Damkeeping, September 2024
Happy Sea Otter September!
Welcome back to Damnkeeping, the… well, I seem to change the definition every time I do these, as I myself don’t even know what these columns are for…
but I guess for today I will refer to it as an unscheduled and spontaneous couple-times-a-year column here on Things You Otter Know wherein I, for absolutely no reason other than I feel like it, talk about my life in general, and maybe sometimes also some things you otter know related to Things You Otter Know.
I know that was a mouthful. Sorry. Otters have big teeth. Google it. It’s true!
So I know last time we spoke I said we were gonna do an entire month of Olympic recaps. But wouldn’t you know it! It is already September once more! And my love of September, and, well, fall in general, is well-documented on this Substack. So we are just going to swiftly move on from things because I feel like most of us forgot it already happened already.
If you missed out—I know a bunch of you are new here—lsat time around we talked about Mondo:
And the week before we talked about Noah Lyles:
If you can’t access these in your email app, go to ottavia.substack.com and the archive should pop right up.
But enough about that! This month is a big month for me. I turn 21 soon! Weird as hell. I’m still not used to having a 2 there. I still feel 13 inside. I feel like I’m always running out of time and yet also trying to remind myself that my life is just beginning. It’s a weird dichotomy. Is that how you use that word? I’m an English major and I honestly have no idea.
And I start my third year of university today! Can you believe that?! It is insane to me, the passage of time. When I began this Substack project thing I was still in high school. I was a kid! I mean, I’m still a kid, but whatever.
But apparently I have to figure out what I want to do with my life this year? And that feels impossible. Dudes, I am just as clueless about everything as I was when I started uni two years ago. Hopefully this is totally normal and I am not toast in terms of the rest of my life.
I’m still an English major but as of today I’m only taking one English course. I decided last week to rejoin the political science land and get a minor in it. If you’ve been around this Substack long enough you’d know that in my first year of university I took two political science courses and they both sucked and I barely passed one of them.
The good thing about minoring in political science here is that I can basically take whatever courses I want. The minor and specialist are way more restricted and you have to fit credits into specific categories such as “public policy” *shudders*
This semester I’m taking a course on European politics, which I know absolutely nothing about, and it will probably destroy me. But then I’m also taking a course on urbanism and another on federalism that I’m really excited about because I’ve become pretty interested in both of those things since I started university.
Relatedly, I tried out a couple Professional Writing and Communication courses to see if majoring or minoring would be my jam—one in first year and one in second year—and they both were just not my thing.
And I realized that even though the program initially seemed like something I would excel in, it turns out their expectation of “good writing” doesn’t mesh well with my own. I had to force myself to write stuff with…plots???
Which I know sounds ridiculous, shouldn’t I know a lot about that?
Like, I’m experienced enough in the sense that I could do what the assignments asked of me, but I didn’t enjoy it per se. Everything I wrote felt very formulaic—it had your typical Ottavia Paluch voice and everything, because no matter how hard I try I can’t get myself to sound like anyone else but myself—but my strengths as a writer never completely translated to their relatively strict parameters of what a creative non-fiction piece can and should be.
It seemed to me that at times the weaker writers were getting the better grades. I personally believed I deserved more than a 75 as my final mark.But such is life!
So now I am an English major with minors in political science and creative writing. Got it?
After the surgery I had in June things basically slowed to a crawl. But now I’m gonna start forcing myself to get out of the house and do stuff. Of course, who would I be if I wasn’t bragging about the 2.4 exciting things in my life every chance I got, so of course you’ll hear about everything. Excited to take you all along for the ride.
No joke, I basically have the next two months of posts planned out, and I’m excited to sit down and actually write them. You should be hearing from me twice a week for the rest of the year. Monday/Tuesday and Thursday/Friday.
Good luck to those of you starting school today! You’re gonna do great. You already have a leg up on everyone else because you’re an Otter.
You didn't ask me but as someone with a degree in government that ran a college newspaper, if you want to be a writer, you should not major in any of that journalism / English stuff, but you should take enough classes to network around that world.
Also, you certainly didn't ask my dearly departed management professor, but when I was roaming the campus with the largest undergraduate enrollment in the states, he pointed out that we minted something like 1000 psychology degrees a year and something like 300 management degrees in a year, but only like 5 double majors in psychology AND management. He argued it was the union and crossover that made really interesting, specialized and in demand folks the world needs.
Or just get the fuck out of there as soon as you can.
Or stay there as long as you possibly can.
Pretty sure I just nailed it.