New Post for the New Year

Well hi. Hopefully you won't hold it against me that I failed to make an end of the quarter post after the fall quarter ended. I'm no longer good at keeping to a blogging schedule (though I think I will be now since I'm getting back into doing football posts weekly). I have a bit to cover in this post, mainly the end of the quarter as well as winter break and the start of this quarter, so I'll get started right away.

Last quarter ended on a high note what with me pwning the crap out of my three finals and performing well in frisbee again, recovering from my bad showing at the OMG tournament in late November. In Philosophy, we spent the last day just reviewing the whole course before starting our final essays. During the class, I got in a philosophical debate with the professor. We share the same views, but he took the other side and we were going back and forth for a couple minutes before remembering there was a class going on, so he had to end it with a nice "I'm excited to read your paper now." I had half written it already and had not gone in that direction, but I was more than happy to completely change it on the hope that I might get a better grade. It worked out well and he really liked it and offered some counterarguments to the ones I laid down in the essay. My favorite part about the essay was that I was able to incorporate Mass Effect into it. I was really proud of that. As for Macro and Stats, well those were just boring tests. Nothing too exciting to tell other than I must have totally rocked them because my grades came out nicely. That was probably going to be one of the hardest quarters I will have here at SU and I got a 3.43 out of it, which is heartbreakingly close to the 3.5 I want and need. I need that 3.5 cumulative by the end of the year so I can keep my Xavier scholarship (of as I refer to it, the Charles Xavier Scholarship (people give me weird looks when I call it that though, but I will not stop)). The scholarship gives me $10,000 off of the cost per year which is really nice because it makes it so the cost of attending this school is only about $2,000 more than the UW and since the classes are smaller here than they are there, I think it's definitely worth it.

Some sad news out of last quarter is that the Jazz Band folded. I guess the enrollment wasn't at total full capacity, so the school cancelled the program before our winter concert. It's especially too bad since I planned my Tuesday and Thursday oriented quarter currently around the time this class went on. We might start a small group to just jam, but I don't know if that's ever going to materialize. The class will be reevaluated next year and I will definitely be there for it. I was enjoying this band, finding that I was actually practicing pretty often (which explains why I was doing so well in the songs). With the free time that I won't spend practicing now, I might go back to the flute or bass (probably the flute for now) and try to learn one or both of those. I like being able to play as many different instruments as I can.

After the quarter ended, I was glad to sleep in (until 9:30!) the next few days, making up for totally screwing up my circadian rhythm throughout the quarter. I spent the first couple weeks of the break mainly just playing Oblivion and putting in a little Starcraft here and there when Keir was available. I wound up getting all my skills to level 100 in Oblivion. If you've played an Elder Scrolls game before, you know exactly how ridiculous it was of me to do that. If you've only played Morrowind, they don't let you train infinitely in Oblivion, so I had to do it the hard way. I spent the middle of the break playing Starcraft with Keir a lot. Christmas was pretty nice, I got a cool letter opener dagger looking thing from my Grandma (she likes to send random gifts) and a Hungarian winter military hat which was also cool. Another good thing I got was a lego Winnebago (a reference to scouting days (Black mountain and the idiot video in case Davis is wondering)). Mom also found a Colt McCoy jersey and she got that for me, which was pretty awesome. Now my man crush on him can be shown off to the world!

Davis came over after Christmas and we wound up using one of the Starcraft trial codes I had. We hopped online with Keir and played for the 7 hour duration of the code. It was actually really fun and I think we had a winning record by quite a bit at the end of the day. We got put into bronze (Davis hadn't played before), so Keir and I got to cheese occasionally which was really fun. Mass battlecruisers ftw. I got my Yamato achievement in that game. Orion also came back that week and the four of us along with Eric played some Munchkin one night. I guess Orion hadn't played before, but he picked it up quick which was really cool. On Davis' last night on the west side, the four of us decided to get Taco Bell and take it to the bridge again because as I said "It's been too long since I've had diarrhea and have been cold" (I hate to quote myself, but Davis did quote me so I feel like it's more ok (still feel like a douche though)). I also quote myself because that was about the experience I had. Maybe without the violent diarrhea though, but it was sub-freezing (and three out of four of us were wearing shorts like bosses!). While we were on the bridge, some rando walked by and said something to the effect of "Interesting place to hang out." It was a good sendoff I think and hopefully someday we do it again (see, already I have the happy memory of doing it because all I remember is leaving).

After that point, I've been mostly doing my usual things which consist of spending extensive time with Grandpa and playing videogames (not at the same time, Grandpa's not into CoD or Halo......yet). Steven recently convinced me to get Minecraft so I did. It's totally worth it. It's like all the fun parts of the Sims. The possibilities are really awesome and I don't see myself getting tired of it for some time. The day after I got it, I played for 12 hours. The day after that, 10 hours. The day after that, 8 hours. The day after that, Steven and I decided to try a multiplayer server. Since we went and did that, I became unaddicted to Minecraft. The multiplayer was so fun that it made the singleplayer seem like there was little point. I still enjoy it, but I only play for a couple hours at a time, less than I would spend playing Starcraft in one sitting anyway. Now Steven, Chris, and I have a cool server that we play on and that has been really fun. We're getting past the need to have all three on at any given time, so each time we sign on, somebody has improved our shelter in some new way. I'm going to post some videos eventually of what I have done and perhaps of what we have done as well. I'll keep you posted there.

Now the quarter has started and it seems I have a new problem on my hands. Where my last quarter classes were really math heavy, this quarter's classes are really writing intensive. In addition, there is a lot of reading assigned. I got assigned ~100 pages of reading from a Tuesday to a Thursday. I can keep up, but there is going to be a lot of reading and analyzing here. I must say I greatly prefer the math heavy stuff to this. I have to get good at the writing though if I'm going to be a lawyer. It also helps that I do this blog because I get practice and can see how well/poorly I write when I look back. Here are my classes:

Theology of Peace (7:45am-9:50am Tuesday & Thursday):
This is going to be an interesting class. I mean that because it seems like it is really geared towards watching disturbing clips of war and being in touch with your emotions. The professor lived in El Salvador in the '80s though, so she has an expertise in war-torn countries and stuff of that nature. In the first class, we watched some commercial about a person that wanted to grow up, but they were killed. The commercial only showed pairs of shoes though, no specific person. Being the souless robot I am, I didn't really take note of anything other than "damn the song they are playing is annoying." After it ended, I looked around and people around me were just sad looking and it was pretty depressing. They were taking notes about their feelings (as per instructions) and were writing paragraphs of information. I said everything that came to mind which was only really "That was an effective commercial." I've trained myself to avoid strong emotions (due to my aspirations in the legal field and my general stoic nature), so I think I'm going to have to fake a lot of emotional responses in this class to get by, but this is definitely one that I can BS my way through this quarter. The students seem pretty nice. As a bonus, this girl I like on the frisbee team happens to be in the class, so we sit next to each other. Today in the class, we watched a music video by Jackson Browne. The professor was asking if anyone had heard of him. Thinking "Well he was a big player in classic rock history," I proudly raised my hand. In the class of 27, NOBODY ELSE DID. That was kind of funny and disturbing to learn that. After hearing him sing though, the girl from frisbee recognized his voice because her father used to listen to him. I'm only 20, but I somehow manage to date myself all the time.

Financial Markets and Economic Development (10:00am-12:05pm Tuesday & Thursday):
I took this class because I thought it was going to be focusing on macro and I figured I could always use more practice on that side of economics. I wasn't totally wrong actually, but it's also going to have a big focus on microfinance which is something I don't have much experience in. What's more, the teacher is a real hard-ass. She seems at times like it's just a ruse, but from what I hear, she is actually pretty strict. She called "people" out on sleeping when I suspect it was just me the other day. She then proceeded to ask students for suggestions on how to stay awake. I couldn't help but feel it was a bit directed at me since I had had a sleep attack at that point. It's always a bit insulting to hear people suggest ways to stay awake because when I get tired, my brain is going at the same rate, realizing I'm tired, but I can't will my limbs to move or do anything and I have to accept that it's going to happen. Hell, I can even fall asleep while sitting upright, taking notes and not even feeling tired. Next thing I know, it's about 10 minutes later and evidently I fell asleep. I cleared it up with her though during the break. I told her it's why I sit in the back (it's colder back there and this way I don't call attention to myself if it happens) and I gave her permission to throw a koosh ball at me (hopefully I don't regret that). She was nice about it though, so hopefully it doesn't happen and the whole thing winds up being a non-issue. It didn't really happen in my macro class in this timeslot last quarter, so maybe I'll get lucky again. I'm not posting from class right now, she's down in Denver at some conference being interviewed for something so there was no class today.

Law, Politics, and Society (1:30pm-3:35pm Tuesday & Thursday):
I'm taking this as a general elective actually. It's really a 300 level polisci class, so there were prerequisites. The professor waived them for me though when I told her my plans, which was super nice. She seems to be living up to that so far. The class looks like it will be pretty cool.

Frisbee (2-4 Sundays, 3-5 Mondays, 8:30-10:30 Wednesdays, and 3-5 Fridays):
Not really a class I know, but something I am doing. We added a Sunday practice since people weren't making the Monday ones. The fate of the Monday practices is up in the air currently. They may become conditioning days or we may just drop them altogether. Either way, I won't be attending. Getting down to SU and back is a pain in the ass and since the practices are all on days when I don't have to go down there for class, I'm only going to make the other three. Having to fight rush hour on my own is bad enough once a week and I decided Fridays are the better day on which to do that. I think we're doing winter quarter this quarter, so that will be pretty cool.

Okay so my quarter is pretty busy. Tuesdays and Thursdays are pretty hellish, but I think the four day weekends will really make it worth it. I like it this way where I block the days off together because it lets me rest up and be ready for the week. It may increase the size of homework, but I have time to do that while I play Minecraft now, so no worries there.

I'll maybe do a big post like this again this month, but it would be at the end, so I don't know. Happy new year to all and hope you have good new quarters/semesters.
Peace out.