I'm back at Principia as of yesterday evening. I was in Iowa for one week then Chicago for the second week. Not a whole bunch happened, which is ok. Saw family and a couple friends, so it was nice. Classes begin anew tomorrow. All of them are for my major, and are organized together in what is called Bio Block. I'm excited about it.
The weather here is almost oppressive, yet it is still March. Humid too. I'm also in a new room in Lowrey and a new roommate. I'm currently waiting to be called for a phone interview, though the caller is an hour late in calling, and I have dinner to eat and a basketball game to watch downstairs...nervous feelings growing.
I'll be diving into more details later on, thanks for reading.
WGM IV
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Monday, March 5, 2007
Everything is Illuminated
Phooey to not posting for a month. And apologies to you all. I'm honestly not sure where to begin for what has happened in the last month, so here goes.
Every weekend for the last five or six months I've been playing Intramural basketball on campus. Each house has a team, though Lowrey has two because we can always generate more participation. It was a lot of fun, and it felt good to be exercising so hard. My team was mostly just six guys every week, but we won a good number of our games. Unfortunately, for me, we just had the playoffs yesterday. I was not able to participate because I was in Madison, Wisconsin for the Midwest Student Clean Energy Conference. It was worth missing for going to Wisconsin, but we UNexpectedly won the championship game in OVERTIME, and I didn't get to be there.
The Clean Energy Conference was pretty fun itself. I left on Friday to go with two other Prin students. Ironically, the school would not give us a car or van to take, so we had to rent one of their pick-up trucks. Oh well. The drive is about 6 hours each way with no delays, but there was heavy snow on Friday, so we were delayed about an hour. There were several very good keynote speakers. One woman from Ohio who lives on the border with West Virginia was very powerful, making many people cry. On the West Virginia side of the border where she lives, there are several coal-fired power plants that are causing all kinds of problems in her small town. They are fighting against them as well as mountain-top removal practices. Learn more here. I also participated in a workshop about coalition building for a campaign on one's campus or in the community and how to get groups to sign on to your campaign. Several smaller things too, but these were the highlights for me. Unfortunately, there was one other key event that going to Wisconsin forced me to miss.
He's a world-famous author and biographer. His voice is instantly recognizable, used for several PBS shows, including American Experience. He has won the Pulitzer twice. His name, of course, is David McCullough and he spoke at Principia on Friday night, March 2nd, and one William Moller was not in town to watch. Very disappointing. Someone said they video recorded the talk, so I'll be looking out for that. Still, would have been fun to see him talk and possibly meet him and get a book signed, which he supposedly did.
One additional thing about going to Wisconsin. It was my birthday yesterday, the day of our return trip which took about 7 hours. This is the second year in a row that my birthday was celebrated mostly in Madison, Wisconsin, of all places. On the drive back to school, we stopped at Cracker Barrel to celebrate. It was quite a bit of fun really, and they surprised me with a cake. One of the girls in the group is vegan, so it was an interesting meal to eat. Being 22 is fantastic and I'm glad to be part of its wonderful organization.
Classes have been going very well me all quarter. My American Biography class has been surprisingly interesting, and I'm doing very well in the class. I've gotten A's on all my papers, my graded discussions and quizzes have been surprisingly well too, and the teacher is really interesting and it's just a fun class. 6 students total in the class. My two environmental classes have been good too. I've gotten at least a perfect score on every quiz in my Global Environmental Issues class, and the teacher is pretty interesting still, though the majority of students are not interesting in being engaged in the class, with a few exceptions. I had to give a couple presentations in that class, one about pineapple fruit and the environmental, economic, and social contexts of the fruit, where it's grown, and onward. The other presentation was about hydro-electricity with similar contexts to talk about. Turns out I'm not a fan of hydro-power as a source of electricity.
There is still a lot of talk about Stuart Jenkins, George Moffett, and everything in between on campus, and it's really just getting ridiculous. There is a lot of negativity about all of it, and it's really a turn off for me and I would think reflects pretty poorly on the campus in general to the outside world. People are nominated for temporary fill-in positions, people go up-in-arms about the nomination, the nominee resigns, and repeat. No more shall be spoken on this subject.
I've had a new roommate for the last 4 weeks or so, can't remember how long exactly. He's from the Toronto area in Canada. He's pretty fun most of the time, and has a lot of good thoughts and ideas about life, christian science, and everything in between. He's a theatre major and has his capstone project performance tonight. Every major on campus does a capstone, usually your senior year, that is a culmination of your years in the major. Some majors require a 50-page paper, others, like theatre, have you write a 10-page paper then direct a one-act play that is about 30 minutes long.
I'm running low on things to write about. Next quarter, I'm in what's called "bio block" which means the three classes I'm taking are all designed to work together within my major, which I officially declared as Environmental Studies a couple weeks ago. The classes are Botany, Ecology, and Research and Writing Methods. At one point in the quarter, we go to Smokey Mountains National Park for a whole week of camping. Very exciting. We also go canoeing at some point in Shawnee National Forest, which is in southern Illinois.
School ends for spring break after this week, so I have finals this Friday and Saturday. Classes end tomorrow for me. I have to write two papers this week too. I'll be going to Iowa for my first week of break, then to the Chicago area, then back to school.
Well, that's all I got for now. No pictures to put up really, mostly because I forget to take pictures as often as I would like to...and I'm not a fan of my camera that much. Have a good month of March, though I do plan to be back on here well before the month ends. Thanks to all for your posts and hounding of me to post again. Love to you all.
WGM IV
Every weekend for the last five or six months I've been playing Intramural basketball on campus. Each house has a team, though Lowrey has two because we can always generate more participation. It was a lot of fun, and it felt good to be exercising so hard. My team was mostly just six guys every week, but we won a good number of our games. Unfortunately, for me, we just had the playoffs yesterday. I was not able to participate because I was in Madison, Wisconsin for the Midwest Student Clean Energy Conference. It was worth missing for going to Wisconsin, but we UNexpectedly won the championship game in OVERTIME, and I didn't get to be there.
The Clean Energy Conference was pretty fun itself. I left on Friday to go with two other Prin students. Ironically, the school would not give us a car or van to take, so we had to rent one of their pick-up trucks. Oh well. The drive is about 6 hours each way with no delays, but there was heavy snow on Friday, so we were delayed about an hour. There were several very good keynote speakers. One woman from Ohio who lives on the border with West Virginia was very powerful, making many people cry. On the West Virginia side of the border where she lives, there are several coal-fired power plants that are causing all kinds of problems in her small town. They are fighting against them as well as mountain-top removal practices. Learn more here. I also participated in a workshop about coalition building for a campaign on one's campus or in the community and how to get groups to sign on to your campaign. Several smaller things too, but these were the highlights for me. Unfortunately, there was one other key event that going to Wisconsin forced me to miss.
He's a world-famous author and biographer. His voice is instantly recognizable, used for several PBS shows, including American Experience. He has won the Pulitzer twice. His name, of course, is David McCullough and he spoke at Principia on Friday night, March 2nd, and one William Moller was not in town to watch. Very disappointing. Someone said they video recorded the talk, so I'll be looking out for that. Still, would have been fun to see him talk and possibly meet him and get a book signed, which he supposedly did.
One additional thing about going to Wisconsin. It was my birthday yesterday, the day of our return trip which took about 7 hours. This is the second year in a row that my birthday was celebrated mostly in Madison, Wisconsin, of all places. On the drive back to school, we stopped at Cracker Barrel to celebrate. It was quite a bit of fun really, and they surprised me with a cake. One of the girls in the group is vegan, so it was an interesting meal to eat. Being 22 is fantastic and I'm glad to be part of its wonderful organization.
Classes have been going very well me all quarter. My American Biography class has been surprisingly interesting, and I'm doing very well in the class. I've gotten A's on all my papers, my graded discussions and quizzes have been surprisingly well too, and the teacher is really interesting and it's just a fun class. 6 students total in the class. My two environmental classes have been good too. I've gotten at least a perfect score on every quiz in my Global Environmental Issues class, and the teacher is pretty interesting still, though the majority of students are not interesting in being engaged in the class, with a few exceptions. I had to give a couple presentations in that class, one about pineapple fruit and the environmental, economic, and social contexts of the fruit, where it's grown, and onward. The other presentation was about hydro-electricity with similar contexts to talk about. Turns out I'm not a fan of hydro-power as a source of electricity.
There is still a lot of talk about Stuart Jenkins, George Moffett, and everything in between on campus, and it's really just getting ridiculous. There is a lot of negativity about all of it, and it's really a turn off for me and I would think reflects pretty poorly on the campus in general to the outside world. People are nominated for temporary fill-in positions, people go up-in-arms about the nomination, the nominee resigns, and repeat. No more shall be spoken on this subject.
I've had a new roommate for the last 4 weeks or so, can't remember how long exactly. He's from the Toronto area in Canada. He's pretty fun most of the time, and has a lot of good thoughts and ideas about life, christian science, and everything in between. He's a theatre major and has his capstone project performance tonight. Every major on campus does a capstone, usually your senior year, that is a culmination of your years in the major. Some majors require a 50-page paper, others, like theatre, have you write a 10-page paper then direct a one-act play that is about 30 minutes long.
I'm running low on things to write about. Next quarter, I'm in what's called "bio block" which means the three classes I'm taking are all designed to work together within my major, which I officially declared as Environmental Studies a couple weeks ago. The classes are Botany, Ecology, and Research and Writing Methods. At one point in the quarter, we go to Smokey Mountains National Park for a whole week of camping. Very exciting. We also go canoeing at some point in Shawnee National Forest, which is in southern Illinois.
School ends for spring break after this week, so I have finals this Friday and Saturday. Classes end tomorrow for me. I have to write two papers this week too. I'll be going to Iowa for my first week of break, then to the Chicago area, then back to school.
Well, that's all I got for now. No pictures to put up really, mostly because I forget to take pictures as often as I would like to...and I'm not a fan of my camera that much. Have a good month of March, though I do plan to be back on here well before the month ends. Thanks to all for your posts and hounding of me to post again. Love to you all.
WGM IV
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