Tonight I could feel with all my senses that I was going to have one of those awesome nights that I could sleep. I felt exhausted. It was a long day. I anticipated Sleep touching my shoulder and whispering me to sleep.
But I had this project due for class by midnight, and things weren’t working out at all. I had to film myself teaching. By the time we finished recording, it was still daylight. I got home with plenty of time to edit and to upload it.
My two great friends (that I’ve known now for a decade), and my two sisters were part of my “students in the class” on H.P Lovecraft’s excellent short story, “The Outsider.” Fantastic short story! I’ll blog about it soon.
My younger brother volunteered, sort of, as the camera man. Which after the class discussion, he amused himself by telling me Darth Vadar and a Storm Trooper had a cameo. Before filming, we moved them enough to hide the two feet in height dolls from the camera angle. But my brother, a grown young man, is still a kid at heart. And honestly, I thought the cameo was a superb idea too–and amusing.
The duration limit of the video should have been ten to twenty minutes. I did thirty-six minutes.
When I got home, I had to embark on the journey of the editing world–but Movie Maker wasn’t working. I tried to edit twice and spent about an hour on each. I then downloaded a different app to cut out scenes. I used a different app called, Filmora, for about an hour. Then it didn’t work either after I spend about forty minutes to an hour editing.
I tried to follow instructions. I checked out various tutorials from Youtube. Nothing was working. I felt so frustrated, and yet determined to get it done.
So, I return to Movie Maker. And after tedious hours of cutting and trimming videos, it worked out! Well, somewhat. The last part of my class is missing. I’ll have to figure this out in the morning– in a few hours.
What did I learn from all this? That sometimes, it doesn’t matter how hard we work on something, regardless of effort and even lack of sleep, we can’t control certain things.
Some things are not going to work our way all the time. Life doesn’t surrender everything to us in spite of effort–or it doesn’t “surrender everything to us” as we wished it.
All my peers, because it’s an online summer class, seemingly uploaded their video without a problem. Not saying they didn’t stress about the class or the like. But I was the only one that didn’t upload my lecture on time? Why? Why? Again, because things just happen sometimes. And that’s okay.
I dislike the phrase, “at least you tried” because if I fail at something, it means I didn’t try hard enough. In this case, I honestly tried my best, so I can’t lie to myself.
Overall, the discussion of “The Outsider” was a great learning experience. And quite fun! I’m glad I got an opportunity to spend time with my friends and family. And there were pets present too besides Darth Vader and the Storm Trooper. They just didn’t get a cameo (LOL!) Cheers!
The Art of Studying: No Sleep Tonight
Ana P. Rose's Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.