I feel like my life is so full.

Long time no see. Ever since I got back to campus I’ve been crazy busy. In the last two weeks I’ve adjusted to new classes, rushed (and gotten a bid to) a sorority, went ice skating for the first time in years, gone to two lectures on Afghanistan and Iraq, one panel on Guatamala’s civil war, attended Winter Bash, gone into Boston several times and finally cleaned my dorm.

Last semester I was always busy in a ‘I’m completely incapable of managing my time effectively’ kind of way. This semester I’m busy because I actually have a ton of things to do. It’s really cool though. I’ve been having a lot of pretty diverse experiences and meeting people which is what college is all about, so I think I’m doing okay.

Actually, I’m doing better than okay. I’m in love with college. I’m serious, this semester is only just started but it’s already been a lot of fun. I think it’s because that fish out of water feeling has dissipated a lot. I know my way around campus, I’ve finally figured out laundry and how to manage my bank account, plus I already have friends right off the bat this semester. I still get to meet new people, but during the first day of classes I actually had people to sit with. Basically, I’ve now got a semester’s worth of experience under my belt and I love it.

New classes are fun. History of Rock and Roll is really fascinating. I’m actually learning a lot. Learning history through a fine arts lense contextualizes it so much more than I was expecting. If you don’t believe me, consider the disconnect between Frank Sinatra’s lyrics and his musical style in the context of post WWII America. Our professor talked about how this disconnect in a way is a reflection of the disconnect between the happy little suburban family sheen and the threat of nuclear annihilation. All that stiff upper lip attitude. I’m now in love with Johnnie Ray and Desi Arnaz. Arabic is still completely owning me. It’s actually worse than last semester. So far, but it’s okay, I refuse to let this language defeat me. I’m going to pass this class if it kills me. Hopefully more than pass, but whatever. Luckily last semester my grades magically turned out pretty decent, so I’m trying to keep things in perspective. (This made me think of the title of this blog…just fyi.)

I did not expect to join a sorority at all before I got here. I actually only signed up for recruitment on the last possible day because my roommate kind of wanted someone to go through it with. Turns out I really enjoyed myself. But I have to state my little disclaimer here. Greek life here is nothing like it is in the movies, or at some big state school. It doesn’t dominate the social scene, and it’s not nearly as intense as it might seem. If it was I would never have stuck with it. Believe me. But so far it’s been a great way to meet more people, especially upperclassmen, which is kind of difficult depending on what classes you’re taking. Also, going through this whole process has also inspired me to finally catch up on Greek the television show. (Which will surprise if you give it a chance. So you should.)

Besides that I’ve been getting really excited about what the Institute for Global Leadership is planning for this semester. They’ve already had a lot of events and the EPIIC symposium is coming up, as well as this super intense sounding workshop on Afghanistan. ALLIES is involved in both of those things, and also has some really cool events of its own lined up this semester so I can’t wait for all this stuff to get off the ground.

Right now I feel like this semester is all full of potential and opportunity except maybe when it comes to Arabic, and in all my insane busyness I’m starting to worry if freshman year is moving too fast.

My thoughts on college apps

So…now that time is getting short and you guys are probably all stressing about finishing your apps, I’ve been asked to write about how the admissions process was for me.

I mentioned this before, but I love the whole concept of college admissions so I’m probably not the most normal source. But, in case you’re wondering, here’s my perspective on it:

I think in all the stress of applying to college people forget how amazing of a time it is in your life. Right before your applications go in, you’re in this wonderful limbo phase. You don’t have to deal with the overload of information and choices that comes in the beginning when you’re trying to figure out where to apply, but you still hold the cards. You have the chance to prove to the admissions officers why you deserve to be there, and there’s still all this opportunity. Not to mention that awesome hopeful feeling that you’ll get accepted to all the places you want to go, that your life is just about to get started, and that the world is at your fingertips. So embrace this time now. Because soon you’ll enter that long period of waiting where the ball’s all of a sudden in the university’s court and if you’re like me you might even end up missing the frantic nature of this first phase of the process.  That’s how I feel about it at least.

But like I said, my opinions on this aren’t exactly normal. Anyway, keep in mind that the decade is changing! In just a few hours! I’m so excited! I can’t wait to see what this next decade will bring. That’s really all I can think about right now, so I apologize if this post was not helpful at all.

(Sorry I didn’t get around to posting one of the application essays like all the cool bloggers. I was going to, but I have to take my time with those and my break has been kind of crazy so far and I decided posting some half-done rushed version would be too embarrassing.)

I’m on a journey.

Guess what? Google is offering free wi-fi in airports during the holidays!! It’s super exciting because I got to the airport three hours early and was going to have to figure out what to do with myself, but now I can catch up on television!!

I am soooo tired. I got two hours of sleep last night because I had to get up ridiculously early to catch my cab. It was really a strange feeling this morning to wake up before some of the kids in my hall had even gone to sleep. But I’m so excited!

Austin is supposed to be 65 degrees today!! That sounds so much more preferable to the teens and twenties I’ve been suffering through up here. Suffering’s not the right word. I actually kind of enjoy the cold. Maybe not the cold, but the new experience at least. Every time I go outside I feel so proud of myself for not just running back to the comfort of my dorm.

I’m here at my gate before they’ve even started boarding for the flight before mine. I feel like I’m going to look kind of awkward when I just keep sitting here while the rest of the people get up and move toward the gate. It’s okay though because I love airports. I mean, I’m legitimately obsessed with them. I think this is the result of one summer where I had the worst luck with flying. I ended up spending a total of about a billion hours waiting for delayed flights. Not to mention a very awkward possible flight risk scenario in which my father and I almost missed our connection and went to plead with the people to reopen the gate and they were not at all sympathetic to our plight until they realized that they screwed up and were somehow counted as already being on the plane…This story is better in person. The point is that I have had some pretty bad luck, so I think this love developed partly as a self-preservation thing. Better to embrace these kinds of situations than fight against them. Really, everyone’s stress levels would be so much lower if they stopped fighting the airport concept and started loving it.

But I also just like the idea of them. Everyone’s in the midst of a journey, you get to people watch as much as you want, and when you end up having your flight delayed 12 hours you sometimes get to bond with the pilot and other passengers. I’ve met some pretty rad people in my (not very extensive) travels.

I’m trying out new adjectives by the way. Do we think rad works? Maybe I’ll keep looking. This search was inspired by Shawn Stockham who’s one of the judges on NBC’s the Sing-Off. He says a lot of funny words. Like dope, can we please bring that back? Maybe it is back and I’m just out of the loop.Maybe it didn’t even go anywhere to begin with. I really have no idea.

Speaking of words, I like to use the word journey instead of travel. The word travel is so mundane, that just reinforces the fact that you aren’t going to have a great time. With a journey, anything can happen.

ARE YOU GUYS WATCHING THE SING-OFF? Because you should be. Tufts’ very own Beezlebubs are competing. They’re in the finals! Which airs LIVE on Monday the 21st. The Bubs are AWESOME. (As evidenced by all these capital letters I keep using…) Seriously. If you are at all interested in Glee, choir, singing, music in general, Ben Folds, Boyz II Men, the Pussycat Dolls, or anything related to Tufts you should really check it out. AND VOTE FOR THE BUBS! Support this university that I’m assuming you have at least some interest in. If you’re one of those people who are all about the quality even when it comes to voting on reality competitions, rest assured. The Bubs are rocking this competition. They are so much more entertaining than anyone else and consistently deliver both a good performance and great singing skills.

All their performances are on YouTube, or helpfully compiled here for your viewing pleasure.

The end of the semester

I’m taking a break from posting about my activities to write about the winding down of the semester. Just so you know, this post really has no direction to it, I just thought I should share a few random things in between studying.

I was really surprised to see that on the last day of class, half of my teachers brought food. My philosophy professor baked brownies for the class and my Arabic professor brought in Turkish Delights and Arabic baklava. It was a little like being back in middle school again when we’d have parties on the last day. Not really, because we still had a lot of work to do. (And by work I mean frantically try to figure out what my professors are expecting us to know and/or do in our finals, but whatever.)

I just think it’s cool how as a freshman I’m in a couple of these small classes with just 15 or so students where you actually get to do things like bring food and chill out occasionally in class. I know that doesn’t happen everywhere, but I’m glad it does here.

A couple weeks ago my roommate and I went down to the CVS and bought Christmas lights (and candy.) Now our dorm is all festive and fun. Which is good because we failed at decorating our walls this semester.  And, because it’s not Christmas time without certain episodes of holiday themed television on my screen, we watched the Christmas episode of Studio 60 and the Chrismukkah episode of the O.C. (season 1, by the way. But really is there any contest?) while decorating.

Oh! This isn’t really related to anything of note, but I saw Pirate Radio a little while ago. Actually it was on that day the weather decided to be crazy. I was going to see it with this other friend of mine from Texas, and at first we were all excited about the snow and enjoying ourselves on the walk to the atm machine. But then it became a blizzard or something. I don’t know. The wind picked up and it flipped my umbrella inside out and it was a whole big dilemma trying to get back to the theater. See, this was my first real experience with any snow that actually sticks around for longer than like half an hour. It was a momentous occasion.

Anyway, this movie, Pirate Radio, is so much fun! I would highly recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a funny movie to see with friends. I loved it a lot.

It has kicked off this massive 60s/70s Rock & Roll obsession with me. I started off with The Who, Queen, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones. (I just made a station for The Who on Pandora, that’s what came up the most often.) Now I’m developing what’s really turning out to be a pretty intense love for The Beatles. It’s kind of a problem, because when I get obsessed with things, I get really really obsessed. As in spending hours researching the history of this band and scouring the internet for every possible clip, interview, or picture of them. When I’m trying to study for finals, it kind of gets in the way.

On the other hand, I now have dozens of new songs to listen to while I study. It’s funny because the walls are kind of thin in my dorm, so you can sometimes hear the music playing in the room next to you. I feel weird playing all my old songs when everyone else is listening to pop all the time. Whatevs. I’m so happy that I’m finally liking this music. I’m a huge fan of the 60’s, just, y’know, as a decade. And I’ve tried so many times to actually get into the music and always failed. But now I like it! It makes me happy.

I feel like this post is kind of bland. I apologize if you noticed it too. Just wait until finals are done, hopefully then I’ll be much more entertaining. And also have much more time to update and reply to comments! Which I swear I will get to, eventually.

ALLIES

I realized the other day that there are a lot of activities and groups that I’m part of that I haven’t really explained adequately here. So I figured I’d just writing about the first semester of doing all these things so you guys know what I’m doing with all my time.

First thing I want to talk about is ALLIES. It’s the Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services. You can read about it here if you want more information, but basically it’s all about increasing education and fostering communication between civilian and military students and leaders. It was something I wanted to join since before I even got on campus. I’m really really passionate about the military. I actually seriously considered joining it when I was younger, and I decided that even though that probably wasn’t the best choice for me, it would be great if my career were to connect to the military in some way.

In October I had the opportunity to go to the ALLIES Intellectual Roundtable which was awesome! It was this conference over at the Naval Academy where we listened to speakers and participated in what turned out to be a pretty intense crisis simulation. Seriously, if everything that was happening in the scenario was happening in real life I’d swear it was the apocalypse. But it was really cool, and we stayed in Bancroft Hall with the midshipmen so that was definitely an experience. Especially since they were celebrating Halloween at the time, seeing all of the midshipmen all wrapped up in the holiday spirit was a lot of fun. I met students from all the different military academies, and the Virginia Military Institute, and I ran into a couple kids from my high school who went to the Naval Academy. I won’t bore you with the details (unless you want me to! In which case, feel free to leave a comment), but it was my first college level conference and probably one of the highlights of my semester.

Then in November I went with a couple other ALLIES students to this symposium on civil/military relations being held at BC. That was really interesting. The panelists brought up some really good points about religion in the military and other diversity issues that I’d never really considered before. Also, Rachel Maddow was moderating the third panel. We sat just about 10 feet from her for a significant portion of the day.

Other than that I’ve been mostly just going to weekly meetings where we usually read an article about civ/mil relations and discuss the points it raises. The other students in this club are ridiculously smart and knowledgeable and I learn a lot at pretty much every meeting. I also really love this group because I have several friends in it, so I can usually count on being able to catch up with them at the meetings when we’re too busy to see each other for other reasons during the week. A couple other Tufts bloggers, Eileen and Alexa, are also members so check out their blogs if you want a different perspective on it.

the weather and college admissions

Can we just take a moment to reflect on the absolute insanity that has been the weather in America these past few days? It’s snowed in Austin. Meanwhile, I wore short sleeves today. With no jacket. Yesterday it was 70 degrees! What’s up with that?

Everyone’s busy talking about how the weather makes them so happy. Am I the only one who’s more disturbed than excited? I planned for college basically like I was embarking on an expedition to the tundra. I was so concerned about the weather, only to have it be nicer here than in Texas! I have to mentally prepare for things, and sometimes it takes me a while to adjust when life doesn’t really turn out the way I envisioned. This is one of those times.

To switch gears a bit here,  I don’t know how many of you have been reading the Tufts Admissions Committee blog recently, I certainly have. But fun fact, I’ve actually been obsessed with the concept of college admissions since the 8th grade. It’s weird. I actually really really loved the whole college application process last year.

Anyway, for anyone worried about not being exceptional enough or unique enough or whatever, I just figured I’d mention that I’m pretty sure I’m one of those “brick” students Becky mentioned in the latest post. As far as I know I haven’t done anything particularly out of the ordinary. Unless you count my ridiculous obsession with television. Which I guess they did because I definitely wrote my optional essay about how much Firefly has changed my life. But I don’t think that has quite the same effect as being able to say you cured cancer on your application. Still, I remember feeling similar when I read the class of 2012 bio. I don’t even know if I’m from one of those geo states. I’ve met plenty of Texans here, so I can’t help but think that it’s not all that unique. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry so much about that.

Okay, so I’m finding it harder and harder to form logical thoughts as we get closer to the next new episode of Dollhouse. (It airs in 15 minutes. I’m so excited!) But I’ve been attending a lot of various events and having all these awesome experiences that I never end up writing about, so starting tomorrow, I’m going to go through the backlog of memories in my head and start writing up some specifics about how I’m spending my time here.

shopping spree.

Okay, the title of this post is a misnomer. I wouldn’t really call this a spree, but it’s the most shopping I’ve done since getting to school. I just picked up my Tufts hoodie from the bookstore. After buying another shirt, and two sweatshirts, I’ve finally feel as if I have enough Tufts merchandise to adequately represent my school when I go back home during the break. I’ve gotta compete with a bunch of my friends in Texas schools, where a multitude of game-day outfits are required for the big massive event that is football in Texas.

This also serves a second purpose of supplementing my still woefully inadequate winter wardrobe. (It’s actually not that bad. Now I only really need boots, scarves, and a hat of some sort. I just like to use the word woefully.)

I’m having a slight problem though, a lot of the clothing just says Tufts, and not Tufts University. Where I come from, and I know I’m not the only one who’s experienced this, Tufts is a relatively unknown school. I mean, some people have heard of it, and actually one of my high school teachers was a Tufts alum (they pop up more often than I’d think considering how small the school is), but certainly not everyone has. So now I’m going to be walking around with all these pieces of clothing that just say Tufts, possibly with a picture of Jumbo. Or Angry Jumbo as I’ve affectionately named the design on the t-shirt I’m wearing now. Which I wanted to show you guys a picture of because that version of Jumbo is definitely my fave and because my roomie and I have been disagreeing about whether it’s actually brown or gray. (I think she’s right. It’s brown.) But it isn’t currently showing up on the website, so that’s kind of unfortunate.

But I digress. The point was to say that it’s not necessarily going to be clear to all the random people reading my shirt as I walk down the street back home what Tufts is exactly. And after living in Austin and being confused about the Tyler’s shirt I saw people wearing all the time, I kind of feel for these people. Not enough to choose the designs that do say university over the ones featuring Angry Jumbo, but still.

Also, I just looked up the Tyler’s thing. Apparently it’s just a clothing store. What? I definitely thought it was like a gym, or a restaurant, or something…That was a let down. And, isn’t the term sporting boutique kind of an oxymoron? Maybe not, but it seems weird to me.

This whole post came out way less positive than I intended. I was going for an excited-about-my-new-clothing tone not such a complaining one. Sorry guys. Hopefully I’ll have something more substantial to say soon, but right now I’m going to take a nap.

Moulin Rouge!

If you’ve never seen Moulin Rouge before, stop whatever you’re doing, go rent it and watch it RIGHT now. On the biggest television you can find. Turn off the lights, don’t let anyone distract you. Immerse yourself in the spectacle that is this movie. It’s BEAUTIFUL.

Thank God I’ve seen it before, because watching it on this tiny tv in my dorm does not do it justice at all. But I’m still getting totally affected by it. I’m not even really drawing to pay attention but it’s totally drawing me in. It is so stunning! Visually. Musically. Emotionally.

Next time the Alamo Drafthouse does a Moulin Rouge Sing-Along, I am so there. I don’t care where in the world I am, I’m jumping on a plane and making it to that screening.

Guess what guys? I finished my essay! Sort of. I need to do a lot more editing. But I got it written down at least. Now I’ve gotta study Arabic, but first I think a television break is in order.

Procrastination time.

This blog is turning into an awesome procrastinating tool. I have an 8 page paper to write on energy use this weekend for my Peace and Justice Studies class, but I can’t force myself to keep working on it.  The main problem is that it’s only early Saturday afternoon and the weather is soo nice outside, and I’m really feeling like it’s already Thanksgiving Break.

It doesn’t help that I know I’ll get it done eventually, so I can’t make myself focus on it now, but the longer I wait the smaller this ambiguous ‘eventually’ window gets. I don’t know why I’m even explaining this, as far as I can tell this is a universal problem faced by all of humanity, Except those rare go-getters and super organized people. Sometimes I can fake my way into that elusive category, but then my brain reminds me that I like to read magazines, and watch television, and blog. And I’m back in my current predicament.

Anyway, last night, me and some friends were feeling in the mood for a good romantic comedy. We went to the library and rented When Harry Met Sally. Renting dvd’s from libraries is one of life’s best kept secrets. I mean, I don’t find it that much of a secret, but I tell people about it sometimes and they’re all surprised. Anyway, back home I occasionally rented dvds from the public library. It’s the best way to catch up on huge tv series. Renting single dvd’s from blockbuster online takes forever when you’re trying to race through 7 seasons of something as fast as possible. (Or in the case of Alias, 4 seasons in 3 days. That’s currently my television marathon record. In case any of y’all were wondering.)

I’m getting off track, the point of this post was to tell you all that the Tisch, the library here at Tufts, also has movies available for rent. They have a pretty awesome collection of old and new releases. (Although, they don’t have Fast and Furious. Someone should get on that.) The student working there was really nice and my friend and I ended up talking to her for several minutes and gushing about our favorites. Actually, she and my friend discussed Fred Astaire movies and I stood there not having a clue what was happening. (I consider myself a huge movie buff, but I have very little interest in much before the 80s.) Still, it was fun. I definitely need to activate my library card because I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting addicted to this ability to satisfy my random movie moods pretty fast.