Realization is better than Anticipation

Sorry for the delay. I have had a few opportunities to write on here, but to be honest, I'm not entirely motivated to write stuff. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but as far as I can tell, the number of people who read this are counted on one hand, and I talk to a few of those relatively consistently. Nontheless, I don't suppose that's a legitimate reason for not writing a bit more frequently. So, in conclusion, give me some fodder in the form of responses to my posts to motivate further entries.

Now then, stuff that's going on. There has been a big flap on campus about the CEO's pay increase of 47% from last year. I'm not well informed on the issue, I'm not familiar with the context, and it doesn't really interest me anyway, but it sure is causing quite a stir on campus. There will be meetings and such open to students and faculty in the coming days, with rumors going about of resignations and so forth. It all seems a bit ridiculous to me, since the CEO requested his pay be returned to the previous level (once the information became a hot topic of course). But anyway, you all in the Christian Science community may be hearing things.

Personally, I've been working pretty hard in school, writing papers, lots of reading, researching for a couple presentations I have, and being pretty busy socially too. I'm doing well so far academically, but there is still a ways to go before the end. It is currently 5th week in the quarter (10th being the last week in the quarter), so it's crunch time right now. I'm reading a biography about Mary Baker Eddy written by Sibyl Wilbur. Briefly, I don't find the book very good as a book. Yes, the information within the book is itself interesting, but it is presented with a style of writting that just doesn't work for anything but the time period it was written in (published in 1907). The book was basically commissioned to be a response to the biography written by Georgine Milmine, a book that casts MBE rather negatively. The church asked Wilbur to write this book, and it definitely carries a positive bias towards MBE. Alas, everything is biased it seems.

We watched most of An Inconvenient Truth in class yesterday. 'Twas my first time watching it, and it was pretty strong I think. Yes, it too carries a bias, and one that I agree with, and he does indeed have a lot of fantastic information supporting his point, always from credible sources. However, I have to admit there are a few points where additional referencing or context would have either made his point stronger OR presented something not supporting him that would still at least give Gore more credibility in that it would not show him to be as biased as he obviously is. Hooray for long-winded sentences! I also have to write a paper and give a presentation in that class about pineapples: ecological/economic/social context, and facts about it like how it's grown, where it's native, etc.

This past Sunday I played in my 2nd Intramural basketball game. So, I live in Lowrey, we're the only house on campus that has TWO basketball teams, thus I can accurately say we played ourselves on Sunday. Team 1 v. Team 2. I'm on team 1. Team 1 won. It was a lot of fun really, we just played randomly a lot, not really calling fouls too much, taking ridiculous shots a lot, and Team 1 played at a man disadvantage of 6 to 8. 14 guys on the court at once sure makes it interesting. Lots of fun though. I scored a bunch, but we weren't really keeping track.

Saturday night I went to "Jo Down." It's hosted by Jo McNabb house in a barn building down in Elsah, and it's just several hours of fun dancing (mostly line dancing), free food/drinks from an establishment in Alton, and free bandanas for everyone! Of course, I had to dress as a cowboy. I had a black hat, plaid shirt, jeans, and I wore the FREE bandana in the manner of a cowboy bandit (covering the face). It was a lot of fun, there are pictures of me, but I didn't take them so I don't have them yet.

Oh yes! Last...Tuesday I believe...I went on an all-day field trip to the St. Louis Zoo for my Wildlife Conservation class. A rather appropriate venue for such a topic. We did have some work to do while we were there, but we finished it early and just enjoyed seeing everything there. It was sad to see many of the animals, spending their lives in glass enclosures. Some of them were almost certainly not there mentally. It had snowed days before we went, and you could tell the tiger had walked probably hundreds of times since the snow in the same pattern, with some change in the pattern once in a while too. The zoo does work hard to keep the animals engaged, to be sure. One of the easiest ways for the zoo to do this is to make the act of getting food a very time consuming process. They also interact with the animals too, knowing zoo animals will NEVER themselves be realeased into the wild (thus it's not too much of a big deal if they lose their fear of humans). I did take pictures, but most turned out pretty bad. Here's a few of the better ones:

This past week

Wowee, quite a busy week I had. Sorry for growing the anxiety of waiting to a fever pitch.

So I went to church on Sunday as usual. The service was nice, as always. Then the fun began. I think it was the Bears who played that night against the Seattle Seahawks. There were over a dozen of us watching in the RC's living room, with favoritism split pretty much down the middle. It was very exciting, with the Bears pulling it out in OVERTIME...with a 50-yard field goal, the longest of the kicker's career. A very exciting way to determine the fate of men who get paid millions to play a game.

Later that evening I went to my first hymn sing. That was really fun. We go to the Chapel and just sing hymns by request for half an hour. If you sit upstairs, it's a great view of the organist in action, pulling levers, pushing pedals, and playing two sets of keys at once. So that was a neat day.

On Monday I had a geography quiz on all of South America. We do a different region every week until we have done all of Earth. So I had to know the names of countries, their capitols, 4 main rivers, a few lakes, geologic featurse (Andes Mountains, Drake Passage, Tierra del Fuego, etc), as well as population levels in each country and each country's ecologic footprint. It's some number that represents the physical impact per capita on the environment, taking into effect consumption levels, cars, home sizes, and lots of other things. To measure YOUR footprint, click here. Mine's 18.

I finished a book for class titled Sickles the Incredible. I had a paper, graded discussion, and test on it all on Thursday. So that was a nice afternoon once I finished all of that. We are now starting a book about Mary Baker Eddy written by Sibyl Wilbur. It was published just about 100 years ago.

Friday (last night) I had class, work, then I watched Finding Forrester, went cosmic bowling for free (thank you Principia), then watched the Matrix. Quite a night. I slept in today and I have homework to do, then work from 6-730 in the dish room. Then the grand finale: Lowrey House Initiation. I have no idea what will happen. I've only been given these simple directions:

"Bedtime is 10:36, and DON'T ANSWER YOUR PHONE!"

Pics of campus earlier today after last night's freezing rain

Oh yeeeaaah!

The last few days have been pretty crazy busy for me. I suppose that will be the norm, so updates may not be as frequent as I would like. Sorry. But anywho...

Well, on Sunday I went to my first church service in the Chapel. It was really neat. Lowrey generally sits as a group near the front. The readers are always students. The organ is quite magnificent, and authentic...no pics of that...yet. Otherwise, it was like a normal church service (though I suspect the average age is tilted slightly lower than usual). I had a boatload of homework every night since then, tonight being no exception. The classes are good, and THIS saturday is actually when I'm doing the Eagle Count somewhere about 25 minutes from campus.

I also went to CSO's Tuesday testimony (in lieu of a Wednesday service) which is from 10-11 AM in the Chapel. That was really fun too. Students and teachers alike participate in it, and a fella in my house runs the service.

All this week, whenever I find time, I have been walking around my house with my basketball and a Sharpie marker...perhaps you see what is coming, in part. All new students in the house have to find an "artifact" of theirs that carries some personal significane and go around the house and have every single person in the house sign their "house name" on it. I will eventually be told what my house name is, though apparently not until next week. It will be something ridiculous, as everyone else's.

Today was my first day of working at Principia. 3 days a week I work in the Pub, plus every other weekend. I also work Saturdays in the dish room and Sundays as the Grill Call. In total, my schedule is only 6 hours per week...I guess it'll add up...eventually. Salary = $6.50/hour. I have bunches of reading and writing tonight, and there is a house meeting later tonight. Bye byeeeee

Pics

A pic during sunset over looking the bluffs. Yes, in the lower right of the shot is a barge going by




The rest of these shots are all in the area, including the chapel.

My Bad

Sorry for a little delay betwixt posts. Everyone has been having issues with the internet, and I've been busy as well.

Today at dinner was really neat. It's the one time when professors and administration people serve the students their meals. It doesn't end there either. They put your food on the plate, they make your drinks for you, and then another teacher approaches you as you walk away from the drink table, takes your tray of consumables, and walks behind you to your seat. They pull out your seat, remove everything from your tray, get you drink refills, all while you listen to a live jazz band compiled of students. The piano player in the band lives 2 doors down from me, he's pretty good. The teachers also periodically walk by with a dessert tray too. It was pretty fun. Good food too: Salmon, cooked zucchini, a very good punch mix, carrot cake and berry tart for desert, and a friendly smile all around. Geroge Moffet was serving out the main course and I of course introduced myself as the son of my father. He and his wife knew of me immediately (she was demoted to serving the vegetables).

All of my classes sound pretty interesting and relatively demanding. I first had Global Environmental Issues on Wednesday. The teacher is a former Prin student who accepted the teaching job after spending some years living/working in Fairbanks, Alaska. There isn't much structure to the course yet, he's new to teaching the course and hasn't formulated a proper layout yet.

Yesterday I had Wildlife Conservation (WC) and American Biography (AB). WC sounds really neat. Three weeks from tomorrow the entire class will meet at 7:30 AM and spend the next 4 hours observing and counting all of the Eagles in a certain area near the campus. We'll be using telescopes/binoculars I'm sure, but it sounds pretty neat. Hopefully I'll be able to take some pics in the process. WC also has a full-day field trip some time in February to the St. Louis Zoo.

AB is a course that seems to be about learning how to read a biography: When was it written relative to the subject's lifetime, what relavent stuff is going on during the time it was written, what sorts of sources does the author use, what scope, style, bias, thesis does the author have, what's the background of the author. These elements are all included in discussions about the material in the text as well, and the books all sound pretty interesting. There are a total of 4 in the class: Sickles the Incredible, The Life of Mary Baker Eddy, Molly Spotted Elk, and A Bright Shining Lie. The time periods range from the Civil War through the Vietnam War.

It has been very fun so far walking around campus talking to people I don't know. Everyone is usually willing to talk to you, and everyone is friendly.

Last night was my first experience with house meetings in Lowrey. Most everyone in the house meets downstairs at 10:30 PM. There's a big wrestling mat in the middle of the room and chairs all around. The mat wasn't really used for THIS meeting, but apparently it usually is. There are some brief announcements, what's happening socially on campus, etc. then a couple guys usually have a story to tell, not necessarily with any theme or purpose other than it's funny. One fella talked about a particular experience during his study abroad in Japan in a public bath...it involved dancing. Being the first meeting of the quarter, the new guys had to be brough to the middle of the circle (me and 3 other guys). I was the only transfer new student, the others were only new to the house, not campus. We had to say our names and where we're from firstly:
"What's your name?"
"Wil-.."
"YYYYYYEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
"Where you from?"
"Chica-.."
"YYYYYYYYEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHAHHHHHHHHHHH"
Then we had to do the worm dance. That was about it, but it was a pretty fun atmosphere. One guy tried to fit himself into a mini-fridge...not quite. A soccer ball was being kicked all over the place. 'Twas fun.

That's all for now. We have classes tomorrow just for this one week because of the funky start time. Class starts at 8am, OH BOY! G'night

WGM IV

For Real

Alright, now then, a real post...now that I have time.

Presently it is about 8 in the morning on Wednesday, my first day of class. I have only one class on Mondays and Wednesdays, at 1040 for 2 hours. The class is titled Global Environmental Issues (2). My other two classes are Wildlife Conservation (2) and American Biography (3). I just signed up for them yesterday. They had us go through this whole training thing to know how to sign up for classes and look up certain things regarding classes. It's the same system they have at U of Illinois, so I breezed through it.

I also took my math placement test and did my french interview yesterday. I'm exempt from any foreign language, but I still might take a class or two, or even minor in it. I'm not sure when I'll hear about my math score, but I'm sure I don't need to worry.

I've met quite a few people in the few days I've been here. I can't remember half the names I've heard though. Several people from Africa (Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya..so far), and most from USA, but only one guy is from Illinois so far. My roommate is actually from Stockton, CA, a mere 20 minute drive from where I was living with Granny. Charlie is his name. He's on the swim team here, he's a Mass Communications major, and he takes reaaaallly good pictures with his fancy Digital SLR camera. He's got one that is a 30 second exposure and it captures 5 separate lighting strikes while overlooking the bluffs.

Every day, during the week at least, there is half an hour set aside for CS study, usually done with the reading of the lesson. No classes can be scheduled at this time, and all offices shut down.

Every house has an RC (Resident Counselor)...literally someone who lives in the dorm year round. Mine is JD. He has a wife and daughter and has been here for 11 years. He's a really nice fella, he used to live in the Boston area, so he's a Patriots/Red Sox fan (like me, in case you're wondering) and he's very helpful/friendly, as are all the RCs. They all pretty much have open door policy into their living space, including JD. Usually it's just to hang out and watch TV or a certain movie (the rooms don't have cable TV and reception is no good).

There are lots and lots of nice people, most everybody is really. The campus is really nice too, of course. I was stricken with absolute happiness a few times, completely immobilizing my left hand.

My car can be parked on campus for only FIVE DOLLARS per quarter. I like that.

Sorry for the random-spurt format. Everything is happening all at once for me at the moment, so I'm just writing what I can remember.

JD was saying that a few times a quarter, most of the guys in the house will strip down to boxers, cover themselves in shaving cream, and run around part of campus shouting "West West West!" From what I've gathered, Ferguson usually throws thing at them for redemption. Ah, college. S'long for now, shower/breakfast time.

WGM IV

Information

So my DIRECT line, to my room that is, is: (618)374-4440.

My mailing address is:

William Moller
Principia College #685
1 Maybeck Place
Elsah, IL 62028

I gotta go take a math placement test, be back shortly!

Everybody!

Hi. I'm presently sitting in the lower level of the Science Center on campus (the really long and short building). They're teaching us how to use our internet accounts as well as something else regarding our writing seminar stuf...That doesn't start for a few minutes still, so no problem. I can't go into too many details at the moment, except to say: This place is sweet.

I haven't met my roommate yet.
I do have a phone number, but I can't remember it at the moment.
I haven't been given a mailbox assignment yet.
I take a math placement test and a french interview today.
I also register for classes and buy books today.
My room is pretty much set up.
My resident counselor (RC) is a really cool guy. an RC basically is an adult, usually with a spouse and children, who lives in the house with you, except they live there year round. They are there for guidance, maintaining order (apparently a necessity in Lowrey), and helping out with pretty much anything. His name is J.D., he's been here for 11 years, he's a RED SOX (!!!!) fan, and very cool.

Lots more to say later, gotta do more training for the moment. Also, pictures forthcoming when I haev time and when I actually take some pictures. Ta

WGM IV