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This blog has moved. Please continue to: http://blramo12.me.holycross.edu/
Hey everyone! After spending my spring break vegetating (all I did was go on Facebook, watch the animated Redwall and Martin the Warrior series on YouTube, and work a tiny bit on my poetry essay), I’m ready to dive back into the action and pick up where I left off.
For starters, I have vowed upon my honor as a nerd/geek that I will do better in Invertebrate Zoology than I did in Botany. I want to do well in that class, and this time around I will! Albeit, I could never remember my phyla in botany, but I’ll get it down for invertebrates. Professor Ober seems like an awesome professor. She introduced our class to the Tree of Life yesterday and got really excited when she hit showed us some beetles. She seems like such a funny lady; I’m sure we’ll get along great.
Speaking of developing my inner nerd, I received an email from Professor Herrick inviting all of us Clavius Scholars (it’s a scholarship thing that Professor Herrick runs) to a poetry reading on Friday. It’s a poem about hemoglobin. I am not ashamed to say that I giggled in delight upon receiving said email and poor Kristy could only give me a look, which seemed to say “Why am I roommates with such a geek?”. However, I am a loveable nerd, so it’s all good…I think.
I had my Kimball Captain interview today as well. I was terrified. Apparently there was an unprecedented amount of applicants this year (which I suppose is not surprising, as my class was the year of unprecedented appliers to Holy Cross). It wasn’t as bad as it could have been though. Inigo (the Kimball Student Organizer, or KSO) was very nice about the whole thing. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens! Whatever the case, I had a great year working at Kimball and I just hope I get a spot!
And for all you seniors who applied to come here, I wish you the best of luck. Responses should be coming back, or have already come (I can’t remember the date they’re supposed to let you know). No matter where you go, I hope you pick the college that’s right for you!
It’s really cliché to say this, but the wind is simply howling outside. I just got back from the outside coming in from O’Neil with my botany abstraction in hand, when the wind shoved me backwards. I held onto my assignment for dear life and trudged up the steps, hoping against hope that I’d survive to take my laundry out of the washer before someone else did.
Obviously, I did, otherwise I would not be writing this to you.
Saturday night was Hogwarts at Holy Cross, the main Science Ambassadors event of the year. I was doing the Iron Cereal experiment, which is moving the iron within cereal around with a magnet. Not going to lie, but a few days beforehand, I spent a good two hours in my room trying to figure out how to make it work (which is a little depressing in hindsight, but oh so entertaining). I finally figured out that if you placed the whole flakes in water, you could make the cereal move more visibly than if you just left them on a napkin. Also, I got to whip out the super strong neodymium magnets, which are a lot of fun. It was kind of cool watching some kids’ eyes bug out when they realized that the nasty grey iron fillings I showed them were mixed into their cereal.
And there was so much enthusiasm! Our Ron and Ginny Weasley, as well as the rest of the characters, did a great job running around and entertaining the little kids. I can’t wait to see how next year will turn out. My friend Tom suggested we try and get Venus Fly Traps for next time…
Montserrat has taken over my brain. I hate to say it, but it’s true. Almost every time I walk around campus, I keep wondering how I can apply what I see to that class. It’s so weird. My Montserrat seminar is called ‘Truth and Abstraction’ and this semester is basically talking about self portraits and what it really means to capture yourself in a photograph, or in a painting, or what have you. I’m finding it a bit frustrating because it’s not really straightforward. It requires a lot of introspection, and quite frankly, I don’t always have the time to ‘journal creatively’ everyday. On the other hand, because I am so keen on scenery, I have now walked around most of campus, and have seen some pretty cool sights.
I never really realized how pretty campus was until recently, when I was walking around and seeing how all the buildings popped out of the scenery.
In other news, we’re having a burst of warm weather! It’s so weird, considering that it’s the middle of February, but yesterday I walked outside without a coat on! Admittedly, it was only fifty degrees at most. Still, in comparison to the usual winter days here on the Hill, yesterday and today have been quite balmy.
Oh, well, until next time…Happy Early Valentine’s Day!
p.s.- Why yes, I did sketchily stand in front of buildings to take pictures for possible self portrait backgrounds…
Egads! It’s been so long since my last update. I apologize for the sheer agony you all must have suffered while waiting for my next update. How horrible! There are many excuses I could give you for my late entry, including keeping up with work, attending various campus events, going off campus, and sleeping. However, I shall cut to the chase and tell you the most recent exciting things going on right now.
You may thank me later for saving you from the rambles of the past two weeks.
At any rate, I went to the Kimball Student Office today to pick up my Kimball Captain application. I have been looking forward to the application opening for the past few weeks (much to my friends’ annoyance) and was horrified when I realized on Friday that I had forgotten to get one! So today before lunch I ran down there to get one. I’m so excited about filling it out, and really hope I get a position. It may be rather surprising to some of you, but I had a lot of fun working both last semester and this semester, and I’d like the chance to do it again, from a Captain’s point of view. Wish me luck!
On Saturday, Gordon, Linh, and I went to Providence Place Mall. It was my first time down there, and it was amazing. The mall was gigantic. There were five floors, the first two devoted to parking, Old Navy, and Borders, and the top three floors devoted to other stores, an IMAX theater and a Dave and Buster’s. Linh and I were on a mission to get clothes that somewhat resembled Hogwarts uniforms. Since Hogwarts on the Hill is coming up (it’s the Science Ambassadors’ biggest event of the year), we both wanted to dress up like Hogwarts characters. Since J.C Penney was conveniently having a sale, we both got ties for our respective houses. Linh got a Slytherin tie, and I got one for Hufflepuff. Gordon made an attempt at teaching me how to tie a tie, but unfortunately, I’ll have to ask him for further lessons.
Since the deadline for applications was January 15th, I wish you all the best of luck. I remember how irritating it was checking the mailbox every day and seeing no responses from schools, but don’t worry. The mail will come eventually…
Welcome back everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful winter break and, for you seniors, that you’ll all enjoy one last semester of high school!
Over here, classes started today. My schedule for this semester is AWESOME. This is mainly because it does not involve getting up at 8 a.m. every morning (except Tuesday) and getting out in the late afternoon/early evening. My first class today was a 10 a.m. and it was organic chemistry. As sad as it may sound, I’m actually really excited for it. Even though there are horror stories told about that class and my grades last semester weren’t quite as pretty as I’d like them to be, I want the challenge. We were in the new science building, Smith Labs, and it was a nice place. Admittedly, the classroom looked a lot smaller than the lecture room in Haberlin, but the architecture of the building is nice. For one thing, the outer wall of the atrium is all glass, so it’s very light. Also, Smith Labs (I do rather wish they had named the labs something else, because I’m afraid of confusing the new building with Smith, the building connected to O’Kane and Fenwick) connects the original science complex with Beaven, which means that I never have to walk outside to get from class to class
Not freezing my face off to get to class is just plain lovely.
Speaking of the new building (I’ll skip talking about botany, because nothing of real interest happened in it today), I went exploring the new five building complex on Monday, with the intent of finding my CRAW poetry class in Beaven. As my poetry classroom is actually right next to the entrance to Beaven, I found that adventure boring, so I went to look around the upper levels of Beaven. I was walking in the second floor corridor when I passed a professor pacing in his office. He looked up, saw me peeking in, and said hello. Obviously I said hello back, and somehow we ended up having a nice little chat in his doorway for a good half an hour or so. He’s not one of my professors, nor will I be likely to have him as a professor, but I walked away from that conversation feeling pretty cool that I could pull off a random conversation with random people.
As I’ve now hit the four hundred word mark with this incredibly long blog entry, I’ll leave you all here. Until next time, bye!
Yay! The first (real) snow of the season! It started snowing last night as I was on my way back to Wheeler from Hanselman. At the time, the snow was coming down heavily, but there wasn’t much on the ground. From what I can see out my window, it has stopped snowing, but there are a few inches on the ground. Yay!
It’s the middle of finals week, so hopefully the snow should help to lighten people’s spirits a bit, especially before Christmas. At this point, it seems like there are quite a few people who are just going crazy with the stress of finals, so hopefully the new snowfall might help cheer them all up.
So far, I’ve had my biology and chemistry finals. On one of them, I think I did decently, and on the other….not so much. Looking back, I think a big problem with me is that I never really picked up good study habits in high school, which is coming back to haunt me now. My next final is for calculus, and that’s on Saturday. Hopefully I don’t forget to go to it, because without the usual schedule, it’s been ridiculously easy to lose track of the days.
Yesterday, I had my chemistry final, and after that, Gordon, Dominika, and I hopped on the consortium bus and went on a field trip to…dun, dun, dun, the Worcester Public Library! It was exciting, and the place was HUGE…at least in comparison to the Maynard Public Library. We explored the library a bit, before walking to visit Gordon’s sister at work. She works as an investigator for juvenile defense cases. It was pretty cool being inside one of the tall buildings, and I have to admit, I’ve never really walked around a city of any sorts on my own (as in, without adult supervision) before, so it was neat. Admittedly, some aspects of it surprised me a bit, but I’d still like to walk around more if I ever get the spare time.
The bus ride itself is a one hour round trip, and since the library is the first stop after Holy Cross, the ride back took fifty minutes. I didn’t mind it though, because the bus stops at each Worcester college, and I liked seeing the different colleges (all the while comparing their campuses to that of HC).
Ah well, good luck to all of you applying to colleges (my friend Marissa from back home got some responses back and I was SUPER excited about them) and have a happy holidays!
At the moment, I’m sitting in O’Kane computer lab waiting for the Pit to open up so I can watch my friend Dave do his theatre final. Classes for everyone ended today (although poor Kristy still has to go to class tomorrow, because her Montserrat professor added an extra class). It’s weird to think that in a week we’ll all be done with our first semester of college!
Class for me technically ended yesterday, because on Tuesday I normally have bio lab, but it still feels as if the work never ends. Right now, I know I need to be studying for everything. I have three finals: biology, chemistry, and calculus, and at this point, I can’t say I’m ready to take any of them. Albeit we only just got out of class and the rest of the week is study week, but still. It’s scary to think that next week I’ll be sitting in those rooms for the last time this semester to take a two hour exam.
Even weirder is the thought that my chemistry exam will be the very last time I ever sit in that building, because next semester the new chemistry/physics building will be available for use and Haberlin will be gutted out. It’s exciting, but sad at the same time, because I just got used to the way the science complex is set up!
I think the show is about to start soon, so I’ll leave you all here now. At some point or another, I’ll write a better entry; this was just so you all are aware I didn’t fall off the face of the Earth after Thanksgiving break.
Today I woke up at the crack o’ dawn (a.k.a 6:40 a.m., which is earlier than I’ve woken up in a very long time) to enroll in classes for next semester. I woke up super early, and the first thought that came into my mind was that I could go shower…but as I was putting on my flip flops, Kristy, my roommate, said sleepily from her bed, “ten minutes…” which brought me back to why I had woken up obscenely early to begin with. Enrollment started at 7:00 A.M. for all freshmen, so I pretty much sat for ten minutes staring at my computer screen with all my first choice classes checked off on my Backpack and hoping that my roommate would get up and start her computer soon.
It was pretty intense. As soon as my computer clock changed from 6:59 to 7:00, I clicked on ‘enroll’ and waited for the magic to happen. Instead, I got an error screen saying that that I did not have an enrollment appointment. In a little panic, I went back and clicked ‘enroll’ again and it worked. Score! I got all my first choice classes. I’m now in Intro to Bio 2, Organic Chemistry 1, CRAW poetry, and my Montserrat, which has been upgraded from Truth and Realism to Truth and Abstraction. I went back a minute later to check on how many open spots were left in the classes I had picked, and was surprised to see that my CRAW was already full. Multivariable calculus, on the other hand, is still open…so I might need to have someone keep an eye on me, because I’m still thinking about wavering back to the dark side…
In further news, tonight Kimball is serving Thanksgiving food, and the line is supposed to be MASSIVE. However, Thursday nights are nights that I go to eat straight out of chem lab, so hopefully my early timing will counteract any chances of a long line. But anyways, yay, Thanksgiving is right around the corner!
p.s. - I shall now abuse my usage of this blog to give a little shout out to Taylor and Debbie. Happy birthday guys!
Office hours are a blessing that every student should take advantage of. Today, during office hours, my bio lab professor gave me two of the most useful things I could ask for. Those things being:
a) a cup of dirt, and b) some solid advice.
And yes, the cup of dirt was very important.
See, I have a cactus in my room that I got from the Natural Highs Fair (sponsored by the SRCs) way back in the beginning of semester. Since then, my dear cactus (who I have lovingly named Cactus) has flourished under my care. That is, until yesterday, when I was reaching for some cookies and the package happened to knock poor Cactus onto my bed. I put Cactus onto some intensive care, but alas, I would be unable to do a thing if it weren’t for Professor Lemay letting me have a cup full of dirt to take back to my room.
Never fear, Cactus should be right as rain in no time.
Beyond that, Professor Lemay offered me some sound advice. I had originally gone to see him with a question about our lab reports, which soon evolved into a little talk about my lack of organization. In case it hasn’t been made clear, I am really, really disorganized. Which is bad, especially with schoolwork. I homework hop. I start off working on one assignment before changing my mind and going to something else, and something else…
All in all, things don’t always get done when I do that. Professor Lemay offered me some helpful tips, such as working in study groups and setting specific times to do certain assignments. It’s all things I’ve heard before, but perhaps this time it’ll finally sink in.
Oh well. Moral of the entry: here on the Hill, dirt is gold…and sometimes professors can say smart things…
