Something New

It’s been a long time since my last update, although I have been thinking of you, dear Readers. I almost wrote an entry about this year’s apple picking trip, as well as our second adventure at making apple crisp (alas, we missed a crucial ingredient and were thwarted again—we made apple turnovers instead). I almost wrote about how last Wednesday/Thursday I survived on one and a half hours of sleep. Likewise, I almost wrote about how on Friday night I went ghost hunting with a large group of other students when CAB sponsored a professional ghost hunter to guide us. I ended up going to bed at 6:30 in the morning partly because I was a little unnerved and partly because me and Goebel were setting the record for the longest conversation our dorm hallway has ever seen. If I wanted to, I could write about how Kimball owns my life. Alas, what brings me to you tonight is the misfortune of some strange boy I met in the O’Neil computer lab.

I sandwiched my laptop in between two of the computers here because I am currently using excel, and I dislike how the computers in the lab automatically open to the new version. I’m doing this for genetics, and while I think I have all the right numbers, I have yet to find out what they mean. I asked Professor Lemay earlier today, and he explained it to me. Unfortunately, grasping biology is sometimes like grasping sand—it slips through your fingers too easily. I even asked the Excel Paperclip for help—you know it’s bad when you ask office supplies for help. The computer lab technically closes at 10 pm, however, if you are already in the lab, nobody really kicks you out. I ended up alone here with two boys who were using the Macs on the other side of the room. I feel that they were doing some sort of math/physics/upper level chemistry type of homework. As I was reading over my lab manual for the answers to my problems, there was a sudden yell and one of the boys exclaimed “The computer just froze, all my work is gone!”

Of course, I felt bad for him, but did not realize the extent of his troubles until a few minutes later he was lying facedown on the floor banging his fist against the carpet. He repeatedly asked what we all ask in situations like that—“What did I do to deserve this?!” He walked in only his socks from between his computer and the printer trying to let it all sink in. He tried bringing back his work. Sadly, all ten hours worth of work was gone. As the two of them left to get food, the boy’s friend turned to him and said, “On the bright side, if you start now, you can be done by six.”

Six in the morning.

The moral of the story, dear Readers? Save, save, save. What do I not do? Save. What should I do? Save. What will I do? Save, save, save.

And now I shall return to genetics.

Until next time!

p.s. New favorite phrase: Me Hercule! (According to Professor Lao, it means By Jove! Every time Pat decides I’m having an “Oh Brandi…” [insert weary sigh] moment, I try to respond with this phrase).

The substituted benzene rings are drawn so that it looks as if a long column of hexagonal eyes are staring straight at me, wondering why I can’t “provide a good laboratory synthesis for each compound”. I will learn—fast—how these compounds are created. My first organic chemistry test of the semester is on Friday. If last year taught me anything, it was to not wait ‘til the day before to start studying for exams. So far, I’ve made some good headway into the review packet, but now I’m stuck on how to attach Iodine to a benzene ring. It feels as if this should be more simple than I’m making it out to be, and I’m sure I’ll slap myself on the forehead when I realize how easy it is to attach one little halide to the ring.

In the meantime, I’ll distract myself from chemistry and ramble, as per usual.

As I’ve mentioned before, my SPUD this year is Salvation Army Tutoring, and on Tuesday my entire SPUD group crammed itself into a SPUD van and a student car and drove to the center for SPUD site orientation. We got to see the kids and say hello, and they were wicked excited to see us, just about as much as I was to see them! I can’t wait for next Tuesday to meet some of them more personally. My only concern is that Major Babbit (the woman in charge) mentioned that they were going to try to teach the kids music on Tuesdays. My musical talent is near to nothing, short of high school chorus in senior year where I learned I had abominable singing skills. My computer skills are decent though, so maybe that’ll be more helpful…

On Friday, I went to see Angels and Demons with some friends of mine at Seelos Theater. The theater itself is fairly new, having opened last year right next to the Kimball administrative offices. I really liked the movie, and I’m sure my friend Tom liked it even more, as every time something mildly unexpected happened, he’d exclaim “What?!”. Ashamedly never having read any of Dan Brown’s novels, I can’t say I have any complaints about the movie. Furthermore, it had Ewan McGregor in it—of whom I am a shameless fangirl.

After the movie, I went up to the CAB sponsored magic show put on by Derek Hughes, a magician with a sense of humor to boot. It was fascinating. Never in my life have I seen a man (or anyone) magically make a deck of cards disappear, only to have them pull the deck out of their pants a few minutes later.

Today was Brickfest for Loyola Hall. Basically, we ate doughnuts and bagels while painting bricks to hold the doors to our rooms open. My room door doesn’t need a brick for it to stay open—my roommate and I keep the door open whenever either of us is in the room—but the novelty of having a brick was too much for me. I’ve been looking forward to Brickfest all week, and when I finally got to paint my brick…I misjudged the size of my letters and failed to paint my entire name. Instead, I am now the owner of a Bran brick. My roommate made a brick as well, and then the two of us painted one side each of a third brick. My side of the brick has a sparkly pi; her side has white flowers.

It’s now occurred to me that it is past midnight, hence my version of “today” is in fact “yesterday”. Ah well, and goodnight!

Or rather, good morning.

Here is a collection of collection of odds and ends from the week past, in which I have lacked the motivation to write an honest-to-goodness well written blog entry. You have my apologies, dear readers.

Monday: I have come to the realization that I cannot maintain a straight face in Latin, as saying the words out loud tickles me to an extreme. Amamus (we love) makes me think of “I’m a moose”, for example.

Tuesday: I got to break in my new pink laundry basket. After breaking the handle of my hamper last year due to too much weight (I was stupid and threw my detergent bottle in there once), I decided to aim for the more sturdy plastic laundry baskets. There are a lot of machines in Loyola basement, and I was pleased that most of them were empty. While not as spacious as the laundry room in Wheeler, I still think it’s lovely.

Wednesday: Co-curricular extravaganza night. I was the first person on the list for Science Ambassadors and signed up for CAB (Campus Activities Board) as well. I would like it to be further noted that the CAB table had excellent M&M cookies. Currently, sign ups for clubs are now on an online forum type of thing. The paperwork is now electronic, and the emails for clubs are now sent through that website. It’s pretty cool, actually.

Thursday: I survived! Due to my poor scheduling skills, I have both of my labs that day, as well as my creative writing class jammed in between. Essentially Thursdays are a big rush from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon. However, being in the Organic Chemistry lab is always fun and in genetics, we got our Drosophila!

Friday: First Latin quiz. Before Professor Lao entered the room, everyone was talking about how they hoped that the quiz would be first. When Professor Lao got into the classroom, she announced to the class that she usually begins the class with the quiz, but since it was our first one, that she would put it off to the end of class. The irony caused me to giggle. Professor Lao asked if I was alright, which prompted a fit of full blown laughter from me.

Please note: I have been told I have an obnoxious laugh.

I later went to the Shoppes at Blackstone with Clara, Lenore, and Dominika. I didn’t buy anything, but it was nice to get off campus.

Saturday: My friend Mike was making fun of me at breakfast, so I was crafty and stole a piece of ketchup covered egg-white-with-cheese omelet off his plate as payback. I was both shocked and impressed at my success.

Sunday (today): SPUD orientation. I couldn’t get into my SPUD from last year (Grandkids—Jesuit), but I’m signed up for Salvation Army Tutoring this time around. I’m really looking forward to meeting the kids!

There’s something about doing something you haven’t done in forever that is oddly thrilling. Thrilling, because it’s something you haven’t done in awhile; and ‘odd’, only when that certain something is ‘attending classes’.

Today was my first day of class since being on the Hill. I left my room with something that should have been pride at waking up with my alarm, but was instead a feeling of regret for not having scheduled all afternoon classes.

In case it has never before been noted, I am not a morning person.

At any rate, after filling up on eggs, sausage, and hash browns at Kimball, I made my way towards genetics. Quite honestly, I’m terrified of the course, but was heartened by the fact that my lab manual has a recurring character named “Drosophy” the Drosophila. After genetics, I quickly made my way towards the chemistry building in the hopes of getting a front row seat. I slid into the classroom, found a seat right in the front of the room, and was thrilled at the fact that I had snagged the best seat in the house. A girl then sat next to me and pulled out her notebook. It was labeled “Analytical and Physical Chemistry”.

I’m only in Organic 2.

Instantly, I sprang from my seat and ran to the room next door, where all the good seats were already taken.

Several hours later, I found myself butchering an ancient classical language…also known as trying to pronounce words in Latin. Thankfully, the boy next to me had taken some Latin in high school and tried to help me out. I was actually really excited at the fact that ‘ui’ makes the “we” sound when said out loud. I wrote it down in my notes as “whee!”.

I am easily amused.

As it is, I hope all of you had a wonderful summer, and that you have an even better (although it might be impossible to believe) school year!

Hello everybody!

Why is it that I always feel I have taken forever to update? This seems to be a common theme here, although when I look back, updates weren’t all too far apart…maybe I just have a bad sense of time. That must be it, for it seems as if the days and weeks fly by here at school. It’s no wonder people say that college time is too short; I can’t believe I’m almost a sophomore. Or, even weirder, that I won’t be a freshman anymore. I suppose there will no longer be any excuse for me to get dazed and confused on campus anymore after this.

It’s a little depressing to think about.

On the bright side, becoming a sophomore has some perks to it. For one thing, we actually get to pick our housing for next year. Housing appointments for rising sophomores were yesterday, and unfortunately, I got a late time—8:40 p.m. By that time, the housing people had already run out of rooms, so everyone after 8:20 p.m. ended up on the waitlist. It’s not as bad as it sounds though. The reason that they don’t have enough rooms at the moment is because the juniors going abroad next year still don’t have confirmation that they can leave yet, so they have to pick housing before they go. Once they get the green light to go, all of their rooms will open up…which is good for us waitlisted people, because we get top priority on getting their (better) rooms.

Also, the class schedule is now up on STAR (our management system here at HC) so I’ve been briefing through it, looking at potential classes to take. So far, I know I want to take genetics and organic chemistry 2 next year…and the rest is finally up to me to decide!

And as I talk about moving up in class grades, I suppose I ought to put a light on you guys, the HC prospectives. Responses from the college are coming out really soon (I’m not saying when, because then it would spoil the surprise in the mailbox) but once more, I wish you all the best of luck. My biggest piece of advice for the moment (obviously I have more advice; isn’t it obvious I like to ramble?) is to take the time to visit each college you’re interested in. One of the biggest factors in me picking Holy Cross over another (_____ College, another Jesuit school in the area that I didn’t particularly like) was the atmosphere of the place. Think about the type of people you run into. If you can, try and get an overnight visit. See what each college is all about, and then…go for it.

I shall have to elaborate at some other time, because the Invertebrate biology lab is calling my name…

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!!

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!