The Final Stretch--December!

We’ve reached the month of December! It really is the final stretch of this semester.

  

On Monday, my Sophomore Essay will be wrapped up—the final draft turned in and, after 8:30 p.m., the end of public Sophomore Essay presentations, my PowerPoint given. I need to work on my essay this weekend, but thankfully, most of the edits I’ll be tackling are minor. My PowerPoint also needs some tweaking.

 In Intermediate Fiction, we are on our last portfolio which we will hand in at a reading at our professor’s house.  I am not so confident about where I’m at with this portfolio as I am with my Sophomore Essay.Among other things, I need to do a major rewrite on one of my stories. I am not feeling too enthusiastic about either of my pieces this semester. Hopefully the magic will come back when I sit down to write!

My grammar paper is in need of some serious work too. The rough draft I turned in was admittedly not the best I’ve ever done. It doesn’t help that I’m finding it difficult to really take a side with my paper. I’m examining grammatical differences in two versions of the Bible and I am supposed to be arguing that one version is more rhetorically effective. Initially, I decided the modern version was more rhetorically effective, but examining the King James Version has made me realize some if its rhetorical strengths, as well. This essay is due later than my portfolio, though, so I still have quite some time.

There are also final projects coming up in Thought & the Natural Sciences and a final paper in Hebrew Bible.

Something else I am just finishing up is applying to study away for a semester. I will be turning in my two final forms today—then I will officially be applied at Susquehanna’s Office of Cross-Cultural Programs (the application to the specific study abroad program comes later)! Though filling out the application was a bit tedious, it also renewed my excitement for going abroad. I ended up with Northern Ireland as my first choice. I keep thinking, “This time next year, I’ll be in Europe!”

While these next weeks leading up to Christmas break are bound to be academically stressful, I am hoping there will also be time for fun. I am looking forward to the Christmas Candlelight Service, as well as our university president, President Lemons, reading Twas the Night Before Christmas to us in our pajamas. I’m also going to a young adult Christmas party at the Selinsgrove Church of the Nazarene on Saturday. As far as Christmas parties go, though, I am most excited for the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Christmas party. Last year I received a clown mug as my gift!

All in all, though, I really am looking forward to break. It was nice being home for Thanksgiving, but it feels like such a short period. I am also looking forward to a new semester, new routines, and new classes come January.

Fall Break and the Mini-Week

Number 3--my Venetian mask!

It's been a short but active week since I've returned from Fall Break!

Fall Break itself wasn't particularly interesting (it was also way too short), so I thought a fun way to share about it would be looking at a list of all the things I brought back from home after Fall Break that I hadn't had at school before.

1     A bag of clothing
2.   Bags of stuffed animals
3.   A Venetian mask
4.   My Halloween costume
5.   Rainboots
6.   Umbrella
7.   A fan
8.   Cookies

The clothing and stuffed animals are for Alpha Phi Omega, my service fraternity. APO is running a clothing drive as its major project, so I brought some of my clothes to donate. I am asking my parents to bring any clothes they have lying around when they come up for Family Weekend. APO has also made me aware of a stuffed animal drive. I’m pretty okay with parting with all of these stuffed animals—as long as I have my Pillow Pet that I got at APO initiation last year, a hippo I named Hagrid. The stuffed turtle, though, is probably the coolest of the stuffed animals I’m donating. The Venetian mask is also for Alpha Phi Omega. APO has a formal once a year. This year’s formal is masquerade themed. Many people are making masks, but I thought I’d take advantage of the one I had in my room! It’s a souvenier my brother bought me when he went on a trip to Europe in college.

I also brought my Halloween costume—or the key piece of it, which I bought at Salvation Army for 3 dollars over break. My Halloween costume is obscure, and nobody may get it, but I’m still very excited about it. I am being Lindsay Weir from the cult classic television show Freaks and Geeks. This costume basically consists of jeans and a green, oversized Army jacket.

Earlier in the year, I threw out my rainboots because they had a hole in them. This was a decision I came to regret since, for a while there, it was nonstop rain. It was such a relief to get rainboots over break! My former umbrella also had some difficulties—though I haven’t yet thrown it out. A new one is very helpful, though I’ve already used it and struggled with closing it before I go into buildings.

A small fan is one of the best things I’ve brought back from break! My room can get pretty hot. It’s super nice to feel that air.

There is no real reason for cookies, except that they’re Golden Oreos and they’re yummy.

All in all, I was pretty prepared for the short, but active week that was ahead of me! Yesterday was probably the most hectic, as I scrambled to complete a short story for Intermediate Fiction. It was due around midnight, but everyone else with the same due date had sent their stories in prior to mine—which came in around 9:45.

Nevertheless, I headed over to the Christian group I’m involved in, InterVarsity, even though it was only for the final 15 minutes. After InterVarsity was formally finished, a group of us stayed after to make a scarecrow for an event happening at SU called Scarecrows for a Cause.  Scarecrows for a Cause is a competition among different organizations. Each organization submits a decorated scarecrow, and members of the campus community will “vote” for different scarecrows by donating money. The scarecrow that accrues the most money will earn its groups’ charity of choice all of the money made through Scarecrows for a Cause. I didn’t go back until my room late last night, but it was worth it because it was a lot of fun—especially after all that story stress!

Group Projects

In my Intermediate Fiction class, I just completed something I haven't done in any of my other writing courses--a group project. Like the rest of my writing courses, Intermediate Fiction is divided between workshopping people in the class and reading published works. Each group in our class is leading the discussion on two authors. Today, my group had to lead conversation and activity around two David Foster Wallace short stories. I was a little bit worried that I wouldn't contribute enough, because I wasn't leading a section on my own, but I think I was able to ask some interesting questions as well as respond to some of the questions my other group members raised. What I liked about this group project was that it was not nearly as stressful as many I've done!

My Thought & The Natural Sciences course also relies on group projects. For tomorrow, we need to turni n the next stage of our end-of-unit group project. Our professor gave us a lot of freedom as to the topic and medium of our projects. My team ended up choosing to do vlogs, or video blogs, of different scientists involved in aviation, in order to convey biographical information about these scientists as well as scientific concepts. I am playing Daniel Bernoulli. Aviation was before his time, but the Bernoulli principle became very important in flight. Our last due date we all turned in outlines of our research. Tonight I need to write my video script so I can hand that in. The next stage will be actually filming my video, which will be interesting--I feel like I need to find a good costume!

For Friday we also have to come up with an idea for an experiment we could conduct as a team. We're still in the brainstorming stage, but we are leaning towards something to do with psychology.

Usually, I'm very wary of group projects, but for both these classes, I've had good group members. I have yet to really feel my normal group project stress. I hope that I can continue warding that off as our group begins a new project in science.

Short Shorts--Being Challenged As A Writer

When it comes to writing, I would identify myself as a novelist. I love to write longer pieces and can find the idea of writing fewer pages to be stifling. I tend to turn in lengthier pieces than many of my classmates--and those pieces still often beg for more pages. This has been a challenge since both Intro to Fiction and Intermediate Fiction courses are focused on short stories.

In Intermediate Fiction, my tendencies are challenged even more by "short short" assignments. Short shorts can be no more than four, double-spaced pages long. And yet they have to contain so much--or at least, contain very little done very well. Rather than having full-scale workshops, where the entire classes discusses the piece, we break into groups of four people and go over each person's work more informally.

I used my first short short as a chance to experiment. The experiment failed--at least judging by the feedback I received.

Today I have to e-mail out my newest short short to a different small group of students. This piece is a bit more conventional--also, I'm hoping, a bit better. I am both excited and nervous about hearing their feedback. I feel as if I understood short shorts more when writing this one. In my previous short short, I crammed in a lot of different scenes but this piece is more focused on a particular moment.

While I don't see myself abandoning my novelist aspirations to crank out short short anthologies, I definitely see that I'm being stretched as a writer by these activities--and surprisingly enough, I've actually enjoyed writing these short shorts, even if they may not be my best work.

Why I'm Here In The First Place

Already I have a feeling that this year is going to be a busy one.

After completing my Grammar and Science homework last night, I really felt the urge to begin writing my short story for Intermediate Fiction before I went to bed. I have to send out my story Friday so it was important to start on it. I was adapting an idea from something I had written a few pages of over the summer, but I didn’t use any of those pages. Instead I took inspiration from there, but started fresh. Though perhaps it was the looming deadline that motivated me initially, I think it was the writing that kept me staying up. The words were just flowing; whether or not they are any good, I will leave to be determined later.

Finally, homework complete and story started, I was ready to go to bed.

Once I was wrapped up in my blanket, my mind started racing. I had so many ideas for how I wanted the story to play out, and I could’ve cranked out many pages more—even finished a rough, rough draft of the story, if I had the time. Unfortunately I had reached my tired, loopy stage, and I had to wake up fairly early today. Some of those wispy ideas are surely lost, but I did manage to turn on the light, stumble over to my desk, and scribble out some prose. In the end, I didn’t get to bed until 2, which was later than I had anticipated.

Moments like those are a good reminder of why I’m studying at Susquehanna in the first place. While my schedule is going to be kept full with all of my classes, with my Sophomore Essay, with organizations and chapel services and friends, I came to college as writer. I came to college to study my passion. I came to college to hone my skills so I can better write stories that I love, stories that are in me, stories that I think should be told. It’s easy to forget about that when I’m caught up in other stresses.

Obviously I can’t neglect everything else to sit around my dorm room and pound the keys on my laptop all day. Nightly writing sessions at such a late hour, for the sake of my health and sanity, have to be a no-go.  Even if I don’t have all the time in the world, though, I do have to make the time, sometime—not only because my classes require it, but because I love it.

Starting Sophomore Year

After a summer of watching Doctor Who on Netflix, messaging college friends on Skype, and hanging up clothing for minimum wage at my local Salvation Army, I am back in Selinsgrove for my sophomore year.

And believe me, I’m excited about it.

I will definitely miss my family and friends from home, but while at home, I definitely missed Susquehanna.

Today marks my second day of classes. So far I’ve gone to Intermediate Fiction and a little later in the day will have Hebrew Bible. I’m very excited about Intermediate Fiction—so excited that I may have, a bit foolishly, chosen the first date for workshops. I need to have a 6 to 25 page story read to send out to my classmates by September 2^nd! Thankfully, I have a lot of ideas for it, and I have some things already written that I could use.

Yesterday I attended English Grammar and the Writing Process, Thought & The Natural Sciences, and Sophomore Essay. My sophomore essay is going to be something about the portrayal of faith and religion in YA novels. Over the summer I read about six books to give me some background on it. I think I am going to focus my idea by specifically examining how YA novels represent religious doubt and its consequences and analyzing the accuracy or the helpfulness of such representations. This essay needs to be 15-20 pages long, and the first draft is, I believe, due in October. I definitely need to get to work on it. 

Probably one of the biggest differences so far is living in a different dorm. My dorm this year is smaller and a bit quieter. I have a single, a room to myself, instead of sharing a double. It’s nice to have my own space, but it’s also a bit strange since, so far, I’ve associated college with having a roommate. Some of my friends from my freshman dorm, Hassinger, are living with me in this new dorm, the Scholar’s House, so that definitely helps with the transition.

I am excited about what this year has in store! I hope to grow as a person and a writer, form new friendships, and just have a lot of fun along the way. It’s strange no longer being a freshman and seeing all these new faces on campus that are—gasp—actually younger than me, but it’s also nice to return to a familiar place.

Even if I have to get used to walking everywhere from a whole different side of campus.