The Importance of Planning

Last weekend the college was host to two events, Ferris Fest and Sibs and Kids Weekend. Sibs and Kids is pretty self explanatory, siblings and children of students here at Ferris come up for the weekend and take part in various activities put on by each campus (North, South, and West) and by all the different halls. Ferris Fest is an all day concert event in the quad that took place on Saturday. The line up this year was pretty good, aside from the fact that Three 6 Mafia was the headlining band.

The issue that was encountered over the weekend was the fact that both events were planned on the same day, in the same places. The kid events that the individual halls put on were scheduled in the parking lot right next to the quad and the the rain location for both the concert and the kid events were in the rec center. For those of you that don't know who Three 6 Mafia is, this is a very vulgar hardcore rap band that has gifted the world with hits such as "I'm On A Boat" and "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp." The latter actually one an Academy Award in '05 for best original song, which makes me wonder what our world is coming to, but I digress.

Imagine that you are a parent bringing your child up to the campus for this weekend, only to hear a bunch of people talking about drugs and sex, with every other word being the f-word. Also imagine that at this concert are a couple thousand students smoking weed and fighting. This is the situation parents had to deal with on Saturday. I don't know who exactly decided that holding both of these events simultaneously was a good idea, but I do know that this mistake has probably severely damaged the reputation of the college with those parents.

Ups and Downs

Today was a very mixed day. I completely disassembled my external hard drive and connected it as a slave drive in my desktop. My computer tried to repair the drive, but it looks like everything is lost. Most of the files were deemed "unreadable" and the whole computer froze when it got 66% of the way through the drive. So don't be surprised if I start asking to raid peoples' music libraries while i try to rebuild music collection.

On the plus side, the weather was amazing! Mid 60's and sunny, so it was hard to be too down about anything. And I will be able to attend Pat's art exhibit tomorrow thanks to my friend Jess. All in all, I think the good definitely outweighed the bad today.

Far Sighted

"And all you see
Is where else you could be
When you're at home
Out on the street
Are so many possibilities
To not be alone" - Death Cab For Cutie

It seems that this verse is true for many of us all too often. Why is it that we are so blind to the opportunities around us? Why are our sights fixed on trying to see what may lie in the distance? Maybe it's just the culture we live in these days. The story Hollywood loves to portray is one in which the protagonist lives in an area seemingly devoid of any romantic interests, but everything changes in a flash when he/she decides to take a spontaneous vacation and meets their soulmate along the way. Granted, there are plenty of movies that have been made in which the main character encounters a sudden realization about a long time friend and they receive their own praise from within the romantic film audience, however they lack the mystery element which draws the masses in like flies to a flame.

Everyone is so busy waiting for that "love at first sight" moment that we disregard the possibility that the developing feelings for a person within our tightly knit circles could be exactly what we are searching for. For a personal example, I found myself hoping that college would bring opportunities to meet a possible "significant other." Of course, rather than finding someone up here, a crush from long ago stirred back up in my head. So now that my focus is back home, I lack interest in anyone else.

Am I the only one that really has this issue, or have you encountered/witnessed similar situations?

I apologize for such a depressing entry. I seem to be going through one of those slumps where I realize that at least 90 percent of my friends are in relationships and I don't even have anyone that I consider a realistic option. I promise to make the next one more light hearted.

Unlucky

So I took my external hard drive down to my friend's room to exchange music with him.  I gained a few gigs of music and he took about five from my hard drive.  When I was leaving his room, I dropped the hard drive.  The drive still seems to run, but is not detected on any computers.  The tragedy is that I had all of my music on the hard drive, since my computer does not have enough memory to hold all of it.  Hopefully I can get it fixed and recover the files.  Today was a sad day.

Friday 13... Ugh.

Update

This semester has been insanely busy.  It feels like classes just started, but a third of the semester has already past.  I haven't had much time to really collect my thoughts let alone record all of the stuff that's been going on.  So here's the gist of it so far.

I applied for a job as a resident advisor for next year.  The interview was a little crazy.  My loan money had not come in yet, which meant that I had to borrow dress clothes since I had none of my own.  My RA was kind enough to loan me a shirt, tie, and pants, though he is quite a bit shorter than I am so the pants didn't even reach my ankles.  I borrowed my former suite mate's shoes. (I forgot I never mentioned that I got a new room all to myself now.)  So I walked down to the Residence Life Office, where I was interrogated by not one, but four people.  Thankfully, I sat on the opposite side of a large desk, so attention could not be drawn to the fact that I appeared to be anticipating a flood or something.  

I kind of covered the group processing part of the application in the last blog, which thankfully was on a separate day and very casual in dress. This section was designed to examine how we worked in groups (hence the name).  It was actually pretty fun.  For the last activity, my group had to design a program using a disposable camera, a notebook, and a banana (that was interesting to say the least).  Apparently, I did pretty well.  I got a letter on Monday saying that I was hired.  The hall they're putting me in is on the opposite end of campus as all of my classes, but next year will be $8000 cheaper and I will have a steady pay check all year, so the benefits greatly out-weigh the drawbacks.  

I've also been helping set up the 9th Annual Bethany Schumaker Memorial Volleyball Tournament for the Battle Against Cancer.  I even put together a team to compete in the tournament.  We have only two players on the team who are actually experienced in volleyball out of a team of nine, so we've been spending as much time as we can practicing at the gym.  We all decided that it doesn't matter if we win, we just want to beat the Hall Director's team (although we have gotten quite a bit better).  

I'm using some of my loan money to buy a new desktop.  I ordered one online today for $500.  I need a computer that is able to run programs for some of my classes and this laptop just isn't cutting it anymore.  Thankfully, most of my friends here in the hall are computer geniuses, so they helped me put together a cheap, high performance computer (which kinda sounds like an oxymoron, but it works).  

Well that is all I can think of right now.  I will try to keep you all up-to-date a bit more often in the future.

Blondes

Have you ever wondered who exactly gave blondes a bad name?  Well I think I found that girl during group processing for the RA position I applied for.  The processing consisted of 3 events in different rooms throughout a 3 hour time period.  While leaving the second event, I stopped to ask directions from a group standing out in the hall, and that's when SHE spoke up.  

"OH, Steve!" She exclaimed.

Thinking it was someone I had met at some point in time, I turned and said "Yeah?"

Excited to announce as if it was some Earth shattering breakthrough, "My brother's name is Steve.  He spells it the same way, too." 

Uh-huh...  I don't know what exactly influenced this outburst, but I now have a much clearer definition of the phrase "blonde moment."  Please don't get me wrong, I don't believe all blondes are like this and I know that everyone is capable of such acts, but it really made me think of the stereotype.  Especially because the first thing that anyone asks after I tell the story is "Was she blonde?"

I would like to end by saying that the majority of blonde's that I know personally seem to be rather intelligent and I am sorry if anyone took this post offensively.  I am simply attempting to shed light on those responsible for the stereotype.

Out With The Old And In With The Sort-Of-New?

I finally got a chance to check out one of the college groups here on campus.  The group's name was His House and it's a nondenominational church group that meets every Wednesday at 7.  There is also a small group that I got invited to on Mondays (I figured I'd stray a little from the old routine by changing only the location of the groups I attend and the people in those groups.)  The group was cool.  They were all very welcoming and introduced themselves pretty much as soon as I walked in the door.  As soon as I took my coat off and found a chair, I was approached by a few people that noticed I was new and wanted to get to know me and get me connected with the church.  

I think the similarities between the new group and the high school youth group really helped me settle in and be more relaxed and open with the people I met there.  The group meets in the dinning area of the Quiznos instead of a church.  There is a full band and speakers set up all over the room.  The words to the songs and the text from the scripture being read is displayed on a screen via a projector.  Most of the songs were new to me, but there were a few songs that are always played at the church down home.  

Everyone was active in helping the church.  People were there a half hour early to help get everything set up.  While my friends and I were eating just as the restaurant was closing, 10 to 15 people were already moving tables out of the way and getting the sound system set up while a few others made sure the remaining tables all had bibles and info on the upcoming events.  They are also starting a campaign in all the residence halls and campus apartments to try to spread the gospel and a vast majority of the people in the group (which has about 75 or more people) committed to helping the movement.  One would be hard pressed to find a group of people around that are more in love with God than the people I met tonight.  I think this is exactly the support that I will need to help keep my morale up during my Mythology professors lectures on his views of religion.

Break

Hello again internet!  It's been a while since I've logged on to anything in the online world and I must say it was a very welcomed break.  Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy reading everyone's blogs and all, but I prefer actually being able to spend time with people in the real world.  But being back at college means that proximity becomes a major hinderance for the whole real world thing, so it's back to the web.  

Break was great!  It was a much needed month of relaxation and fun.  I loved catching up with with old friends and even got to spend a lot of time getting to know some more recent friends much better.  I was even able to find the time to read World War Z, which was amazing! (Thanks Woodstock!)  I already miss rocking out at Zombie's house and chilling at The Red One's or Phil's apt.  

As far as being back at school, today was quite a productive first day back.  I purchased my books for my classes and found out that my mythology class might be a bit more time consuming than I had expected.  The class requires eight books!  Even so, I think it will be an interesting class at least.  I also began learning to play the guitar today.  I spent roughly three and a half hours practicing chords and even managed to memorize the intro sequences to both "Santa Monica" by Everclear and Jimmy Eat World's "In the Middle."  Not the most amazing feat, but I think I'm picking up rather quickly for my first day.

Well the whole sleep deprivation thing is starting to kick my butt, so it's off to the lovely dream world for me.  It was great seeing everyone over break and I will see you all sometime in March hopefully.