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" So I have not been able to watch a good movie for weeks! Actually, I haven&amp;#039;t watched a movie period. For spring, I&amp;#039;m taking 18 credits, which is about 2 more classes more than the average amount. Unlike high school, where your curriculum is relatively set by your county school system, college allows you to specialize as much as you want. For example, I&amp;#039;m taking three political science related classes, two economics classes, and one behavioral neuroscience course. Every single one of my classes could&amp;#039;ve been political science topics if I had preferred. That&amp;#039;s the beauty of independence. On the other hand, the process of choosing the &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; schedule could be paralyzing.  Anyway, the point is, I&amp;#039;ve barely had any free time to watch movies. However, there has been an influx of great movies in theaters lately! The Oscars this year are going to be very competitive, with films like &amp;quot;7 Pounds,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Milk&amp;quot; that have been getting amazing reviews.  There are also many movie screenings, art exhibits, and band concerts around campus that focus on or promote specific topics. This Friday, there is a &amp;quot;silent screening&amp;quot; tour called &amp;quot;Dismantling Monoculture,&amp;quot; where murals will be used to deconstruct our normative views on media, art, and cinema. At the University of Florida, there is never a lack of &amp;quot;culture&amp;quot; to get involved in.  On a more personal artistic level, I really miss playing the piano every day. In high school, I took lessons each week, and during competition season, I would play up to 3 hours a day. Since I&amp;#039;ve been 6 years old, I&amp;#039;ve taken lessons in classical theory, aural, and performance, so abruptly stopping in college has definitely affected me. I used to rely on piano as my creative outlet. Sometimes, it would be my depository of emotional rants that couldn&amp;#039;t be heard elsewhere. These sessions typically resulted in an original composition, but the only one I&amp;#039;ve written down completely and gotten copyrighted is titled, &amp;quot;While Ouroboros Weeps.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s about 3.5 minutes, and I was able to perform it at the Phillips Center of Performing Arts here in Gainesville.  Now, I look up the sheet music for whatever pop song or oldies classic is stuck in my head, and I&amp;#039;ll just sight read it on the piano for fun. I do miss writing my own songs, however, so I&amp;#039;m thinking about buying an 88-keyboard for my dorm room\u263A. Anyway, I am already a week behind on watching my online Microeconomics and Macroeconomics lectures, so ta-ta for now! Do you play an instrument? How important is music in your life? Let me know, and I&amp;#039;ll be happy to share some of my songs! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.seventeen.com/life/school/a3588/mary-culture-watch/>