Weekend

Happy September, everyone! Hope you had a great Labor Day weekend!

I did! My mom came up to the college and spent the weekend with me, and I managed to finish my homework in time to enjoy it. So we partied all weekend, going to a wedding shower Saturday and both Sunday services and breakfast at a friend's house on Monday. =D

Sadly, Mommy had to leave Monday afternoon. Sob.

Another great thing came of her visit too! I wanted some new books for my Kindle by an author I recently discovered is awesome, but my Kindle can't connect wirelessly to my college (at least, not without a password from our campus library, which was closed all weekend). Since I'm a pathetic teen who doesn't have a car or even a license yet, I had to make sure to bring my Kindle so I could use the wireless Internet provided by some kind of food place to get my new books whenever Mommy drove me off-campus.

But eventually, I got the books! Woot! And I just finished the first of four last night, so I'll be starting on the second soon. ^_^

Hopefully the workload will be slightly manageable so that I can read the rest of the books, even if not quite as quickly as I read the others.

Anyways, have a great day, week, month, whichever! ^^ See you soon!

Second Day Back to Class

Yesterday, I had my last two classes so that I have now had all of my classes once!

The two classes I had? Well, one of them was a writing class, by the same professor as my blogging class last year. This time, instead of a blog, I'll be writing my memoirs. They may or may not be published online; I kind of hope that they are not - or at least that my professor follows Internet safety rules a little in doing so.

The other class I had was the one where I'll be going to the farm as part of my requirement. The class itself is something about social justice and I think gender diversity too maybe. I hope I don't get upset too often concerning this class.

The homework that class assigned was to read a chapter in a certain book. I wasn't even through a third of the chapter before I started talking back to the pages; and by another third of the chapter, I was probably yelling at the pages (though not at the top of my lungs - I am in a dorm with several other girls, after all...).

Maybe I'll tell you about what made me so upset tomorrow. There's not enough room left in this post to cover it, I don't think.

So, yeah. Writing and social justice. Combined with the previous day's classes of two English and a French.

It's gonna be a good year.

First Day Back in Class

Yesterday, I had my first day of classes, and I had three out of my five classes total (I'll be going to the other two today).

I had my two English classes and my French class, and I already love all of my professors, even if my one English professor is scaring me.

For that particular class, we're looking at psychological stuff. I kind of sort of wondered if that would mean some disturbing study stuff, but apparently I didn't wonder enough to drop the class. Now I've watched a movie that the professor has assigned, and I kind of freaked out really badly over it. And the professor is warning us that more disturbing stuff is ahead.

Sigh. Pray for me. Please.

Other than that, all is well. My French professor is already cracking the whip and assigning lots of homework, but that's normal for her. And it only took me a few hours last night to finish most of it, yay!

As for my other English class, it's sort of a history class - we're going to be learning about how our modern English was developed. Is it weird that I'm actually kind of excited about learning all the difficult, technical side of our language? For homework, I defined terms like morphemes and pejoration; I still don't know what morphemes are, even with the definition, but I'm still excited. xD

Hopefully this enthusiasm will last all semester. Woot, second college year, here I come!

Farming

Yesterday, I visited a farm with one of my professors and some of my classmates.

The class I visited with is one that is centered around service learning - education via helping the real world survive. My particular class's service learning project is that, this semester, we'll be volunteering at a farm, helping to plant and weed and harvest and whatever else they need.

It'll be hot, really hot, at least for the next month-ish. And it'll be hard.

But I'm cautiously looking forward to it. As long as it doesn't get gross (read: I don't want to touch the glowworms or fish or deal with any of their excretions), hard can be good. It'll be good for me, at least. Getting exercise and sunshine is healthy.

This particular farm deals a lot in veggies and berries and whatever else growable that was mentioned but I forgot. It's all organic, too.

As far as animals go, there are the aforementioned worms and fish. There are also some chickens, I've heard, but I didn't see any on that one trip.

Here's hoping all goes well! =D This post looks somewhat short, but I'mma end it here anyways. Have a great day!

Back at College

Woah, sorry I forgot about you guys yesterday and this morning! I moved back to college yesterday, so I've been re-acclimating to college life.

I got my room set up after some furniture rearrangement, and and of course my room is basically purple again. I have my two purple beds - one of which is set up like a couch with three purple pillows.

And I picked up my books for my classes, and I'm pretty sure I have all of them. One of my professors has yet to post a syllabus online, so I can't be totally sure. But I have that particular class tomorrow, so hopefully I'll find out then if I'm missing anything.

I discovered in the unpacking process that I forgot a couple of crucial things: pencils and lamps.

I love to use my purple pens that write in purple ink, but there are times when ink just shouldn't be used. So I'll need to get some pencils this weekend.

And I have only one light in my entire room, and it's on the ceiling, and it makes absolutely no difference lighting-wise until after the sun has set. So, yes, I need my lamp that has multiple lamps stemmed from it to aid the sun in its generous-but-not-quite-enough light provision through my window.

Aaaand, I guess tomorrow, I will tell you about my trip to a farm that I took today.

My Memoirs

For one of my classes this semester, I'll be writing my memoirs.

It sounds creepy to say that, like I think I'm going to die soon or something. I haven't even lived half of what's considered a generation.

That aside, though, I have a different problem: I need to think up stories from my life that will take up at least ten pages when typed out.

I think this blog helped a little bit in that. I looked at the posts I'd labeled 'Story from my Life' and may have found a couple potential topics. Trouble is, I need five total; maybe even five plus one.

Another problem with this is my memory. If I'm going to be expected to put these events in story mode, I'm going to have to do a lot of embellishing because I can't remember specific days in order, or all the stuff that happened on a single day. I just remember highlights.

Woah, I just took a look at this post, and I seem to be complaining a lot. o_O

Please don't let my list of problems fool you. I'm cautiously looking forward to this course; I think it'll be interesting to see what I and my classmates come up with.

Plus, I know the professor already from last semester, so I know what it will take to succeed in her class. It'll be a lot of work, and a big struggle to keep my grade up; but it'll definitely be interesting.

One bright side to this is that, unlike the last course I took with this professor, I don't think I'll have to find people to interview. That was nerve-racking, interviewing a total stranger. =P

College Preparing

I'm finally taking my own measures to prepare for the upcoming semester; let's all cheer for my work and boo the fact that it's necessary to do such work. xD

As the result of just one afternoon, I've mostly finished packing. Most of my stuff was already still together after the last year; when we brought the stuff home from clearing out my college room that I wouldn't be using anymore, I just dumped it all in a corner of my room and barely touched it all summer.

As a result, 'packing' for this year mostly included rearranging the stuff in the containers for maximum efficiency and space usage, plus replacing the stuff like soap and shampoo that I was running low on.

Before the week is over, I'll need to start packing clothes too. And whatever books and movies I want to take from my home room to my college room.

I've also looked over the syllabi that have been put up so far for my classes. As of yesterday evening, only two out of my five classes had a syllabus posted. I've read both of those and jotted down notes about each.

And I'm sporadically going back over all of my French notecards, trying desperately to overcome a three-month break from most things French.

So, yeah. Stuff. Busy stuff. Not fun, but necessary. Unfortunately.

At least there are no major deadlines quite yet.

Moving Back

I'll be moving back to college in a little over two weeks, so I've been shopping around lately for stuff to put in my room this year.

Last year, I was supposed to have a roommate but ended up not getting one. This year, my parents are paying for me to have a room to myself. So I'm going a little farther with the decorating process.

For one thing, the extra bed in my room is going to need some kind of cover at least, so it's not just an ugly ol' mattress in the midst of all the other purple I plan on having. xD Along with a mattress pad and fitted sheet, Mom got me a body pillow, a normal pillow, and a pillow with arms that her coworker called her husband when she was in college.

I'll also be decorating my walls more this year. Last year, I just pinned one hand-made poster (from my "big sister") and one colored drawing (from a girl at my church) onto the only section of my wall that the college lets me put push-pins into. This year, I'll be hanging a picture of Jesus, a picture of the Pillar of Fire, and a picture of the Cloud on my walls.

This other stuff, of course, is in addition to all the stuff I'm reusing from last year, like my crates and my fridge. Along with all the other stuff that's too numerous to mention. :P

Oh, and I got a microwave too. Who knows how often I'll use it, but hopefully often enough to make it worth the buy. It was one of the cheapest microwaves they had, at any rate.

So. Yup. Moving back. Fun. Woo. Cheer.

I'm ecstatic. Can't you tell? *sarcasm*

Lord of the Ring

Lately, I've been trying to read J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Ring series.

Late in the previous semester at college, my college had a book sale. At this sale, my friend found the entire series plus a bunch of bonus stuff in one book. She was considering buying it until I mentioned that if she didn't, I might.

I'd never read the series before, and I remember very little of the movies that I saw only once a few summers ago. I'd honestly never had much of an interest in them until so many of my friends at college would randomly go off on long discussions about how awesome it is and quote a few lines at every turn.

Almost instantly, my friend backed off on her claim to buying the book, encouraging me to buy it.

So I did. One novel divided into three sections, which in turn are each divided into two sections, before coming to the breaking down by chapters.

Sadly, my progress is slow. I've been reading it steadily for about a month, and I've only finished little more than a sixth of the book. But I think I'm picking up my pace now that most of the world-building has been completed and I can focus on plot.

I'll probably let you know my thoughts when I've finished. Deal? =)

Extra Stuff

I currently have way too much stuff in my room.

I have about double the amount of stuff I want in my room, actually.

Can you guess why?

It's all my college stuff. Now that I've moved back out of college, I have all my normal stuff in my room plus all the stuff that used to be in my room at college.

Now I've got two rooms worth of stuff crammed into one room, and I can scarcely get anywhere except from my door to my bed and closet, which are side by side and probably the only reason my closet is accessible too.

Sigh. The joys of no longer getting to live at home full-time except for a few months out of the middle of the year.

I wonder how much of this stuff I'll lug back to college come the start of the fall semester?

It won't be everything that I brought home with me because I brought home a lot of surcies (small trinket gifts from the college) that I kind of wonder if I should just throw away because I'll probably never use them here or at college.

Anyways, that'll be something for me to figure out at a much later date. I only brought it up now because it was the only thing I could think of to blog about.

Later!

News

So I just had a thought. Yes, those do hit me once in a while. ...Wait, I lost it.

Oh, okay, here it is again: One reason I probably have so little to talk about is because I don't really read/watch anything that is considered "news." Sometimes news upsets me, sometimes it confuses me, and sometimes I have no reaction at all. So I avoid it. But I think some other bloggers maybe include certain bits of it into their blogs, am I right?

Well, if I'm wrong, more power to all bloggers everywhere! Woot! =D

I vaguely included news into my stump speech the other day. (NO MORE SPEECHES NOW! I'M FREEEEE!!!! ...For the semester, anyways. Hopefully for many years. It'd be great if I went my whole life and never gave another speech.) I decided the problem with news was the appalling shortage of good news. ELECT ME FOR PRESIDENT, AND I VOW TO ENSURE GOOD NEWS WILL BE SHOWN AT LEAST AS MUCH AS THE BAD!

...Yeah, the speech was basically a mock thing where everyone in my class was running for President of the U.S.A. My proposed solution to the lack of good news was make sure that, Mondays through Saturdays, there was a fifty-fifty mix of good and bad news. There was also the potential to make more good than bad. And on Sundays, only some emergency like 9-11 would be able to worm its way into our news. Otherwise, Sundays would be full of nothing but good news.

You like? Yay, then vote for me! ...Yes, yes, I know I just said it was a mock thing, don't ruin my fun. -_-

Work

Hey everyone! Oh wow, I'm suddenly drawing a blank again as for post topics - not good. =/

Well, because college is pretty much my entire life currently, maybe I'll post some more about that. This week was awful, time-wise. I had to do all kinds of stuffs with little to no break. I think I may have mentioned speeches and presentations?

I also had biology homework which I haven't completely finished yet. I find it so difficult to stay focused on biology. I guess part of it is that, even though I know it's important and everything, I just can't find it interesting. Especially the way the books put it - soooo boring!

But I'm thinking there's more to it than that, at least this year. Semester, actually. Thankfully. This semester, biology seems to be revolving around mutations and evolution. Honestly, I don't think I had ever heard of mutations before starting at college. If I had, it was only as the extremely rare exception to an otherwise near-perfect creation. At college, it's all mutations, mutations, mutations. And evolution. Which I find to be wrong, even if I'm horrible at arguing against it. People say there's so much evidence for it, and they provide that "evidence," and they seem to enthused with and stuck on it that I find it so difficult to say, "That's not concrete!"

Meh. Anyways. This is the last official week of school, thankfully. Next week is exam week. I sort of wish I could get my bio exam over and done with, but no... My bio exam is on Friday of all days, doubled up with French of all things. The two tests I'm going to have to study hardest for, and they fall on the same day. I should complain, but I don't know who to, and I probably will continue to be too busy anyways.

Wow, kind of a depressing post. Sorry about that. Everything will go great! God's got it all in control, and I'll survive one way or another. See you tomorrow! =D

Horror

OH NO. I just realized that friend of mine has a birthday coming up in LESS THAN A WEEK and I'm so busy with school I doubt I have the time or creativity to devote to writing a story for her favorite couple like I've done for a couple of her birthdays. Dx

Maybe I'll have to resort to finding a spare moment to draw pictures again. This is awful, what kind of friend am I? I'mma blame college, but I really have to take at least some of the blame myself. Grrr...

Hmm, I wonder if maybe I could come up with a little short plot and just write about our OCs when they were young. She did that for me one year, and it was so sweet. In fact, in a lot of her stories with her OC, mine also played a role of some kind. I, on the other hand, can probably count on one hand the number of stories that I've included both our OCs in. Not that I'm going to try, cuz I absolutely have no time to waste.

Sooo, plotline possibilities... Hmmm... Okay, I'm seriously drawing a blank here. Maybe it's just because I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to put ideas into this post. Maybe I should just randomly search through my book that helps teach you how to write. That book offers a lot of story ideas. Maybe one of them could work for two nine- or ten-year-olds.

Yeah, maybe something like that. Anyways, absolutely no time to waste. I must do homework and write a story. Busy, busy, busy. See you later, wonderful listeners! ♥

French Interviews and Snacks

If I had the time, I'd try to figure out a way to write this entire blog post in French, in honor of the thing I have today. I have to meet with my French teacher and talk to her for five minutes straight in French only. And I am super nervous.

This week is so, soo busy; but all yesterday that I wasn't in class or eating, I spent studying my French flash cards. And yet I'm scared they won't be enough. I worry that although I know so many individual words, I won't be able to put them together well enough to make a good grade in this "oral interview."

But I suppose that's enough worrying for one blog post. What shall I talk about next?

Oh, I'm running out of snacks in my room. xD

I asked for more when I was home for Thanksgiving, and I was told to write what I needed on the grocery list. But then I came back here Sunday, forgetting even to ask if those items had been bought yet.

So now I have no granola bars to snack on, but I have something similarish yet more filling. And I have peanut butter, but nothing to spread it on. I tried eating just plain peanut butter the other day, but it didn't really work out. I'm not like some of you people out there that can just get a spoonful of peanut butter and eat it plain, unfortunately.

Anyways, I won't starve. A lack of snacks isn't going to kill me. And if it nearly does, I have friends with food that have begged me to liberate some food from them anytime I want.

So. Odd post, going off on two different topics, but there it is. I'm off to study French again!

Two Weeks

Have I mentioned yet that I have less than two weeks left of school in this first semester in college? I'm pretty sure I may have at least hinted about it, but I don't remember if I had yet said it outright.

Anyways, two weeks left! Of my very first college semester! Wow, wow, wow. It doesn't really seem real, but I am more than ready for a month of doing nothing.

Did I tell you about all the work I had over Thanksgiving break? It wasn't really much of a break. Honestly, I don't think teachers know the meaning of the word.

That's why this upcoming month off will be so wonderful. Because all of the classes are coming to an end in these next couple of weeks, and we're starting the new classes when we get back, there's absolutely no way we can get assigned homework! ...Right?

You know, I probably should tone down the enthusiasm just a bit. I really wouldn't want one of my teachers to work at proving me wrong. I am perfectly content with this theory never having any opposition or testing grounds or anything. I have no intentions of daring a teacher to give me homework. Nada.

But I really am excited about the idea of an actual break. This week and the next will probably be so crazy it's not even funny, and I really should be working on other things even as I'm typing this.

Okay, since I brought it up, I may as well concede that this post is long enough and I should stop stalling. It's time to work more on my speech, then once I've given that I'll work on my presentation. And once that's thankfully over and I've hopefully gotten a good grade on it (I really need the extra points in this class), I'll be studying French, French, French for the rest of the day and part of tomorrow. Au revoir!

December

Happy December, people! Yes, I know this is a day late, but remember I was busy with another topic yesterday? Today, I'll be typing very quickly, so forgive any typos please. But I have much, much, MUCH to prepare for today. A test, a presentation, and a speech, then an interview in French. Not cool.

But putting that aside, we're celebrating, right? December is a wonderful month! It's the last month of the year! It contains Christmas! And Christmas break! And for us college students who have courses broken into semesters, that guarantees that we won't get any homework over break. Instead, we get an entire month off to just relax! (Is it a month for everyone, or just for my college? I kind of suspect it's for every college, but please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Also, December contains some wonderful birthdays! Yippee! My birthday, midway through the month. A friend's birthday, nearly a week before mine. And a cousin's birthday, a few days after mine. Just try and tell me that isn't way awesome; you'd be wrong. ;D

I'm so happy about my exam schedule this time around! Why? Because the last day of exams is a couple days before my birthday! Meaning, unlike middle school and high school, I won't be right smack dab in the middle of testing on my birthday! You have to admit, that is wonderful. =3

Anyways, I think this post has gotten some decent length, so I'mma end it here and start back to work on my homework. Evil, evil presentations and the like. Have a great day, and a better December! ♥

Story Time

So I know yesterday I said I'd let you know about the plant music experiments, and I will. But I'm not going to retype them all here. Instead, here's the direct link to the site page that talks about it:

http://www.dovesong.com/positive_music/plant_experiments.asp

Today, I actually have a story about yesterday I'd like to share with you. I have a professor for a certain class who likes to have fun while teaching and get laughs from his students. But yesterday when he walked in, he was so serious he may have even been scowling. When a classmate asked him how he was, he growled, "I'm in a bad mood."

As dead silence reigned from the students, the professor ordered us to get out a piece of paper. We began to comply, but two seconds later he asked us if we were done yet. I could tell a couple of my classmates were getting upset at his lack of common sense plus patience.

I'll be honest. The only thought going through my head at the time was, "Lord, please don't let me laugh, just in case he's serious."

When we finally all had our piece of paper out, our teacher pulled out a box of crayons, grinned, and said, "Now let's all make hand turkeys."

You can imagine the reaction he got. Lots of highly relieved laughter and good-natured complaints about how he scared us all half to death. And we worked on hand turkeys while he talked about our next assignment.

Music Pt. 2

Okay, so remember in a previous post I said something about how different music has different effects, but I didn't know how to go into any detail? Well, I did some research for my biology project, so how about I share some of the info with you!

There's an online article called "Music & How It Affects Your Brain, Emotions." It talks about the part of our brains that processes music. Apparently, music is super effective, because the part of the brain that understands it is the part that also deals with motivation, emotion, and reward.

The article even said that our brains automatically put a pattern to the music we hear! I guess that means we can kind of guess what note is coming next even in a song we haven't heard before?

And you know those goose bumps you sometimes get when listening to music? According to this article, that's the composer taking advantage of what he knows we'll expect and purposely changing it. Incredible, right?

Oh, and I found a website called Dove Song that talks about the differences between positive and negative music. According to this source, here's positive music: "has beneficial qualities and is emotionally and spiritually uplifting, perhaps even healing; can be relaxing, calming, and mentally invigorating." And negative music "stimulates the negative emotions: anger, frustration, depression, hatred and fear."

Whoops, running out of room to continue in this post. But tomorrow, maybe I'll tell you about one or more of the experiments I found. If you don't want to wait that long, all of them are also on that Dove Song website. =)

Don't Brake for Squirrels

Okay, so I know yesterday I said something about describing my own speech if I made it back to you today, but my speech completely pales in comparison to another one that was given. So I'mma talk to you about that one.

Don't Brake for Squirrels. That was pretty much her speech's title, or maybe it was the policy she was advocating. At any rate, she was magnificent.

She described how animals (squirrels especially, but also others such as moose that have become drunk off of fertilized apples or something) are out to get us humans because we have been invading their homes. To assist in proving her point, she used this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40kPEjZpM8M

Another source she used was a comedian, so you can probably guess how her speech overall went with us audience members. But one of the best parts about her speech was the straight face she managed to keep throughout the entire thing. Can you say incredible?

I probably shouldn't end this post without telling you the final point she made. She suggested that in order to keep this situation from escalating, and hopefully to help it to die down even, we stop buying up and building on the few areas of nature left. It doesn't cost anything to do nothing, after all.

All in all, epicness. See you tomorrow!

Recordings

As I'm typing this, I'm listening to a recording of myself practice a speech I have to give in a couple of hours. Thanks to my suddenly extra busy schedule this week, I am grossly unprepared for this. The recording, however, I think is really helping. I get to hear myself give my speech multiple times without giving myself a sore throat.

On the other hand, hearing isn't the same as hearing and saying. Especially when you're multitasking like I'm pathetically trying to do right now.

But once I've finished typing and posting this, I'm going to divert my full attention to the speech. Completely undivided attention. And hopefully these couple of hours before class will be enough to finish preparing. I did spend all yesterday afternoon and evening practicing this, after all.

Recordings are wonderful inventions. I'm so grateful for them. Back in high school, I used to use a lesser-quality recorder thing for memorizing poems or the Preamble or something. It really helped, although I did use it more than twenty-four hours in advance, unlike this instance. I really wish I could've started earlier, but oh well, I suppose. Live and learn.

Are you curious as to what my speech is about? Maybe I'll describe it tomorrow, if all goes well today and I make it back to you alive. Giving speeches is terrifying; who knows if I'll die of fright, even though the last two speeches were gracious enough to allow me to survive.

Adieu, mes amis.