This may just be me, but if I were writing in to be considered for anything -- a job, a show, an academic program, whatever -- I would want to make the best possible first impression -- that is, literate, intelligent, and capable of writing a short, coherent email to someone.

Apparently 95% of the under-18 set doesn't feel the same way.

You would think that after working on casting shows for almost 5 or 6 months (putting together all the different projects for which I've had to find people), I would eventually have gotten used to the fact that most kids can't differentiate between Internet-speak and proper writing. But I haven't. Every time I get an email in the casting box that says "OMG u shud pick me bc i luv MTV and theres so much DRAMAAAAAA at my skool!!!!1!!" my first instinct is to trash it.

Of course, I can't do that, because then our options would be drastically limited, and we only have 4 more weeks to cast this show. But I just want to make these kids realize that it's not okay to write in abbreviations and Net shorthand to someone they don't know -- especially someone they are trying to impress. Usually it works the other way around.

Maybe I'm just an insane grammar Nazi, but if you can't run your shit through the spellcheck before sending it out, then I don't know if I even want to consider you. OMG WTF LOL.

(Oh and PS, kiddies: Don't try to tell me how to change the show until you see firsthand how much it takes for any idea to get through the development process here. There is a reason that we decided on the location we're using and not your little town in the middle of nowhere.)

Yesterday I FINALLY put Jesus Camp back in the mail to Netflix, after maybe a month of it sitting on my bookshelf.

Today I got an email that told me I'd be getting The US vs. John Lennon tomorrow and I got really excited, because hey, I've wanted to see it for ages and VH1 was taking forever to air it (they were working on the acquisition back when I was still working there).

Two minutes ago I just saw a commercial on VH1 for this Friday's premiere airing of -- wait for it -- The US vs. John Lennon.

Can whoever's in charge of my life please let up a little on the irony? It's getting a bit exhausting.

ETA: APPARENTLY NOT.

From a phone conversation with my mother this evening:
"You should start putting yourself out there, find someone nice, have a long engagement. But don't bring home a boy with tattoos and a ponytail, I cannot have a tattooed son in law."

WTF MOM! If you're going to force me to get married, at least let me find someone who I think is hot. Seriously I don't know who this woman is anymore.

* * * * *
Also I watched the last five minutes of Mission: Man Band this weekend and saw, like I expected, that I hadn't been credited. It's not that I'm torn up about it or anything but that basically ensures that my entire nine months there is going unrecognized. Considering all the grief I went through getting the talent their checks for that show, I think that's a little unfair, but whatever. I'm in a much better place now, both emotionally and in terms of my own career goals, anyway.

It's been a really tough winter and beginning of 2007. I've been writing about most of it in locked entries because a lot of it I just don't feel like discussing with everyone. I fell into a huge post-grad slump where I missed Columbia desperately and wanted more than anything to go back to that simpler time. I felt hugely dissatisfied and totally caged in by both my work life and my social life. I didn't leave my apartment for most of January through March, usually claiming that it was because of the bitterly cold weather, but more often than not, I just didn't want to talk to or see anyone. I turned down invitations to go out one after one because I just couldn't handle seeing happy people. It sounds awful, but I was in such a self-pitying state of mind that, while I was glad to hear about my friends' successes at work or new relationships, it always triggered a "why not me" reflex that I desperately wanted to avoid.

But then the cliche of March "going in like a lion and coming out like a lamb" really did happen to me, for the first time in my life. What started as a continuation of the worst month by far that I had experienced post-college (February SUCKED, and that's all I really feel like saying for now) ended with a kind of rebirth -- a rebirth of my career aspirations, my social life, and my generally good demeanor and satisfaction with life as it is. I took a new job in the department where I used to intern at MTV, which I absolutely love so far, and I have a pretty solid understanding of how I want my career to progress, from growth within the department to grad school to what I eventually want to focus on.

As for personal matters -- nothing's really changed, nothing major has happened, but I think my more positive outlook on my work experience is rubbing off on everything else. It makes sense, because as someone who gets very personally involved in her job, if things aren't going well in that area I'll tend to be down about the rest of my life. I've been told that that's not a good way to operate, that I should learn to leave my work at the office, but I don't necessarily want "who I am" and "what I do" to be mutually exclusive. And I saw that happening for a while, and it scared me -- enough to want to make a change, and to follow through on it. For a while I didn't feel any passion for what I was doing during three-fourths of my time, and at the end of the day I just couldn't handle that. At the end of the day, I had to do what was best for me.

I have more stories, about Indian matrimonial websites and my parents' outlook on dating suddenly making a total 180 and fiascos with trying to edit Muse's thesis presentation in my spare time and all of my friends suddenly deciding to leave the city -- but that's too many words for one post. So I'll be back, in a lot less than four months -- but right now, the delightful weather and lunch beckon. May flowers, here I come.

A couple days ago I got an email from my former thesis advisor, inviting all of us from his 2005 seminar to a little get together he was having with his 2006 class. I already had dinner plans with people but I figured I'd stop by for a little while beforehand.

I ended up having more fun there than I did with my friends. I was the only person from the 2005 group to show up, but I knew a couple of people who were in this year's class, and I think my advisor was happy to have someone there who has graduated and is able to attest to the fact that being shot out into the real world isn't AS sucky as it seems (although it does still suck, no question). I forgot how awesome my advisor is -- I haven't had any correspondence with him since last spring, when he emailed me to tell me that "Chaiyya Chaiyya" was used at the beginning of Spike Lee's Inside Man. (For those of you who weren't around pre-graduation, I wrote my thesis on Mani Ratnam's Dil Se in comparison to his earlier Tamil films, as well as to mainstream Hindi cinema in the 1990s.)

I also discovered that at the beginning of this year's seminar, he sent out MY THESIS as an example of what the class should be doing with their papers. He introduced me with the phrase "This is Roopa -- I sent you guys HER paper" (to which I responded "Wait, WHAT?!"). It's incredibly flattering but it was mildly embarrassing at the same time -- knowing that the bulk of my paper was whipped out over 48 hours at my great-aunt's computer in Chennai, I have to wonder whether it's really appropriate for 1/3 of this year's film studies graduates to have read my paper as a model of what they should be aspiring to. As I was leaving my advisor told me that all of his students wrote 50 page papers in an effort to "try to be as good as Roopa" (even though my paper was only 35 pages, maybe 50 with photo inserts attached). If I could turn red, I would have. There have been very few teachers who have been 100% behind me and my abilities, but he and my playwriting teacher from high school are the first two who immediately jump to mind.

I told him that writing my paper was really one of the most enjoyable experiences I had in my undergraduate career, and as I left the restaurant I realized that I wholeheartedly meant it. THAT'S the kind of passion I want to have about what I do for a living -- something that excites me so much to the point where it doesn't even feel like work anymore. I talked a lot about my career goals last night, and I'm happy to say that now, I am well on my way to acheiving what I think, at this point, I want to do with the rest of my life.

I try to keep quiet about my future plans and things I hope for, but apparently I can't keep my big mouth shut for more than 5 minutes at a time. That worries me, because then not only are my expectations raised, but so are everyone else's.

I'm just working towards going home. That's all I care about anymore, the four blissful days where I will be with my parents, NOT worrying about crappy celebrity television. Change is in the air, I think, but playing the waiting game is always the worst thing in the world.

Well, after all of that, I now have a job.

I'm a PA at VH1 in the Production Management department.

I start Monday and am super excited.

I'm just too exhausted to deal with anything right now. I had two back-to-back interviews yesterday (about which, as always, I'm pessimistic) and I have apartment brokers calling me at all odd hours of the day. A month from now I'll probably be laughing at all of this and wondering what I was driving myself crazy about, but at the moment I'm BEYOND stressed out and I wish college had never ended.

[Made public on 19 Jan. 2005]

I would update more, if there were more interesting things going on right now.

But there aren't. I'm BORING. My life is BORING. All I do is sit on my butt and stare at the TV all day. I haven't worked out in the past week. I know it's vacation, and I'm entitled to rest, and yadda yadda yadda, but I wish I could feel like I was being more productive.

My parents talk to me about finding a job for this summer, and making sure I'm headed in the right direction. Currently my life is headed in no direction whatsoever.

Screw directing, working behind the scenes, all that. It's art, it's beautiful, I absolutely adore it, but more than anything else, I want to be a Bollywood heroine. Like that's ever going to happen. Like I can compete with the million and one other (and more worthy) girls vying to be the next Hema Malini or Madhuri Dixit or Kajol. Like my parents are ever going to be OK with me acting in movies as opposed to doing something "worthwhile."

And when I see these doctors going to help the tsunami victims, and all my pre-med friends talking about doing meaningful volunteer work when they get their degrees and leave med school, I feel so ashamed of wanting to go into something as "trivial" and "unimportant" as film. "But you're a FILM student," they say. "You're ARTSY. You're DIFFERENT. You're not your typical INDIAN." How the hell is being artsy and different going to help the world, or make a difference?

And then I start to think about whether or not art is really necessary, and whether film is art, and whether film is necessary, and I go all bonkers like I am right now. Am I choosing the wrong path? Am I pinning all my hopes on something futile? Am I going to end up working the register at a convenience store because I didn't follow my parents' advice and take the IIT entrance exam, or apply to engineering schools, or at least major in econ or a hard science?

Main bahut paresan hoon, par kya karun? I don't know what to do with myself right now, I'm so conflicted and confused. Everyone says that I seem to be "on the right track," but I just have no faith in myself anymore. If there's a divine entity up there, he/she needs to show me that I'm not screwing myself up, because otherwise I just don't know. I need one hell of a confidence booster right now.