“Awake” October 25, 2011

Late nights can lead to giddy mustachioed fisticuffs

 

In the woods again, feeling more awake and powerful!

Sometimes, I don’t manage my time in a manner that could be termed “optimal.” I’m usually pretty good about it, but every now and then I end up playing with my iTunes settings, or reading through old emails, or buying a smiley face Mylar balloon so that I can amuse myself by hitting it, or distracting my long-suffering roommate, before trudging off to McCabe, the Beit Midrash, or the fire escape to force myself to focus. This kind of thing doesn’t happen often, but it happened this past week, which unfortunately meant that it coincided with a week wherein I had two big assignments due.

So I spent quite a bit of time in McCabe late at night, still wearing whatever gross clothes I had worn to the gym, with my hair looking like the aftermath of a bomb detonation, bleakly pondering my work. Crazy things tend to happen in hotbeds of intellectual pursuits, especially when people get tired and frantic about encroaching deadlines, so as I sat and typed and tried to remember how to do Chi Squared tests in Microsoft Excel, I kept an ear open to the people around me. Amid unnecessarily dramatic wails that the printer was broken (it wasn’t; at least, not for long) and the agonizing groans of people who had gone to get coffee only to find there was none left,  there were more uplifting interactions. I had a long conversation with the guy at the computer next to me about the material on his psychology midterm the next day, and I solicited the help of strangers to figure out Excel. Something about the atmosphere of exhaustion and despair really lent itself to community spirit.

Another example came earlier in the week, on Tuesday. I’d been having a bad day for no particular obvious reason, but when it got late enough that I knew I should go to bed, I realized I really didn’t want to end the day without being anything but miserable since waking up. So I called Susanna, who goes to bed later than I usually do, and asked if she might be interested in baking with me. “What are you going to bake?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “Baked goods.” So we used the Parrish 4th kitchen and my baking materials, and I took out my frustration on the dough we made, and we kvetched until long after I should have been asleep. When I woke up on Wednesday, I was tired, but I felt much better than the day before, and not being so irritated made being everything better.

Being awake when you shouldn’t be can be wretched. But in the week that just passed, those times were surprisingly full of fun and bonding.

Weekend (and Exciting News!) October 12, 2011

(Look! My first ever multi-word post title!)

I know it’s been a while, and I have no one to blame but myself. But in my defense, I’ve had a series of weeks jam-packed with homework, classes, meetings with the Catholic group, babysitting a family with 4 kids, hosting my radio show (Literary Works as Musicals! 9 a.m. on Thursdays at wsrnfm.org) and dragging myself off to the gym. And on the weekends, when I might have been catching up on this blog, I’ve been having adventures, the likes of which I haven’t really had since freshman year!

On the first exciting weekend this semester, Miriam, Linda, our friend Susanna, and I trooped off into the Crum, hoping to stumble upon the abandoned ruins of a water garden. We had read an article about this place in the Daily Gazette, the online newspaper, last year, and though we didn’t really know where we were going, we had a (foolishly?) high degree of faith in our combined navigational abilities and luckiness. After wandering for hours, with no water, no breaks to rest, chasing a deer, almost losing a shoe in mud, calling a local historic site to ask for directions, and several photo-ops, we finally found it!  Here’s a sampling of our photo-ops:

Look how deep my shoe sank in the mud!

Standing under a fallen tree that looked like a rib cage

Orienteering

Linda in the ruins!

The next weekend was College Day in Philadelphia, and Linda, Miriam, and another of our friends, Linda’s roommate Yin, and I went into the city, where we ate incredibly delicious hot pot and Korean barbecue at the International Smokeless BBQ. Then we walked around the city, rode a carousel, went to Chinatown to bring back pastry. Here’s what our food looked like:

Grilling meats and vegetables, which then get dipped in mixed sauces

Other food gets boiled in this pot that's in the middle of the table

I was a picky eater growing up, and as I was gorging myself on this, I couldn’t help being really happy that I’m not anymore.

The next weekend, I did something I’ve wanted to do for years–– went and visited my best friend, Jenn, at Yale. We’ve known each other since sixth grade, and although we went to different high schools, we talked on the phone every weekend. Sometimes we miss weeks now, but we’ve had an ongoing email exchange, plus Skype and Facebook chats, so it’s not often that we don’t know what’s going on in each others’ lives. She’s come to Swarthmore 3 times, but I hadn’t made it up to see her until the beginning of October. It was a really great time; I got to meet her friends, eat Cuban food, ice cream, and the first good falafel I’ve ever had, go to Yale’s museum of British art, and take the Tour of Being Jenn (i.e, see all her class buildings, study spots, church, and the places where she lived for the past two years ). We didn’t take any pictures, but here are a few examples of our shenanigans:

In Woolman's lounge last spring, when she had a Tae Kwon Do tournament at UPenn

Sometimes (often!) we wear matching clothes

Sword fighting in front of the Science Center last summer

All in all, I’ve been having such good weekends I’ve barely had time to be stressed, even though with 5 classes, a radio show, two clubs to manage, and study abroad applications to submit, I have a lot going on. And that brings me to the exciting news I mentioned in the title–– I found out this morning that I was admitted to the first study abroad program I applied to, the one that I’m pretty sure I’ll attend! That means next semester, I’ll be at Cardiff University in Wales, taking classes in religion, and sociology and frolicking around the UK. I’m so excited about this!  It seems like things are really falling into place, and everything’s worth being excited about.