Don't Call it a Sign Off

To those about to rock:

Today is Thursday - exams began today.  In about two and a half hours, it will be Friday.  There will be a weekend, and it will be Monday, just like every week of every month of every year for infinity.  Whether or not time runs like this everywhere else doesn't matter - we're here today and gone tomorrow, no matter what parallel universe we're living in.  So right now, I'm sitting in the library "studying" for an anthropology class, when really I'm blogging and listening to Brahms thanks to Pandora.  It's rather dramatic.

This will be my last post as a freshman.  I don't know what great knowledge I should share with future freshmen.  I guess one thing I could say is that I haven't drastically changed.  I'm not a dramatically different person, however, if I was a lump of clay before I came to Appalachian, you could say that now I have become a more defined piece of artwork.  So when you enter this life and are intimidated by upperclassmen, don't fret - because they don't change, they just shape-shift, and soon enough you will too.

Be who you are - make friends like you've always made friends - don't jump into some off the wall group just so you can identify yourself as "that person" that hangs out with "that group."  You don't need an identity, because you already have one and you've always had one - and that is your family and friends and experiences.

Don't be close-minded.  Think before you speak, before you jump, and before you sign up for that 8 AM class.  And have fun, because you can only do this once.

Vive la ʻohana

I don't speak French, and I don't speak ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, but I like to combine them.


In theory, it means "Long live ʻohana."  What is ʻohana?  Let me tell you a story.


Jenna was new on our hall.  She just popped up after Christmas break, and I thought Jenna was cool (and I guess she still is).  One snowy day, Natalie, my friend who lives in the room beside me, decided to make potatoes out of a box, and Jenna went with her on this potato adventure.  They were downstairs in the kitchen when I ran into them.


We all decided to wait for the potatoes to bake, and while we waited, we watched Extreme Makeover Home Edition.  The show happened to be at a house in Hawaii.  I think it was a house that had been ravaged by some horrible storm or natural disaster.  Like every episode, the entire community helped in repairing and rebuilding this torn home.  


It was a struggle - a struggle for the family who had seen their home become just another ruin of a storm, and it was a struggle for those who worked tirelessly to rebuild the house.  Ty Pennington, the host of Extreme Makeover, made a statement about this - he said that the people who struggled together, the community, the family - they were ʻohana, as it is said in Hawaii.  


I turned to Jenna.  "We're ʻohana."


She looked at me funny.  "What?"  


"We're ʻohana."


"Okay, Carrie."  It seemed like a bizarre statement, but there was a mutual understanding.  


We live and we go through struggles together, so we, the girls who live on and around our hall, are ʻohana.  It's unconditional.  When we can't sleep, we talk it over.  When we can't study anymore, we press on.  When we're stressed, we split a roll of cookie dough.  When we cry, scream, laugh, or stumble, we do it together, because we're family.


Like Lilo and Stitch once said:  "ʻOhana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind."


Who's your ʻohana?

Blizzard Part 2

Honorary degrees in computers.  I don't think they have these, but they should.  Every student has computer troubles - you can be the most tech savvy person in the world, yet something will plague you.  It doesn't matter where you get the computer from - you're just going to encounter problems - and somehow, you - the student - are going to figure out exactly how to fix this complex problem through a series of Googling and visits to a manufacturers website.

I live for computers.  I love computers.  My life consists of:  the little screened notebook, food, and Thursday nights (that's when The Office comes on).

Yesterday, my roommate ran into our hall lobby and started to tell me about the strange sounds my computer was making in our room and the smoke that was coming out of it.  I almost started to cry - and then, as I darted for my room, she ended her panic with "just kidding."  Sam, if you're reading this, don't think I'm not going to get back at you.

So today, I am in front of my beloved blue rectangle blogging at the student union with my headphones in listening to MSTRKRFT.  I'm looking outside, and if I walked out there I imagine I would only be able to see five feet in front of me.  I can only compare this wind and snow to the great blizzard.  And you know what, it figures that my first year in college would mark the resurgence of horrible winter weather.  I think someone up there is just trying to make up for the many years I missed out on snow in my life.  Okay, thank you Mr.  Cloudy Sky, but seriously, I think I've had like a good three years worth of snow withing a couple of months.

It's funny because the first night it was supposed to snow after we got back from Christmas break, I told everyone on my hall that we should do a rain dance so that we wouldn't have classes the next day - so we looked up rain dances on YouTube, and none of us had the guts to do the dance or say whatever it is the dancer was saying, so we just danced to some rap music instead.  I guess it worked because the next day, school was canceled, and we didn't go into class until 11:00 the next day.  The next week they called for a blizzard - and now the sky looks like chaos.  I regret any rain dances that we unintentionally performed, and I would like to apologize to the general public.

At this point in my blog, I would like to mention two things.  First, this year has broken many winter records for the town of Boone, and this weather only occurs in 50ish year cycles, unless some drastic global warming crisis takes place in the next couple years.  Second, I get all my Boone weather from Ray's Weather.  He's a computer science professor here, and we blame him for all the bad weather we get (not really).  All of his stuff is so accurate, it makes you wonder if he's causing it...  Suspicion...

An Introduction to Apocalypto

I hate to hate on movies, but there comes a time in everyone’s life where one must watch a historic adaptation.  Most children start with the lovely Disney classic Pocahontas.  I loved Pocahontas.  I wanted to be Pocahontas.  I had Pocahontas pajamas – but I wanted to be the Disney Pocahontas – the less than real Pocahontas, where John Smith was in love with you and your grandmother sometimes took the form of a tree.

When I entered the third grade, history, in my book, was rewritten.  Pocahontas had been a key part of establishing good relationships with old world immigrants, but the rest of the Disney story had been total crap.  John Smith and Pocahontas had never gotten together.  Trees can’t talk.

One may argue that the essence of the story had been preserved, but I thought the singing and dancing had ruined it thus far.  If everything had been hunky dory by the end credits, then why have millions of Native Americans suffered (and still suffer)?

So this is about as far as I’ve gotten on my paper that is supposed to be about the Maya.   Yes, now you might see my problem.  Pocahontas was not living in the post-classic Mayan civilization.  I love Tchaikovsky.

Snow, Saints, and Gas Laws

Yesterday, it snowed.
Today, the Saints won the Super Bowl.
Tomorrow, I have a chemistry exam.

The fate of the world lies in one weekend.

...What they do.

If this entire post gets censored, I apologize - that includes you Clarke and Meredith.

Let me tell you about where I'm from.

Greenville, North Carolina is a funny town.  It's centered in the Eastern North Carolina Bible belt.  Its temperature can only be compared to hades - and the surrounding Baptists are convinced that this rise in temperature correlates to the morality of the college students at East Carolina University.  Anyone under the age of 23 is considered a heathen unless they have attended private schools for the majority of their life and they have perfect church attendance (that means both Sunday services, Bible study, and the Wednesday night service).

So my parents were very much aware of the religious craze in the quiet town, so they attempted to find a church (because they liked the God aspect, not the religious one).  We found one, and I still attend this church, but then this church formed a little private school - the school I attended for four years.

Well, as I was at the normal private school, I was able to avoid any kind of total indoctrination, however, I always received an extremely skewed view of things - and today I write to tell you the story of the visiting scientist.

Since we were at a Christian school, it was mandatory that we all agree that the world was less than ten thousand years old - no matter what kind of evidence was out there, it was demanded of us that we agree that  global warming doesn't exist (that's another story), and the world is about 6000 years old.

Now I was in the sixth grade, and I was in love with science (both my parents had scientific and medical backgrounds), and when science said the world was billions of years old, science was going to be right.  So secretly, in my mind, I disagreed with everything my teacher said.  Had I stood up for science, I would have been considered a heretic, and Miss. T would have sent me straight to the principal.

I suppose it was the principal who brought the guest speaker - the lone scientist - the one of maybe ten scientists who agreed with the under 10000 year earth idea.

It was a special event.  The school and the church was invited for an special evening "lecture" where the scientist would prove that the earth was a mere six thousand years old.  It was funny, because it was this older man and his dedicated wife, and I guess they had never used power point, because he rolled into the lecture with a giant easel made of great prints of graphs and pictures of fossils.

The only picture I really remember was of a fish type creature giving birth to a smaller fish and I suppose the umbilical cord was still attached.  The scientist told us this fish had rapidly fossilized, proving the fact that fossilization couldn't happen over millions of years.  As he was saying this, my twelve year old mind imagined a fish (an angry mother fish in pain) giving birth to another fish at the foot of a sea volcano.  Just when mama fish thought it was over - bam, she gets hit by a volcano eruption.  That took two seconds.  Maybe that explains the rapid fossilization.

The mother fish had been the scientist's final argument, and as he finished, everyone leapt to their feet in applause, like the hope they had held onto for so long had just been confirmed - that the world was only six thousand years old, and all because of one fish.  Being the follower I was, I stood up with them too, confused but overtaken by the emotions incited by a birthing fish.  It was a beautiful thing.  I think my teacher, who sat maybe two or three feet away, was letting tears roll down her smiling cheeks.

In the end, I convinced myself he was right.  I told myself that if the group of 60 people watching the scientist were impressed, I should be impressed too.

I see the mistake of my actions, and I think after the ridiculous performance, I swore to question everything.  So that is what I do now.  I question things, because nothing is worse than putting your faith in a female fish.

I am by no means calling people out on their beliefs, nor am I putting any system down (other than indoctrination), but I am just showing you where I came from and how it shaped me.  I just would like to make the point that there are bigger things to fight over, like world hunger and poverty.

Put your records on - it's FRIDAY!

At this very moment, students are getting concerned phone calls from their parents - and most of the calls sound like this:

"Did you know they're calling for more than ten inches of snow?"

"Yes, mom.  I live here."

"You know you're not going to be able to get out anywhere, right?"

"No mom, I planned on riding my tauntaun* to Wal-mart."

"What's a tauntaun?  Is that slang?  Are you doing drugs?"

"No, mother."

"Well go to the grocery store and get lots of canned food and a flashlight - oh, and do you still have that first aid kit I sent you?"

"I ran out of supplies when I fell down three flights of stairs in front of Eggers**."

"You fell down some stairs!?!  Why didn't you tell me?!?"

"Okay mom, I'm going now...  I have, uh, class."

"I love you!  Don't do anything stupid on the ice!  Call me first thing in the morning!"

[click]

*tauntaun:  A camel-like creature from the hit movie The Empire Strikes Back.  Luke Skywalker rides one at the beginning of the movie.   Here's a picture, and here's a video if you're even more interested.

**Eggers:  The dorm with a lot of stairs in front of it.  I know someone who tumbled down those stairs.




Update 1/30/2010:  You can watch some of the snow here: