Let it Snow!

The weather outside is frightful but my dorm room is so delightful, and since there's to class to go to, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

That's right kids, yesterday was the 3rd time in history classes at Transy had ever been canceled and today was the fourth! Being from "the north" (according to my friends at lunch today since Indy's north of the Mason-Dixon Line) I'm not to terrible impressed with the snow, but the ice is crazy! The trees in the Rosenthal Complex are so heavy with snow that the pathway is blocked and most of the highest branches are touching the ground. Serveral of the big trees around campus have lost big limbs and last night it seemed the whole of the Transylvania Campus had been turned into a ice-rink, that is with the excpetion of Fourth St. which becomes a river with any kind of precipitation. It's very pretty to look at but I don't envy the members of the physical plant trying to keep campus running. The electricty's out in the boys' dorms - Clay and Davis, and the new fancy Thompson Hall and from what I hear there's a large crowd gathering in Forrer's Back Lobby on their laptops staying warm in the heat.

Also, I've started my work study working the William T. Young Campus Center it's nothing too exciting but it's a job and it pays and I need the money for my trip in May so, work I shall. This week is also "Cabaret" a review show the Choir puts on and I've started rehearsal for Kimberly Akimbo. Since the campus has been shut down today and yesterday it's not quite as crazy busy as I was fearing it may, but Monday night was. I had rehearsal for Cabaret from 7-9, auditions for "School House Rock Live" from 8-10, Kimberly Akimbo rehearsal from 8:30-10 and a campus center scheduling meeting from 9-9:30. Yeah, I didn't get to stay at anything for as much time as I was supposed to but, sometimes that's how I gotta roll. C'est le vie. :)

Until next time!

Mmm, give me some spring please...

So, I'm not all that happy with my body at the moment. Starting Saturday afternoon I started having these really sharp pains in my lower abdomen, and when I say really sharp I mean: "OW OW OW OW OWEEEEEEEE, KILL ME NOW!" pain. It continued like this for a couple of hours then it got better, then late that night the pains came back, then again the next morning and continued on and on throughout the morning and into the afternoon, so my boyfriend and I try to go to a urgent care, but they were CLOSED! Needless to say, sitting in my boyfriend's tiny car in the cold, I wasn't very happy. So we decided, after some parental counseling, to go to the hospital. After we got there, the doctors did a bunch of tests and we were there for 5 hours to find that they weren't sure what was wrong and sent me home with some nausea meds. :( I continued to be sick until Wednesday, I finally got my ability to hold down food and today I made it out of bed for some normal activities. So it's better, but the moral of this in my here admissions blog is that my Transy friends were there for me. Whether they were texting me to see what I was doing and found out I was sitting in the hospital or stopping by once they heard that I was under the weather, or offering soup or advice, my Transy friends were there for me.

Proof! Legit Hospital Bracelet.
(Blurred so yall can't steal mah identities)

Also, as I was sitting in class this afternoon, a little loopy from my nausea medicine I gazed out the window and scratched at my seasonally dry skin and dreamt of my warm spring and early fall days, my favorite days at Transy. On warm, sun-drenched days students stream out of their dorms or the library to soak in the rays of light to help them in their photosynthesis and get some energy in a healthier way than an energy drink from the eighty or a cup of (illegal) coffee. On these days you can find students sprawled on any of the lawns on the academic side of campus under the shade giving trees, but my favorite spot on these days is Back Circle, the circle behind Forrer formed by the drive past Thomson, Davis and Clay Halls. Back circle is a refuge for the over studied, for the volleyball lover, for the people watchers, for the sun-bather, the barbecue-ing fraternity or the cornhole-ing student group.

I could, and have, spent the majority of days laying on a blanket, doing (or at least pretending to) do my homework. I've spent warm nights on the benches laughing with my friends, and I made the majority of my friendships in our dear back circle. Last year, shortly after returning from Winter Break, it was unusually warm and pretty rainy and a pick up game of mud football broke out, that game of mud football is among one of my most fond memories of Transy. Unless you were unaware, it''s not all about the things you learn in lectures or labs, but the things you experience in the time you spend at college, that makes the trip worth while. I'd like to say, so far, my trip has taken many unexpected, yet enjoyed detours; I wouldn't have it any other way.

Post-Mud Football in Forrer
With my Girls, Veronica and Meg.

Backstreet's Back Alright!

Hello Blogging World! Long time no see!

I know that I didn't give you all a wrap up of last semester, but everything ended up pretty well; we'll just say, no C's for me! Break was nice but it's hard to be far away from all of my friends here. I spent the first week at home by myself most days because my sisters were still at school and my parents were working. The second week was the week of Christmas so I got to spend more time with my sisters at least, my parents still had to work a lot of the week. Christmas itself was nice and relaxing, it's always nice to see people open the gifts you got them, there wasn't anything big for any of us but we all got Guitar Hero World Tour to share, but being together as a family is always the best part. The next week my boyfriend, Townsend, came up to Indianapolis to spend New Years with me; it was nice to have a little bit of Transy in Indy with me.

My Family on Christmas Eve

Over break, my parents and I decided that I would leave the car I was using, a Volkswagen Beetle, at home so my mom could use it to drive to and from work because it's a lot more fuel efficient than her mini-van. I figured that I didn't really need a car when all of my friends, and boyfriend, have them so I don't idly drive around wasting gas and I usually have a ride everywhere I need to go.

But we're back now, and we've been back for two weeks so it's been enough time for me to get back into the swing of classes. I'm really enjoying most of my classes, even Psychology which I'm taking for a GE credit, and my Education class which is an interesting insight into the whole education process. Spanish conversation is easy but a really good review of vocabulary and so forth and Computer Organization is different from any of the other CS classes I've taken so far.

Then on Wednesday I decided to audition for the Theatre Guild's student directed production of "Kimberly Akimbo" and I somehow landed the title role of Kimberly, a 16 year-old girl from a dysfunctional family who ages 4.5 faster than the normal person. So I'm really a 60 year old 16 year old. Kind of weird, and really scary to think about but exciting at the same time.

So, this semester is thumbs up so far, except the past few days its been FREEZING! Absolutely freezing cold, we checked the temperature Thursday morning and it was at ZERO! Thankfully campus is small enough that even the farthest classes really aren't too far and we don't have to spend 20 mins walking around outside trying to get to a class.

That's all I have for now, but I'll talk to you all later. <3

Rosenthal

So I'm going to make this post a quickie.

This weekend was nice, I went to bed at like 10:30 on Friday and then my Big, my roommate and I went to the mall on Saturday. Saturday we got a big ole group of people together for a pretty kick ass game of Apples to Apples in our room. There was probably 10ish people in the room and it wasn't cramped at all, because I live in the Rosenthal Apartments.

The Rosenthal Apartments are really dorms, they're a big room that you share with another person but you also have your own bathroom and a little kitchenette with a sink, cabinets, and a FULL SIZED Fridge. It's amazing. We have our sleeping area in the room and our living area in the back with a pull out couch for visitors and plenty of room for our desks and drawers and everything. But my favorite part of my room is my bed. This summer I decided I wanted a personalized dorm bed and with the help from my dad we made a canopy that sits on my bed like a top bunk would. I added curtains and voila my own little get-a-way, it's pretty wonderful. It's nice for naps because all you have to do is to draw the curtains and you cave a warm, dark little resting area, this feature also doubles for blocking out those pesky morning rays when you want to sleep in a little bit. :)

The Living Area:












The Kitchenette:












My Bed:












Anyway, on Saturday we had a real big two turkey Thanksgiving meal with a bunch of my friends, it was pretty delicous and really fun to make our own big meal for the first time.

I've got to run, as the semester winds down the professors wind up and make sure we don't get bored before finals. :)

Registration

I’m in a much better mood this week. I don’t have any CS projects due this week; that always helps. I’m getting excited about registration, and taking some interesting classes, my mom suggested that for my social science credit that I take Psychology, which was her minor in school, and I hope that’s interesting. And since I’m not sure about what I want to do with my life I figured I’d take an education course in case I head down the teacher road, which interestingly enough, many of my teachers in high school still insist that I’m going to be a teacher. I’m also planning on taking Spanish Conversation, which I’m really excited about because, although my Spanish writing may suck sometimes, I can talk up a storm. That’s what I get for speaking only Spanish in Spain the summer before my senior year right? But that’s a different story. Then I’m taking a required CS class with a professor I haven’t had yet so that’ll be a new experience.

I think I’ll take this opportunity to explain some of the GE (General Education) credits that you have to take at Transy, as a First-Year your first run-in with GE’s are University 1111 and FLA (Foundations of Liberal Arts) University 1111 is a pass/fail class that meets informally twice a week your first semester at Transy. FLA is a reading/writing course that helps to acclimate you to the Liberal Arts education, basically this is the first class where you find out that every subject at Transy is going to involve some writing intensive classes, and classes where you’ll have to give presentations and classes where you’ll have to do research projects with annotated bibliographies and processed writings. Personally, I loves FLA I and FLA II and got a lot out of the courses; you get some good pointers from professors from all subject areas, because not only English professors teach FLA, you could have a professor with their doctorate in Math teaching this class.

Anyway, you also have to take classes like Lifetime Fitness (think PE), and you have to take a Social Science class (Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology), a Natural Science (Chemistry, Biology), a math class; you have to take a series of foreign language classes, and a couple of other harder to explain required groups of classes. Regardless, through doing this, Transy really does create well rounded students, you may hate every second of your Chem I class, like I did, but when somebody is taking about it or it pops up on Jeopardy, you know what’s going on.

Anywho, I register for classes on Wednesday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday I’m going to *try* to get into General Psychology, Spanish Conversation, Observing the Learner (intro to ed class), and choir, and then on Tuesday/Thursday I’m going to take Computer Organization. I know, this schedule sounds amazingly exciting, but calm down folks, it’s just a schedule. We also sign up for our May Term classes tomorrow.

May term is a time of happiness, where you have 1 class for about a month (the majority of May) and a lot of the time teachers take trips to do different things. Some trips I know of this year include: biking through Spain and France, going to Ireland, and of course the choir is taking a tour of Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia!(^ Ljubljana, the Capitol of Slovenia) I know I’ve talked briefly about this trip before, but let me tell you some more bout it. For ten days, members of the choir and the orchestra, will tour around these beautiful countries, our stays will include a two day stay in Venice with walking tours and all. The price isn’t cheap, but that’s what summer jobs and so forth are for, right?

Stress

So I’m feeling pretty crummy and very tired, I have a test tomorrow and a project due today. My birthday was yesterday but was overshadowed by a day spent mostly in the airport.
Thursday I woke up at 4:45 AM so that I could catch a plane to Oklahoma for a scholarship conference. The timing really couldn’t have been worse. This is the busiest time in my CS classes, I just have program after program due and I also missed a test on Friday. Boo. Then yesterday I left my laptop charger an airport where we had a layover. So it’s off to the lab computer I must go to try to finish the project that I had worked on and now lies on my (dead) computer. So I’ve been working on that all day and still haven’t finished. I just can’t wrap my head around what’s going wrong with it, so I’m taking a break.

We pick classes sometime very soon and I don’t really know what I’m going to take. To tell you the truth I’m really just looking forward to winter break and the extended amounts of sleep I will get. On top of being sleepy, my allergies are going a little haywire and I’ve been getting these ridiculous headaches behind my eyes, it’s def very far from enjoyable. I imagine that all of these symptoms are stemming from stress and I need to slow down, but it’s pretty much impossible.

I better get back to work… but a word of warning before I go: at any college you decide to attend, stay on top of things, it’s the best way to avoid the stress.
Hasta Luego!

Raf Week

So, Halloween time at Transy is basically amazing. Because of our lack of football team, we don’t have a homecoming per say, but we do have Raf Week.

Ok, so way long ago there was this guy, Rafinesque, who was a biology professor at Transy and was way into finding all these new species of plants and so forth like so into it that he would not show up to teach his classes for weeks at a time and when the President of the time decided to tell Raf what was up, Raf got all upset and left the school. As legend goes, when he left, he placed a curse on the school; shortly after that the president died of the yellow fever and the main building burned down… and so bad thing continued to happen until the administration decided to try to right the wrongs and had Raf’s remains moved into Old Morrison. But, rumor is that every seven years bad things happen at Transy, and some people believe while others don’t that the remains that were brought here weren’t actually even Raf’s and some say that bad things will always happen at Transy and there’s nothing we can do to appease Raf’s spirit. But we do get a sweet week a stuff happening on campus to try!

There’s a week long celebration of Creepy Raf type things from ghosts tours of campus to a bonfire and a haunted house, and a drawing for students to spend the night in Raf's tomb, all leading up to Halloween, and most of the time, Parent’s Weekend.

On top of everything going on at Transy, this year I decided to go out into the community for some Halloween fun and joined the community reenactment of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The jist of it is that a bunch of people (that’s us) dress up like zombies and come to life to dance down the street to the Tune of Thriller, led by our very own Michael Jackson impersonator. I know people love to watch it, but I can’t imagine it’s even close to being in it. Regardless it’s a ton of fun and a bunch of Transy people always turn out to watch it and then maybe to go to the Kentucky Theater for a little Rocky Horror Picture show at midnight. Regardless, the time leading up to Halloween and Halloween itself is always an amazing experience at Transy and in Lexington in general.

Here's my roommate and my grand-big and I in our zombie garb:

Parent's weekend was also this weekend and my parents came down for a visit. It was real nice to spend the day with them, we had lunch in the Caf, and then we went to a desert Open house type thing in the Chapter room, then we went shopping at Hamburg and they got me some birthday presents. After shopping we went for a drive in the country and I took them to my boyfriend's house, which is way out in the woods. My mom loved it because the trees were really pretty.

Here's me and my momma:

But I think that the trees all over are really beautiful, especially on campus. We came back to campus and my dad and my boyfriend took naps while my mom hemmed my choir dress and I took a shower and got ready for the concert. After that we walked downtown and had dinner at Sawyer's, which was delicous as usual. Then we went to the concerrt which was good and everything, and then my parents peaced out. And I went to bed. :)

Here are some of our pretty trees on campus:

Today I went to the play, which was The Crucible and it was very good. I may be a little biased because one of the leads was my new, wonderful big. Anyway, it was a fun, interesting weekend. And I'll talk to yall lata!

Peace!