Should'a listened to Mrs. Pacatte...

...who told us, more or less, during AP psych that if you mess with the body, the body mess wit'you.

I didn't listen, stayed up too late for too long, and now I'm sick.

Oh, well. Today I got my blood donor card in the mail, and I finally know my blood type--O positive, for all of you keeping score at home. This means, cutely enough, that if my boyfriend ever needed blood, I could give it to him. Or I could give it to his brother. Or I could give it to anyone with a positive blood type. Yeah, dude! Yeah for having the most common blood type!

(O negative is the kind anybody can receive, positive blood types or negative. Just in case you were wondering. Mine's kinda the second-most versatile, which's cool 'cause there're two types of blood I can get, instead of just my own, like the O-neg people.)

I have a lot of homework to do tonight, but all I want to do is sleep. I want to spend a few minutes at the folkdancing Party Gras, too, but we'll see. I was going to make something new and cool and slightly complicated for it, because it's Mardi Gras and I wanted to have some fun, but my getting sick kinda complicated things. I guess now I'll wait 'til after break.

Okay, end blitherage.

-Laurel

Trying to keep my eyes open as Glenn runs tech support from RPI, through me, to the RA upstairs

So I've been completely burned out of service since I dropped APO, thereby joining the population that the IV staff complain so much about. I think I've simplified my life about as much as possible, but I just don't have any hope about service anymore, particularly running it. It's kind of gotten to the point where I'll have to see whether it's true or false that if I want something done right, I'm going to have to do it myself. Though that entails getting my act together with solo volunteer work as well, which I really have no heart to do.

Earlier I was marveling at the charmed life I seem to have led, but now I keep thinking about how this whole year has been about saying goodbye to so many things by which I've defined myself. Choir. APO. My house. Having deep friends nearby. And it's anyone's guess whether Tim and I will come undone; since September we've had little real idea of what to make of each other.

I've been stripped down to my fourth-grade self, just enough past the move to have been in church. I assume that that much of me is still enough, but I wish it all led somewhere I could see.

Things will look better after some sleep.

-Laurel

Bitlet

It's been brought to my attention (by, of course, an engineer, though not by Tim) that it's kind of lame to get excited about an energy-efficient phone, since "inefficient" phones only use a tiny bit of energy as it is. Thinking back to the energy lab for enviro-sci, I seem to recall something like that, but since I didn't pay extra for it, I still think it's cool.

Going roller skating, of all things, tomorrow. Awesome.

-Laurel

!

With the curve, my 78 or 79 or whatever in oceanography somehow turned into an A, which should be the letter grade that makes the midsemester printout. I'm floored, not to mention excited. I would feel worse about having freaked out in the first place, but I hadn't really understood how the curve worked; we don't have them in the humanities.

I mean, occasionally everyone in some class will bomb a test so badly that it will be curved, in the sense that whoever lost the fewest points will be upgraded to a 100, and everyone else will be upped from there in relation to how close to that person they did. And I guess in a way that's what's happening here, but, see, the humanities people often feel like they need to justify things by actually turning it into a 100, perhaps because many of us have trouble believing that a letter grade even can, let alone should, be relative. And it never, in the humanities, applies to every grade in a semester, whereas in this case it does (and a good thing, too, as there'll only be three grades). I remember Mr. Jessop refusing to curve things on the grounds that it was just a way for bad teachers to look better. (He was a really good teacher, so him thinking so was understandable.) And, I mean, it kind of sends the message that you don't have to be truly intelligent; you just have to be smarter than everyone else.

But it certainly does make up for the humongous amount of information we're expected to soak up, so it's not like I'm complaining. Musing, yes.

I got a new phone, 'cause the old, cheap one went kaput (and after only two years; that's kind of mediocre, right?). This new one is better (and energy-efficient, which after ENS 101 actually does make a considerable difference to me), but I realized this morning that it has no answering machine component (so that's why it was so much better than the old phone without being significantly more expensive! :-P), so I will have to go and get an answering machine now. Which is okay; I rented March of the Penguins last night (hurrah!), and was going to have to take it back by Monday anyway, so I'll be in town in any case. And besides, I wouldn't mind an answering machine that, unlike my last phone's, doesn't make everyone's words semi-unintelligible.

Okay, lunchtime.

-Laurel

How it all played out

A 79 on the oceanography test--significantly better than I expected, and almost a B-minus. Though that isn't exactly the midsemester grade I wanted, I'm impressed. Apparently there was a "sweet curve," as Otto said, which helps the logic there.

I read for three different roles at the callbacks--Hailley called me back for hers even though I didn't try for it originally; I felt complimented. ...I read okay, but could feel myself not quite getting there a lot of times, and was ultimately cut. Which truly is all right. Tara got cut, too, but Meryl got the lead in Hailley's play. I've never seen her act, but she must have been quite good; it's not a simple role, especially playing someone almost seventy years old.

So now I get to go to the honors banquet after all, and folk dance every week, and have time after all for volunteering, once I get that going. Or I can sink a chunk of that time into Text and Image--so interesting, but so much to learn. And not in the same way as oceanography, where there's so much to learn to get even the general shape of things; Text and Image work is like frosting a cake. I know that what I have is solid, but to make something enjoyable as well--winning Ender and Anna's effusion with my last piece felt so good.

Time to have a snack and do some reading...and then get to bed. I'm sleep-deprived already; tomorrow will be interesting. If I freak out on anybody, please don't be offended; just try to sedate me.

-Laurel

Um...oh.

So it turns out that everybody got called back for the plays. ...I simultaneously feel special and not-special. ::giggles::

The oceanography test kicked my sorry butt. Kicked everybody's, really, 'cept maybe not Kathy's, especially since she sent Otto like ten questions. I'd been hoping for at least a C, but I think I'm going to have to lower my minimum standard to a passing grade; it really was hideous. Since this test grade also doubles as our midsemester grade, this one will be a particularly entertaining sell to my dad. It's even too late to take it pass/fail.

Again, and not for the last time, and rhetorically-questioning only, how staggeringly idiotic does one have to be to take a geology course as an elective? I don't know anybody besides me who did that.

Oh, well; at least my English classes are going quite well.

-Laurel

Whoosh went the week...

Okay, so apparently when I said "more in a bit," I meant "more in about a week."

I should be getting back to my homework, so here's the severely-abridged version of everything that's gone on since my last post:

-I went to Montreal with Quiz Bowl. It was cool. My team did quite badly, but we had fun. Everything is in French up there, and the street signs are not translated, but that's okay; yay for French being sort of like English in many cases. It was really ruddy cold. If you're going to Canada, don't wear stretch jeans, wear thick K-mart ones. Or, better yet, wear fuzzy pants, like Tim has.

-After that week being really slow, I had a really fast past week. Valentine's Day was cool; I was part of one more APO project ('cause it was my idea long ago) and helped hand out I Am Loved pins (see the site here), which I still see people wearing, five days later, which makes me happy. ...Tim and I went out for dessert that night, 'cause the schedule thing wasn't working for getting an actual meal, and then I went to folk dancing on a sugar high, bringing with me the some-crumbled-some-lumpy chocolate chip cookies I'd made earlier, which everyone ate.

-For Text and Image, which's really going well after the kind-of-rocky first class or two, we had a Field Trip of Mystery (Susan and Roger wouldn't tell us where we were going) to a weekly dance for senior citizens. At said dance, my partner Haley and I met a lady who's more or less overcome MS, which's a whole long story that I won't tell here, and we went to her and her kind husband's house yesterday. I think we expected to be gone from campus for maybe three hours, four tops; we were gone for six. She had us splitting wood, for one thing, which Haley was all into, but which made my left side hate me this morning. Ah, well. ...I also, thanks to this visit, now own a spider plant, currently hanging illegally from my ceiling; I hope to find a better place to keep it soon.

-Tonight, however stupid this may have been, I decided to try out for the student-directed one-act plays. I was super-glad that Tara was also trying out, and we figured we'd read together. We managed to find a pair of plays where I didn't have to be profane ('cause I'm a tromping prude; I can only hope the whole plays are like that), and the reading went pretty well, so it was a success altogether. We'll see what develops; the one I liked best actually kind of ridicules Freudian psychology, and I think that's fun.

If I get a part, I'm pretty sure I'll have to miss the honors banquet, which's sad, but it's not my senior year; I'll prolly be there for the last one. And this year I am actually going to not-be-a-bum and show up to the IV one. Tada.

Okay, I need to get back to the Homework of Doom. But hey, I've figured out all the time stuff, and this shouldn't be one of those nights where I end up massively sleep-deprived the next day. Which's good, considering that I have a test "graded learning opportunity" tomorrow in Otto's class.

It's recently occurred to me that it might be kind of weird or stupid to have a mood indicator on one's blog. If my English majorness is worth its salt, shouldn't my mood be semi-obvious from the text? I mean, it wasn't ever really about that anyway, so much as an, "Ooh! Adjectives and little graphics! And I get to pick them and change them around!" Still, any thoughts?

-Laurel

Quickish second part of previous entry

"And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude."

The part I didn't mention about my leaving APO is that Tom left, too; he was in charge of membership, so he was the first one I told that I was leaving. He told me he'd been contemplating it, too, and we ended up having a really long discussion, pros and cons, hopes and fears. I mean, it's hard to just walk out of something you've promised to carry out, and we were both deliberating to what degree APO deserved more effort, different effort, or more chances--particularly when the faith both of us follow is all about service and perserverance and helping when no one else will, but not necessarily about staying on a sinking ship. In the end, though, we decided together that stepping back would work the best.

So we told Tim, who's president. Tim didn't take it so well at first--and, while trying to get me to stay, was fairly nasty to Tom about his part. Predictable, but frustrating. Whatever the reasons, APO people have never been as nice to Tom as to me.

I know it shouldn't be a huge thing that we left, but of course everything in APO ends up being a big thing, so it did really end up being something melodramatic. It's been, too, a frustrating semester--and, in some ways, year--for both Tom and me. We finally got talkative about it, and it's made us closer friends, a lot like we were my freshman year (but more siblingly, which is nice); we've discovered, at various points this semester, a lot of common ground in our thinking that I didn't believe was there. ...He's also the one that kept me out--were it not for Tom, I'dve rejoined APO before the association status was official, out of guilt, because I did cause the chapter a lot of trouble, particularly with the section staff (gosh, how I've come to resent the way fraternities are set up).

So we've done a lot of talking, a lot of hanging out, and it's been quite good.

More in a bit about everything else.

-Laurel

In which things get better some (*now edited for greater readability!*)

"Chaos screaming, chaos dreaming--gotta do more! Gotta *be* more!"

And Nuwanda plays the saxophone.

So pretty much everybody updated their journals, like, three times this week, and I never read most of them 'til today. Things've been t3h cr4zy.

The Big Dramatic News is that I'm going associate for APO. "Associate status" is basically an open-ended hiatus (it has to be renewed every semester you plan to be away, but that's never difficult). I might come back in the fall if things're less chaotic--and if the e-board isn't still doing all the work. ...There's actually more to this story than I'm going to tell now, so there'll be a second part later in the week. Not too long.

Thank you to all who left encouraging comments or dealt with my agonizing over it.

Following lesson learned, though: never ever resign from a fraternity e-board position when you've got a pile of homework up to your scalp. I had so much explaining to do to the twins, though I guess most of that is connected to Part Two of the story. Assignments got done, but not particularly well. I will fix that.

My home friends all appear to be joining new groups, which is fun. Assuming I find myself with enough time now that APO is on hiatus (and assuming Quiz Bowl gets back from Montreal in time), I might actually try out for the one-act plays, since I missed the tryouts for Becky's play by a couple of days, and a one-act involves a lot less rehearsal time anyway.

I do want, though, to take the 15 hours I'dve used for the APO service requirement and put it into other community work instead. The local hospital has come to mind (after all, I do have a car), and I might look into that soon. I do realize that people sometimes get physically sick at hospitals, and I am still mildly emetophobic, but if they are, it's usually not because you've got a drunk eighteen-year-old on your hands, and that's what I'd be asking for with Rescue Squad. I'd like to do something medical-related if I can, 'cause I think it's cool.

At first, though, I should focus on homework a bit more. And having a way to get out of my room won't be truly important until Lent. Because I'm a major AIM addict and it's getting to be annoying as well as a distraction, I am taking Lent (which I typically do not even celebrate) to give up instant messaging. This is not because I'm doing another self-improvement-obsession thing; my mind's actually been made up about this essentially since the fall. I've been wanting to try to cut back, and that seemed like a logical time to do it. So between March 1 and April 16, I will be checking my e-mail like a maniac, heh. Please write, call, or visit; it gets lonely in a small, quiet single. Any other addicts want to give it up with me, even though Lent spans spring break? Admittedly that won't be a problem for me; if I haven't mentioned, my mom, my aunt, and I are going to Granada to visit Lily Jo(!!!!). It'll be my first sight of Spain, and our mothers' first times out of North America.

(Whoa, Spain during Lent. I bet they'll have all kinds'a crazy seafood dishes on the Friday we're there.)

Okay, really have to go do something for Text and Image. My first crit(!) with Jenn is tomorrow and I'm a little nervous. Should be an experience, though. It won't be quite so bad as the art kids get.

Cheerio!

-Laurel

More whining (reading optional, which I suppose it always is, but more so)

The Midget is here, but I can't really hang out with her because I have more homework than I know what to do with. Whee for being, for one thing, on page 116 of 302 of a book that I have to finish, and for which I have to write two pages' worth of goodness knows what, in less than 48 hours.

I'm also hating on APO again; wish I knew what I was really supposed to do on that one. I keep going back and forth, but never with enough weight on either end to force a change. ...Doing that about a couple other things, too.

Tim promised a while ago, though to other people and not so much me, that he'd come back to swing if I joined, but it turns out he never had any intention to make good on that. I didn't really join for him, but I've come to wish he hadn't lied about it. ...It isn't folk dancing, to be sure, but I'll finish out the semester and see where I am and what I think; the aforementioned folk dancing love certainly didn't develop, either, within three weeks.

I suppose it goes without saying that I'm also sleep-deprived.

-Laurel

This entry turned out differently than I expected.

I should probably clarify the thing about APO: I'm not just in it, seriously, because Evan played some sort of religious card on me. There are moments that make me glad I'm in it, and honestly, I think service is the closest right now to what I want to do indefinitely, so I'd better learn how to find longevity in it.

He also didn't just order me to stay; he's offered a lot of help with what I'm doing, and he and I work well together, so I would like to take some.

But I don't like it. I'm staying because it's good for me. I think. And what I said last night is only partly true. I don't have plans to drop out. But I've not yet ruled it out.

I don't know what on earth I'm doing, honestly.

...Text and Image was lovely; I need to spend more time in the art-and-engineering-library looking at photography books, as I did today. I had no idea that such texts were there.

Am thinking a lot about Main Street and what Shelley and Tony said when I interviewed them, and how different it is from what Jeanne said, though in some ways all are correct.

Gonna go have lunch by myself; I could use it.

-Laurel

C'mon, go 'head and be an informed citizen.

It's the State of the Union, and we should read it.

Though, in the name of balance, I also found the official Democratic Party response interesting:

read here

We're in the honors house for next year, officially. ::does joyful dance::

Tomorrow's the APO invite dinner, which is a nice way to end the wretched mile-long pledge process ('cause it's the most truly fun event of the bunch), and then we'll have pledges.

Though I cannot imagine running a service program for the next three semesters, I don't have any plans to quit anytime soon. I mean, I had an atheist telling me this could be a God-given lesson. Granted that he's also sunk if I drop out, and we both know it, but, unfortunately, I don't argue well against divine guilt. So, for that reason and others, I will stay and be of service either until I like it or until I find myself not being loving toward them anymore (sometimes I still manage it), in which case I will drop out because clearly it's not good at that point.

Folk dancing was very nice. I'm going to bed now. Happy February. The picture on my calendar for this month is so bright and lovely; a butterfly on a sunflower.

-Laurel