write like you're running out of time

Since I'll be finished with finals and school in less than a week, I thought I'd take what free time I have to reflect on some of the good and not-so-good things I'll remember about my 4 1/2 years here at Monmouth College.

The Good
-Having 24-hour access to the Internet, which introduced me to an...interesting variety of people (you know who you are).
-Figuring out how E-bay works.
-Banter with Steve during wind ensemble rehearsal.
-English 180, including but not limited to the succubus riff on Phil, "I hate this class," "watch out for orangutans with razor blades" and Asta is the answer to everything.
-Being a member of the "Fab Four" that wrote the letter about the 2002 Turkey Bowl t-shirts.
-Willhardt's vests
-Willhardt's bonus questions on exams
-The toys in Willhardt's office
-Willhardt & Hale going at it
-The English Department Halloween Party at the Boone House
-Watching "The Importance of Being Earnest" at the Boone House (twice)
-Poem about a Christmas tree turning into poem about a prostitute
-Finding RENT references in Mike's short stories.
-Mike's Technicolor hair, and his mother's reaction to when it was red
-"It's illegal to throw things out the window of a moving building."
-Liedman almost kicking Grier's ass in the dorm softball game in '01.
-A-1 floor dinners
-Shannon and Beth (and by extension Jamie, Amanda, Rachel and Rebecca): the cool quadmates
-Koren, Amanda, Beth and Kristen (the coolest RAs and HRs)
-Secret Santas on B-1
-The loveliness of having a double-single.
-Scot's Day
-Family Weekend
-Monmouth's Living Windows Christmas festival
-The Maple City Candy Store
-Monmouth Soda Works
-How the campus looks in the fall (when the leaves turn, before they fall on the ground) and the winter (after the snow falls but before people tear it up).
-Playing the clarinet in wind ensemble
-The honest-to-goodness ONLY decent roommate I've EVER had.

The Bad
-Getting a decent roommate for the LAST semester that I'm here.
-Walking back from a final exam in the middle of a freaking BLIZZARD at 7:30 in the evening.
-Liedman's penchant for fire alarms, especially in the wee small hours of the morning.
-The loneliness of having a double/single
-Small rooms with linoleum floors
-Treadmill hill
-Walking to the grocery store
-Walking to ShopKo
-Liedman's horrid '70s decor (before the remodeling)
-Doug the tuba player asking for a gong solo...and getting it.
-Rehearsing in the basement of Austin Hall while Dahl Chapel was being remodeled (cramped quarters)
-The second semester of my sophomore year
-being on academic probation
-The roommate from hell from that semester who I hold mostly responsible for said academic probation
-The other roommate that snuck her boyfriend into the room while I was asleep and did God knows what

In the middle of due papers, homework and other shite that needs to get done before the end of the semester (or Thanksgiving, whichever comes first), the one bright spot was this weekend when my best friend came down. We had a really great time hanging out together. I showed her some of the best spots in town, we went out to eat and trolled the mall last night, and we just got to hang out together and catch up and all of that fun stuff. Then she had to leave this afternoon to go home. So now I'm sitting in my room, feeling alone and a little depressed. And my roomate's back after being gone since late Tuesday night. I would have preferred to be alone in my depression for just a little while longer, thank you very much.

Finals week on Monmouth College campus has finally started, which means people can be loud only one half-hour out of the entire day, which also means they try to be as loud as they possibly can during that entire half-hour.

Fortunately my finals schedule isn't too bad. I have one tomorrow, a free day on Monday from when my grammar professor turned our final into a take-home one, a non-formal final on Tuesday, one at 8 AM on Wednesday and a second non-formal final on Thursday. Said Thursday is also when my mom and I will be packing me up and moving me home (where will Dad be? In Conneticut. Thanks a lot, Dad).

Now for the bad news. Just found out today that the mom of a friend of mine is really sick. Actually, she's more like a friend of the whole family; she's one of the heads of my brother's Boy Scout troop and helped him a lot in getting his Eagle this past year. From what I've learned she has a mass around one of her kidneys, and the doctors aren't sure if it's gotten into the bone or not. In other words, cancer and it may or may not have spread.

To add to this, I'm the only one between my friend and I who knows this information. All my friend knows is that his mom is sick and in the hospital. He's planning on going home tomorrow morning, but I don't think he knows that he's not going to be coming back to take his finals. I just hope I don't see him anytime before he leaves tomorrow, because I'm having a hard time as it is not IM-ing him and telling him everything I know.

-Lady Iapetus, She of Many Identities

The Monmouth College wind ensemble has its spring concert in two days (coincidentally that's Founder's/Scot's Day, but that's a whole different rant). Ergo we need to log in all the rehearsal time we can. Tonight was our informal dress rehearsal, informal because a) it's not the night immediately before the concert and b) we were rehearsing in the basement rehearsal room, not on stage like we normally would for a dress rehearsal.

And why weren't we rehearsing onstage?

Because the religion department of the school decided to invite a theologian by the name of Martin Marty to our school to give a lecture and talk to some of the religion classes. And they picked tonight to have the lecture, in the same auditorium where the ensemble rehearses.

Ordinarily any sane sensible conductor would talk to the religion department and work out this snafu, or else postpone the rehearsal a night.

But not Blomster. Oh, no. We went right on with rehearsal as scheduled, lecture be damned.

At first I thought it would be okay. After all, we'd pulled this stunt earlier in the month when people were on the first floor trying to rehearse for a play. But then about forty-five minutes or so into rehearsal a professor sticks her head into the room and tells us that they're having a lecture upstairs, and that they can hear us all the way up there. Blomster stops rehearsal and tells her that we've got a concert coming up and this is the dress rehearsal for it, and there's nothing he can do. The professor leaves, and someone in the ensemble makes a remark that she's one of the more easily pissed off proffesors.

No apparent harm done. We kept on rehearsing.

We had made it about halfway through the eighth movement of "Pictures at an Exhibition" when who should pop in next but Reverend Fannin, the chaplin. And she did not look happy. My first thought was, "Oh shit, now we're in trouble." I expected Blomster to stop rehearsal and Fannin to chew all of us out; my guess is that she expected us to pack up and go home after that first warning. But no, Blomster kept conducting and we kept playing. One of the percussionists went over and talked to Fannin. I don't know what he told her but she eventually left, still not looking too happy.

Blomster was pretty vocal about his opinion of the whole thing. His opinion boiled down to "we were there first, the students are the ones paying for an education which includes music, blah blah blah." A lot of the students agreed with him, including me (to a point). In fact the only person I talked to who didn't agree was one of the student chaplains. Actually, he kind of agreed with Blomster but said that if he had known about this earlier in the week he could have contacted the Green Army (aka the campus moving crew) move everything back over to Austin Hall, which had been our old rehearsing quarters while the auditorium was being remodeled.

What's my personal take on this? I think that the religion department could have found some place else to have their lecture. There are scant places on campus for the ensemble to rehearse, especially two days away from a concert, not to mention we would have to worry about hauling equipment back and forth between the auditorium and our alternate rehearsal spot. All of that, two days before a concert? I don't fricking think so!

All that's left for me to say is that this is going to make my 10:00 class tomorrow morning very interesting. See, the guy who was making this lecture this evening is coming to speak to my class, and odds are that my professor for that class was at the lecture tonight. And she'll most likely have something to say about what happened. And I don't know whether to out myself as a member of the "trouble-making" wind ensemble or not.

-Lady Iapetus, She of Many Identities

...or for an optional title, "Why it pays to have a Senior Seminar professor with Connections."

Said senior sem teacher has published a book of poetry and is working on her first novel. She also happens to know some of the authors of the books we're reading for that particular class. Somehow she got one of them, Fred Johnson (the author of Bittersweet and A Man Finds His Way if anyone's read them), to come to the college and speak to our class. It's funny, it started out that he would just come and speak to our senior seminar class. Then my professor got him to speak to some of her other classes, like my advanced creative writing class, as well as do a reading from one of his books for the college in general. By the time he actually got here, she had him speaking to a few history classes as well.

It was great. Fred read excerpts from his two novels on Monday night. Then this morning in creative writing we mostly talked about the writing process of his novels. At one point Fred had to borrow the book from one of my classmates since he had forgotten his copy, and she took that opportunity to ask if he would autograph it. He agreed to do it, which just goes to show how nice and open a person he was. In senior seminar we talked more about the book itself and some of the themes and stuff. I swear, we must have taken that man by surprise with some of the things we talked about that had been brought up in discussions during earlier classes. He also autographed the books the rest of the senior seminar students had (there's no way in heck I'm selling that thing back now!)

The whole thing made me take another look at my writing. For years that's one of the main things I've wanted to do with my life, which is why I think I latched onto fanfiction writing when I first actually got on the Internet. Two years ago I took basic creative writing and even though I wanted to write short stories I found myself deviating more towards poetry. The same thing happened when I took advanced creative writing this semester. Overall the reception among my other classmates is pretty good, and I've been reevaulating what I want to do with my writing. At first I wanted to be a novelist or a children's author. But now I think that poetry may be a good path for me.

Boy, just when you think you've got things figured out someone or something has to throw a monkey wrench into the works.

-Lady Iapetus, She of Many Identities

I had a weekend to get this thing done. Hell, I had more than a weekend; I had at least a fricking month! So why the hell am I sitting here at 10:30 in the evening trying to hammer out a 5 page prospectus for a 25 page research senior seminar paper the night before its due? Especially when I don't have a freaking thesis? Gods, I am so tempted to just go to Bruce and tell her I couldn't get the blasted thing done, and ask for help. But what really burns me up is that she told me that there's "lots of information out there" about the author I'm doing my paper on, so I shouldn't have any problems. Unfortunately the guy's got "III" after his name, which makes his dad a "Jr." His dad is also a famous author, so when I type in this guy's name I get info on two different people.

Gods, I am so screwed...

Lady Iapetus

And here it is, the beginning of my senior year at Monmouth College. So far things seem to be working out well. My roommate is currently out at orientation (she's a freshman; why'd they stick me with a fucking freshman? The guy said they'd try to get me a roommate my own age...but I digress), so I'm alone in the room.

Hopefully this year'll turn out to be the one where I actually get along with my roommate for the whole year. Or else, if we don't get along or something else happens that causes one of us to move out, I get a room to myself for the rest of the year and don't have to put up with any shit like I had to put up with the past three years I've been here. Really, I have not had very good luck with roommates. Two moved out on me, I moved out on one and the other...I don't even want to think about the semester I spent rooming with her.

Technically the campus doesn't open up to upperclassmen until noon tomorrow, but I guess the school was okay with us moving in today because a bunch of upperclassmen were moving in today. And classes don't start until Tuesday, and my first class isn't until 2 because my morning class got canceled (the proffessor has to do a convocation). So I've got roughly a day and half to just goof off. Sure, I have to go get my books, and my tv won't be here until tomorrow (long story for another entry), but overall not too shabby of an arrangement, if I do say so myself.

~Adieuddles!

Lady Iapetus

Come August 25, I will be starting my senior year at Monmouth College (no, you aren't hearing my cheers of celebration; I'll have one more semester to go after this year is over). And I've known who my roommate will be since early June. I didn't get around to calling her until Thursday.

Because I don't want another rommate.

I have had nasty luck with roommates in the past. The first one I had went out and got drunk with our quadmates nearly every night. Twice she asked me to let her out-of-town boyfriend spend the night in our room, late enough so that I had no choice but to say yes, and at least two other times she snuck in her on-campus boyfriend to spend the night while I was already asleep. When second semester came around, as soon as I could I was out of there and moved into a room of my own. My second roommate (first semester sophomore year) was okay; really quiet. She didn't live very far away from Monmouth, so it seemed like she went home almost every weekend - which was all right with me. At the end of that semester she moved out because she was going to commute to school next semester. The girl they assigned to my room the second semester of that year was a real nightmare. She was ten times worse than my first roommate. Add to that some pretty sucky grades at the end of the year, and you have the one year of college I'd rather forget. Last year I started out with a roommate, but she moved out after the two week waiting period was up which meant I got my own room for the entire year.

And now they're sticking me with another roommate. She didn't sound too bad, except for the parts about her getting drunk in Germany. I just pray she's not going to be that bad during school, or else once those two weeks are up I am out.

*sigh* I swear, someone up there has got to have it in for me.

Adieuddles.

Lady Iapetus