SJC Student Blogs

This past week I have been going-going-going-going. I have relaxed a little bit, but I have been trying to be productive! So there has been some of both relaxation and productivity, but perhaps not enough of either.
As things are, I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving! That break has officially started for me because I'm done with classes for the day, and I'll be back home in just a few hours. (:
I am going to have to continue the relaxation vs. productivity theme - I must spend some break time writing papers! Well, I could probably get by without doing it, but I'd much rather spread the work out over a couple weeks than have one week that would be really overwhelming.
I am really glad to be going home. I love it here, but I am excited for the break. It is really awesome that we get a whole week off instead of just a couple days. This is soooo nice.

Rock climbing down in Indy was really cool, 10 of us super adventurers went down to Climb Time Indy and had a relaxing but tiring morning/afternoon trip.



This is a shot of part of the place, a small segment of what we had available to climb.


One of my peers was a really talented climber - I couldn't even make it up to the second row on this and he made it to the top!


Me! I made it to the top of this wall. I'm really not very good at climbing, I can't do the difficult walls but the easy ones are fun. So that's what I stick to, because that's what I can handle. I can't always make it to the top even on the easy walls because sometimes when they're sloping backwards I just get too tired!


One of my friends going up the same wall much faster than I did!

Puma Football! Football really isn't my thing, but going to the games can be pretty fun, even though I don't understand what is going on most of the time!



Band! Dance team! These guys/girls do a really good job - they have a lot of fun and the performance scholarships don't hurt either.

The coolest game to watch the band and dance team was definitely the Halloween game! The seniors voted and they got to wear Halloween costumes for the game and while they were performing!

This morning/afternoon I went indoor rock climbing with Super Adventure Club! I don't know whether other schools have a Super Adventure Club or not. It facilitates adventures! Such as indoor rock climbing - 10 of us went and everybody had a good time. I'll have pictures of that up later.


This is the radio station in which many a blog is written. It is definitely cool how much experience students get working with the radio station if that's something they want to do. People who want radio time or radio shows spend several hours a week on the air. That's not where my skills lie, but I like to go to the radio station when my friends are on the air.


Midnight Madness! The basketball season has begun, and this was a picture of the preview for it. I'm pretty excited, the girls team have won their first games! The guys team has a lot of good players still here from last year and I don't know what their win/loss record is right now, but I do know they've played a couple of really tough exhibition games.

On Sunday my church back home voted on a new minister - he's in! I'm really excited because it seems like he will do a very good job. We have gone 10 months without a full time pastor, so this is really nice. I'm not home much to reap the benefits, but I am still really glad. The sermons are one of the biggest differences between the Catholic church and my church. Here the homilies are about five minutes, I'm used to something closer to 15 or 20. Our newly selected preacher delivered a very good one as part of the selection process, so I'm really excited about that!

Now I'm back at the Joe, chilling in the radio station. Fun times as always. (:

The football team has won conference, so that's really exciting! I'm not a football player, but it is still really cool for the team. I'm also really excited about Puma Basketball! The girls have already had their first game and I think the guys' first game is today? Maybe not. Either way, the season is starting so it'll be really fun to go to those games. (:

My registration for classes is tomorrow, so hopefully everything goes well with that.

I am at home right now! It is really nice, but I haven't been spending as much time on homework as I probably should. This is the first full weekend I have been home all school year, so I have been soaking it up! My sister, who is a senior in high school this year, is in the pit for our high school's production of Godspell, so I came home in part to see her. It was a really, really great show; I'm so glad I got to see it! I have seen bad productions of Godspell before, and thankfully this was not one of them! There is a huge amount of voice and acting talent at my high school, so the productions really are top-notch. I went to a high school of around 4,000 people, so there is a very large talent pool! I was great to be involved with theatre there and to continue to put my talents to good use once I got to St. Joe - I haven't been on the stage at St. Joe and I only was once in high school, but I have had a lot of fun helping with costumes at both schools!
This morning/afternoon my local church had a fundraiser/charity day called the "Alternative Christmas Fair." It is fun. It has lots of representatives from worthy organizations to donate to, homemade crafts from people that attend the church, and fair trade goods for sale. (Fair trade is different than free trade! This is an oft-ignored distinction!) I bought myself a fair trade scarf made in Nepal and a tote bag made by someone who goes to my church. I'm rather excited about those purchases. (: Probably the best part of the day is the food. There were probably about 10 or 12 different kinds of soup to choose from! Every year the soup is great - this year I had half-full bowls of four different kinds, and turned around and had more for dinner and baked goods on top of that. It was nice to see people from church and my grandparents also came in from out of town for the occasion, so it was really nice to see everyone.
Tomorrow is church, and I'm actually really excited about it! At St. Joe I have gone to Catholic Mass a few times, and it has been fun to experience and learn about by going and by talking to my Catholic friends. I am very glad for that opportunity. Even still, I really like my home congregation and my home church is very different. Every church has something to offer, but there's no place like home.

This was the Halloween group that happened to be down at Cup of Joe at the time the picture was taken. The party lasted for four hours, so a lot of people came and went during that time. There was also a dorm sponsored party in Merlini, so we went to that also. It was good times, good times.




My costume was Iris, the Greek rainbow messenger goddess. I won one of the Cup of Joe costume contests, so that was pretty cool. Yay for tie dye bedsheets! Hahahaha!

Now, back to the paper about the difference between urban and rural crime for my criminal justice class. That topic might not seem particularly intriguing to most people, but I am actually really excited about it and am really glad that I got to choose that as my topic!

This week has had some excitement to it, but for the most part it has been a good week to get things done. I have been somewhat stressed and tired, but I am crossing things off of my to-do list.

I got all of the parts of my application for a summer internship to the State Department turned in! Hopefully that works out; time will tell.

Monday night we threw an 80's party down at Cup of Joe. It had a pretty small turnout and was pretty low key, but it was still fun. I dressed up in an 80's outfit and won a prize for my decades-late fashion!

A couple of nights ago I joined in on a game of Phase 10 while my competitors were both already on Phase 6. By the end of the game, one of them had made it to Phase 10, the other was still at Phase 6, and I had caught up and was also at Phase 6! This might seem too noteworthy, but my competitive nature is very proud of that accomplishment!

Yesterday afternoon a costume shop adventure was had. I'm second-in-line as far as student responsibility for the costumes here. The massive number of costumes in storage are for the plays and musicals here, but they are put to good use in other ways. Generally, as long as something is returned and isn't currently needed for something, it may be borrowed. There is all kinds of interesting stuff up there, so it is really more fun to explore than anything.

Last night there was a pit fire for ceramics and a cooking fire for brats and s'mores courtesy of Art Club. Fun fun fun; yum yum yum!

I've been working my regular shifts at the library, and this was a great week for that! All of the student workers got goody bags with fun stuff, candy, and some home-made sweets! This week the occasion was Halloween, but the same thing happens for several holidays. It is a pretty sweet gig.

Here is a quote for the week taken from an anonymous online blogger:
"There isn’t much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren’t really living without it."

Nixon shaking Elvis's hand! Hahaha, awesome!



This is the Nixon museum and library, it was interesting inside and impressive and pretty on the outside.



This is me doing the "V" Nixon thing on the helicopter that was the real deal! Inside was scary, though - it supposedly had room for 17 people, but I was getting a little claustrophobic with about five.



This is the group of students that went - we were on a ferry going to Balboa Island... where everything was closed. It was a fun adventure. We're on a boat!



Hollywood!



Hollywood landscape. The view from the observatory we were at really reinforced how much L.A. is just a huge mass of urban sprawl.



Hollywood stars! I took a LOT of pictures of different ones, Diddy was chosen at random.



This is Marilyn Monroe's grave. The entire cemetery was really cool, there were many interesting graves there, Marilyn's just happens to be the most famous.



Annnd... the ocean. It was beautiful.

But even with all that excitement and interesting scenery, I'm glad to be back in Indiana. (:

The California trip was a really great opportunity. So great an opportunity that I took exactly 397 pictures. I was there for less than three days, and I took almost four hundred pictures. So, I had all kinds of excitement but am not providing photographic evidence to anyone until I have done a lot of sorting! Day one was the Nixon museum, that was really very interesting because the museum was very biased and selective about the information included. Day two was the observatory and Hollywood. Day three was a tour at FotoKem. All three days entailed a LOT of traveling. We got there and back by plane and we spent several hours a day driving around LA. We got to see many interesting things from the van we rented, so driving wasn't purely from point A to point B. We would go a certain route to drive past a film studio, or stop at a famous cemetery, and we would get out along the way if there was a good place for our group to stop at. The professors were very generous and treated us all to Gladstones. FotoKem also treated us, so that was a huge surprise. It was really fun to get to know the other people on the trip with me. In addition to the two professors there were two Political Science students and four Mass Communications students. I was one of the two PoliSci students. It was fun, because some of the people I went with I kind of knew and some of them I had never met before, so it was definitely a 'get to know you' experience the whole time. I'm really glad I got to go and that I got to see LA. I am glad to have been, but I have no intention of going back anytime soon!

Tonight was the play! It was called "Crimes of the Heart" and it was really very good! It was both sad and happy, depressing and hilarious. It was extremely well cast and technically it was good, so it all came together to form an excellent production! I was minimally involved with costuming, so I had no responsibilities while the play was taking place and it was nice to sit back and enjoy the show. It ran yesterday, today, and is going to run tomorrow, but because I have a lot I need to do I don't think I am going to go back and see it a second time.

I have a lot going on with school, activities, and the elusive hunt for an ideal internship. I really want to have a rewarding internship experience this summer, so I'm doing everything I can to find one. I am using the student services and career center here at school, looking for things online, getting good leads from professors, and getting help from my family. I would really like to do something competitive and at a national or international level, so I'm going to keep looking and working on applications until I've heard back that I've definitely gotten something. Meanwhile, there is homework that needs to be attended to.

I realize now I've jumped into things instead of doing a proper introduction. I don't really know what to say to introduce myself. I am from Indianapolis, and even though I'm completely comfortable at St. Joe I am really glad to be home for a couple of days! I spent the summer in Madison, Wisconsin so I've spent very little time in my home city recently! Wisconsin was beautiful and amazing, so when I first got back to St. Joe I missed it too! I had a crazy and amazing experience over the summer, and I could monologue about that for hours. Just ask. Other essential information: I am a political science major, with minors in English and Criminal Justice. I took a lot of AP tests while I was in high school, so because of the credits I got from that I'm able to be on a three-year track to graduation from St. Joe's. Everyone is making this easy for me to do. Professor Peter Watkins, who is also my academic adviser, deserves a large share of thanks.

I am back in Indy for two nights... then I'll be at St. Joe for an evening, and then I'm going to California! Thank you Political Science department, Peter Watkins again, for coming up with this trip! I'm so pumped!

My other excitement... well, in the last few days I did a lot of studying for midterms, some chilling down at CoJ, and I really enjoyed going to Midnight Madness. Midnight Madness was a basketball event for both the girls and guys teams. There were free-throw contests for us spectators, and it was really cool to see my friends who play on the court for the first time this year. I am by no means an athlete, but I do enjoy going to a good basketball game on occasion. I'm pretty excited for basketball this year.



This is a picture we took at the end of last year. There are a couple of people that couldn't be there, but it is most of my expanded primary friend group. There are 20 of us, and we are almost all entirely awesome! As far as I'm concerned we're the best. (: Not everyone was able to make it back this year, but people are still keeping in touch.



Here are some people a little less afraid of heights than me! I'm rather small of stature, so to get up on that wall I need a hand up. Once I get up there it is too high up on the far side, I get scared, and I have to get back down! Good thing a few of my friends are a little braver than I. (:



Assorted scenes from CoJ (Cup of Joe - FREE student-run coffee house/hangout spot!) It is my favorite place on campus to go and relax in the evening. The index cards taped to the cabinet are the remnants of our 'Guess Who?' event; once upon a time I was accidentally elbowed in the eye when the coolest thing ever happened - my skin/eyelashes were copied over onto my glasses when they hit my face; some of my friends are chilling with a Nerf gun complete with the psychedelic decor of CoJ in the background.

I have a mind to round-out my biography, but the more I think about it the more I think of trivial little things as being the best indicators of my actual personality. I intend to go to law school for international law, but I also am really interested in Persian studies and want to work on that language, so I'm not entirely sure what the next chapter in my life is going to be. I like bargain hunting, glow in the dark decorations, the smell of wild chamomile, my family, C-SPAN, facebook, reading books, Time Magazine, Goodwill, the Church of the Brethren, the Bible, meeting interesting people, taking every opportunity to travel, debating things like ethics and morality, laughing at bad puns, and being around people that make me smile. That sounds like a good place to start. (:

I am taking a break from studying for midterms...
I had a really intense midterm today for my Philosophy of Law class. I have one midterm tomorrow and two other major tests as well, so I definitely need to study more for all of those. So that's life.

Even with all of that going on --- I love my friends! They are amazing. Seriously, they are the light of my world. I have been so fortunate to have made the friends here that I have. We talk about it sometimes, when and how we got to know each other. Example: I knew Mary from our freshmen seminar group, at the activities fair in the first few weeks of school she was sitting by Monica. I joined them sitting out in the grass on the IM field, and the rest is history! That was only JUST over a year ago. Since then we have accumulated more and more people. It is crazy because some of my very best friends I didn't meet until second semester last year. We figured out we've known each other for eight months. That isn't the weird part, the weird part is how we really feel like we've been friends for years. Here we see so much of each other, it is like we have all been grossly overcompensating for lost time. Really, it is amazing. When someone goes home for the weekend sometimes it feels like they've been gone such a long time! In reality two days really isn't that much, but when everyone is around so much it can seem that way.

This is a bit of a peculiar quirk, but I genuinely enjoy proof reading my friends Core papers. So I've done a little of that recently too.
I work in the library here on campus, and there are very interesting archives there. They need sorting through and that is not my job, but sometimes historical gems are brought out of the depths! It is amazing what we have and what is found. Yesterdays were comments and surveys on race relations from 1969. That kind of thing absolutely fascinates me; the growth and development and the history of the college is something I love learning about. I really like history, and it is fun to pick up tidbits as I live and study here.

Last night a club which I am an officer for, M.A.C. (make a choice: encouraging alternatives to alcohol), had a special themed evening down at C.o.J. (Cup of Joe - FREE student run coffeehouse). We played "Guess Who?"; we taped identities to everyone's backs and we all had to ask yes or no questions to figure out who we were. It was fun, so we didn't just stop at one. The identities I temporarily procured that it took me the longest to guess were Genghis Khan and David Bowie. Two of the funnier ones I saw that come to mind were Albus Dumbledore and Big Bird. Probably the funniest one, or at least the funniest one that I witnessed, was when someone had the identity of another person in the room. Sabrina looked straight at Jeremy for maybe ten minutes and asked him question after question about himself! Somehow the Loch Ness Monster was able to figure out their identity in exactly three questions... I'm still really impressed by that one!

After my midterms and tests conclude tomorrow, I have class and meetings on Thursday. Then, on Thursday I am going home! I'm not from that far away, but it is easier to just not go home very often. I'm going to be home for a couple of days, I'm briefly coming back to campus, and then on Sunday I am going to California! We're going up to the Chicago airport by leaving campus at 2 am, so I personally tend to think of that as more along the lines of late Saturday night. I am kind of nervous about missing two days of classes, we'll be back late Tuesday night, but I am really excited for this trip! I have never really been to California before, and this is a real opportunity! I am going to go through my political science senior seminar capstone course on the presidency of Richard Nixon. I'm by no means a Nixon fan, but he is definitely very interesting historically. His presidency was a major shaping force for our nation and I'm really glad to be learning so much about it in the class. We're combining this trip to Los Angeles and his museum/grave/birthplace/library with a day in Hollywood. Even though I only know a few of the mass communications majors, I am glad we're combining this trip with them. So we're basically going to have one political science day at the museum, and a mass communications day in Hollywood. I'm really, really excited about this and can't wait to see L.A. for the first time ever!

PS: ... I am going back in and adding this later - it almost but not quite merits its own entry. There is a debate that cannot be settled. Instead the participants are merely making unscientific declarative statements. Mine is this: jeans are more comfortable than khakis!

At the end of the Ren Fair a lot of the regulars gathered together and sang some kind of medieval song. It was cool, they're standing in the entrance/exit.




I rode a camel! It was awesome!



This was the ultimate hobo commune. Four guys put this mansion together, it was a pretty impressive residence. (:



I wanted a living room and some foliage, so I brought out my watercolors and made it happen. (;

Right now I am chilling in the radio station (93.3 the Joe!) with my friends Laurinda and Andrew. They have a specialty show together this semester, and it is really cool! They're throwing in all kinds of random trivia, when I walked in the station they were talking about bizarre festivals. Music is playing now, but I'm still getting trivia about the Boryeong Mud Festival on the side.

Speaking of festivals, this last weekend I went to a Renaissance Festival in Ohio! I had never been to one before, it was really fun! It was a four and a half hour drive each way, but it was totally worth it for about six hours of Renaissance fun. I got to ride a camel, that was really awesome! Jousting was alright, there were lots of cool shops, and some very talented performers. I have never seen so much period clothing or heard so many bad British accents.

This has been a good week for me, but right now I am a little tired - I was homeless last night! I slept outside of the student center as part of 'Shack City' to promote the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity. Some people are going on a trip, I believe it is to North Carolina, over Thanksgiving break. They'll get to help with a Habitat build, see a little bit of the country, and do a little bit of tourism while getting to know their fellow Habitat participants. I'm not going on that trip, but I'm thinking about going to the one that we'll have over spring break. Last night I had a lot of fun sleeping outside - I slept in the fountain! It was empty of water, don't worry. I did break out the water colors and make my temporary home an artistic masterpiece. ;P There were s'mores and and a trashcan fire. More than a dozen of us spent the entire night out. The weather was really nice, it didn't get below 40 degrees. I had fun but didn't get very much sleep.