Hello Aggies! My name is Kate Zarrella, and much like Carrie Bradshaw of “Sex and the City,” I am now officially a columnist. Unfortunately for you all, I don’t have a closet full of Manolo Blahniks and a fabulous social life in my swanky New York City loft. I have half a walk-in closet in my spider infested South Davis apartment, which I share with four other girls. I am also a proud owner of $10 “Lack” Ikea table like every other college student in the universe.
So, this column would probably be more aptly named Celibacy and the City, or maybe Sweatpants and the City. Despite the lack of glamour in my life, I solemnly promise to write a column that you will hopefully read, find interesting and at least chuckle at a little bit.
If you haven’t laughed yet, then go watch “Kittens, Inspired by Kittens!” on Youtube and remember that I sent it to you.
I have very few talents, but I do have a strange knack for watching entire seasons of TV shows in a matter of days, fueled only by cookies and the need to procrastinate. My encyclopedic and completely useless knowledge of actors, shows, movies and directors occasionally comes in handy during small talk. More often than not, however, it just makes me seem like a huge dork. So be warned Aggie readers, you’ll be hearing many movie references from me, and undoubtedly I’ll be expressing my opinions on the latest events in pop culture.
You may have already guessed from my awkwardness and affinity for cats that I’m an English major, who owns more books than I could ever possibly read. I’ll happily admit that I read Shakespeare for the dirty jokes and I may have named my horse after Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Don’t judge me, it’s an awesome name.
I’m also a psychology major so I have more mental disorders than I could ever possibly diagnose, or at least I thought I did after taking abnormal psychology sophomore year. Judging from everyone else I have talked to who has taken the class, sudden paranoia seems to happen a lot after reading the textbook for some reason.
Unless I somehow monumentally screw up during the next few quarters, this will be my fourth and last year at UC Davis. While I am excited to dig up the time capsule that I buried on campus with dorm friends my freshman year à la Crossroads, I’m still terrified of graduating.
Like most of you other seniors out there, I have only the vaguest inclination of what I want to be when I grow up. Right now, my plan is something like take the GRE, get a job, make some money and then make some babies. Well, maybe not that part about the babies. I have to make sure I can keep my aloe vera plant alive before I try to raise a miniature human.
The idea of graduating has made me reflect on what I want to do with my life. But I’ve been confused about my future since elementary school, when I was convinced that I would someday become a comedian and I worked tirelessly to make people laugh. Once, I even went as far as flushing a stick down the school toilet to get some giggles. I don’t remember doing it, but it’s become legend among my friends.
In middle school, I convinced myself that I wanted to be an interior designer after watching too many episodes of “Trading Spaces.” After I painted my room the color of tarp and got a shag rug, I began to question my artistic vision.
Not long after that, I won an essay contest for D.A.R.E., that awkward anti-drug class, by writing a terrible story about marijuana, retired Olympic horses and a rabid dog. To this day, I’m still not sure why they chose it since it sounds like I wrote it while I was on acid. This, of course, made me think it would be pretty awesome to be a novelist and write stories about rabid dogs for a living.
I’m still nursing the idea of writing as a career, even though the current economy is doing to jobs what Godzilla does to miniature models of Japanese cities. Regardless of what the future holds, my dear Aggie readers, just know that in the present all of your little eyes are helping my dreams come true. And in return, I’ll try and help get rid of your case of the Mondays every week by using a baseball bat to smash in a fax machine with you, or by writing you this column. You choose.
KATE ZARRELLA would like to hear about your hopes, dreams and stories concerning rabid dogs at kazarrella@ucdavis.edu.