariq, in manner and voice and appearance, that I always forget it isn’t actually him. Often during lecture something will secretly strike me as hilarious, and I’ll turn to my right, expecting to share a laugh with... well, with Taariq, whom I know would see the humour in the same things as me... only to have to bite my tongue at the last second when I remember who it really is. Keeping a good joke inside you is a painful experience, let me tell you.

I guess what I mean to say is that I miss... I miss... well, I miss a lot of things this week, really. Too difficult to summarise; let’s just say that: I miss. I’m in a state of missing. I want to tell everyone all my stories, everything, not just the big moments but all the little ones that make up most of my life; it's in the small everyday details where understanding really lies. I want to tell about walking to class every morning, watching the squirrels run through the grass and waiting for the trees along Bruin Walk to burst into full bloom (these flowers are so pink, an unreal pink)... about standing at my window in the mornings and admiring the city sprawled out in front of me and thinking, Los Angeles... about how I get all warm with secret pride when I get an A on something or my teachers tell me I'm smart*... about the mysterious joy of taking a lonely hour-long bus ride to Santa Monica on a lazy sun-filled Saturday... all the slightly boring things that have no meaning or consequence, really, but add up to something larger, I dunno, college or America or turning twenty or something I can't for the life of me describe to another person.

*You may not know this but I'm really the hugest teacher's pet ever. Yesterday exceeded even my own expectations, however - I had a meeting with my film TA, Ben, who ended up telling me about 5 times how intelligent he thinks I am, and spontaneously announcing, without warning, that he'd up my grade on my last paper from B+ to A-. The unjustified awesomeness of this caught me off guard; I was practically protesting it from surprise ("Well I thought B+ was a really fair grade... You really don't have to do this, yknow..!") and he's all, "Oh no, I insist!" I went home and told Brooke who launched into a rant about how her English teacher made her beg for weeks to change her grade, only to finally deny her request... guess she didn't like Brooke as much as Ben likes me! Whoo.