Something New

Clouds of steam whirled around the head of one young, sweet, kind, hardworking (bet you can’t guess who I’m describing), pink-hatted girl as she took dishes out of the dishwasher, waiting for the clock to strike six so that she could go on yet another adventure.

The captains were kind (on a side note, fellow blogger Colleen was subbing for one of my normal captains, and we had a moment of blogger bonding when we discovered how sheltered we were compared to the guys on my shift during our break) and as soon as six o’clock rolled around, they let the girl and her coworkers go. The coworkers, headed for places unknown, went one way, while our young pink-hatted adventurer dashed back to her dorm, put on non-gross clothing, and ventured to Asia.

Well, that’s almost true. Technically, I only went to Hogan Ballroom. Last night ASIA, the (as seems obvious) Asian group on campus (Advocating Student Interest in Asia) put on their annual performance—ExplorASIAn. The performance includes dinner, and features dances from various Asian countries as well as several short video clips from the hosts, “testimonials” from some members, and  plenty of humor. And no, you do not need to be Asian to attend or be a part of ASIA. I am not a member of the group, but several of my friends are. I went to see them perform, and in my personal, completely biased opinion, the dances they were in were my favorites.

In short, the show was awesome. My future roommate Cynthia did a Vietnamese Candle and Fan dance, which was absolutely gorgeous to watch. My friend Abhi did an Indian hip hop sort of dance with his sister which was surprisingly fantastic (he never struck me as the dancing type). And then my friend Jenny did a Filipino dance called Tinikling, which involves having moving sticks on the ground and jumping around them. It looked cool, but I don’t think I’d ever be able to do it. My lack of grace and balance mixed with moving sticks could never lead to any good outcome. 

This weekend is also Visions Weekend for minority admitted students to come visit the school. I’ve met a few, and I can’t wait to run into more of you (no, I am not sketchy) during admitted students day!

Advising is a lot like going to the doctor’s office—terrifying to think about, but pretty painless (and thankfully, unlike the doctor’s office, there is no chance of getting a shot). For awhile now, I’ve been schedule crazy, spending obscene amounts of time searching courses that don’t conflict with labs. I’ve been finding backup classes and backups for my backups. Ratemyprofessors.com has now become one of my favorite websites ever, and when it fails to find the professor I’m searching for, it does indeed make me weep a little on the inside.

Only a little.

For next year, I’ll hopefully be taking Genetics, Organic Chemistry (part two), Creative Writing: Nonfiction (at the urging of my Montserrat professor, and who knows, maybe it’ll teach me to write even better entries than the ones you must already love), and last, but not least, Introduction to Latin. My advisor nearly gave me a heart attack when he told me I had no free slots to take classes that I wanted to take for the sake of taking…but then we recounted and it turns out that I have seven free classes. And, because I am taking a second English class for the fun of it, I’m essentially taking the same courses as a bio pre-med student here. This means that for all of you looking into that means of study, yes, you will have slots open to take classes you want to take for fun.

In other news, I did not receive the position of Kimball Captain, but upon further thought, I’ve decided it’s quite alright, and I’m so happy for all the people that got promoted!  I’ll probably stick around Kimball next year, so perhaps I could even meet some of you lovely readers. And, if I’m lucky, you all won’t be bitter towards me for taking advantage of this blog to ramble about the daily occurrences of geeks (me) on campus.

I also finally met my fellow blogger, Melissa, for the first time last night! We were standing in line at Kimball together, and a mutual friend of ours said hello to me, which made Melissa realize who I was (alas, I am horrible with things like this, and would never have caught on that she was the Melissa). She was incredibly nice and we spent a few minutes in front of the silverware having a blogger-bonding moment. It was lovely.

Lastly, congratulations to everyone who got accepted to Holy Cross! As the applicant pool seems to grow every year, it was a tough decision for admissions to make, and you should all be proud of yourselves for getting this far. As I’ve mentioned before, definitely try and get a visit in (to all the places you’ve been accepted to) and see if you can imagine yourself there. Since you’ll be living the greater part of the year on campus, you might as well enjoy where you’re staying.

And please, don’t let the numerous Holy Cross stairs daunt you—they’re good for you!

That is, in my completely biased opinion…

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!!

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…

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!

Gah! Another long delay in blog entries! Oh the horror! You’ll have to forgive me…again. The week so far has been super busy, and I’ve noticed that all of my classes have started to pick up pace at this point. Alas, no pointless procrastination (as if there were much to begin with) anymore.

For one thing, in calculus, I’ve finally hit the point where I can’t really rely on high school AP calculus to guide my way. Either we didn’t learn this stuff last year, or I completely forgot. It could be either one at this rate, but this morning as I was sitting in class, I realized I had no idea what Professor Hwang was talking about. That really is a shame, because he is an awesome professor to have in the mornings even though it’s at 8 a.m.. This is mostly because his corny math jokes are adorable. And he explains things well. And most importantly of all, because it’s obvious that he loves math. It’s impossible not to pay attention when he’s excitedly scribbling on the chalkboard (because here at HC, we’re old school and have blackboards). However, this morning was getting badly jumbled up in my head, so perhaps I’ll head down to his office hours later.

Other than that, I’m not sure what else there is to say. Since it’s a Thursday, it’s a slow day for me, so I have a little breathing time…in which I shall probably do more work. Tonight, Kimball is hosting some sort of Apple Fair for dinner, so I’m really excited about getting a caramel apple. I had hot apple cider last night from Cool Beans (the campus coffee shop) and now I think I’m going through a minor apple craze.

Oh, and happy Mole Day everyone! It’s one of the best holidays in the year, so enjoy it!