Trinity University

So I’m sick right now, and my sense of humor - such as it is or isn’t - is out of commission. So for this column, I’m just going to write, and I’ll let you insert quips, barbs, and a cheeky tone of voice whenever you feel so inspired. It’ll be fun.
Really. Super-fun.
So I was going to use the last entry to wrap up my trip to Costa Rica, but then I remembered I spent part of my gap year doing other, less exotic things as well, and it would only be fair to include them too. So I’m just going to end the Costa Rica part. If it’s good enough for Arrested Development, it’s good enough for me. I couldn’t encapsulate it all anyway. Suffice to say the people I met were literally, truly brilliant (quote from Diogo: “Conservation is the science that protects humans from themselves”); I got to see part of a foreign country intimately, not just from a tourist perspective; lastly, as corny as it sounds, I had to learn to live by myself. Not literally, of course, but without the usual crutches, supports, or people to fall back on. So - grandiose philosophical conclusion about that accomplished. If you do want any more details about it (because you’re thinking about doing it?), feel free to e-mail me at ebaker2@trinity.edu.
Now, to the rest of it. Since I was not made of money, I was not going to be doing any more traveling the last nine months of the year off. In fact, I was going to be working to save for school and pay off the rest of the GVI trip. But I’ll get to that in a moment.
First, the fun side: I did a lot of theater. Through the awesome Cedarburg Players, I did two plays, one of which provided the cathartic experience of being a Cockney hooker. Then I adapted and put on a production of Edward Eager’s Half Magic at my former middle school. (With a lot of help, that is. Forget raising a child - it takes a village to put on a play.) It was pretty successful, notwithstanding the request by one of the young cast members that we “call a break” in the middle of a performance so she could use the bathroom. A gentle but enlightening lecture on the nature of theater and “holding it” followed.
Then there was work. I don’t know if I’m allowed to share dirty details about it in a public forum, so I’m just going to take a page from Jonah Hill’s book and say it rhymes with “Schmanera.”
Now, I loved the job itself. They have a “no jerks” policy when hiring, so the people were great. One woman in particular, who has become a friend, is downright inspiring in the scope of her ambition and the steps she’s taking (and has been for six years) to achieve it. She’ll probably make the Fortune 500 list in the next ten years. Which just goes to show that you never know in life who you’re going to meet and where.
But as good as Schmanera was, it was still - as all early jobs are - a lesson in patience and humility. First of all, it meant arising at the ungodly hour of 4:15. Second of all, the bagel slicer deserved its own circle in Hell. It looks like an exciting, novel piece of machinery: you just feed the bagel in and whoosh! - it pops out cut neatly in two. But then the blade dulls, or the bagels are still hot and not firm enough yet, so instead of nicely slicing they spin in place while the blade emits a noise the howler monkeys of Costa Rica would have found comfortingly familiar.
Then, of course, there were the customers. The regulars were lovely, and I even exchanged e-mail addresses with a couple when I went off to school. But, as always, there were some rude ones. An economics lecture I got went like this:

OLD MAN: Have they raised the bagel prices?
ME: Not that I know of, sir.
OLD MAN: I think they’re more expensive than the last time I was here.
ME: Well, I’ve only been here the last three months, sir, but they haven’t raised them in that time.
OLD MAN [shaking head]: Why they would raise bagel prices in a recession is beyond me.
ME: Well, sir, it’s possible they raised them before the recession?
OLD MAN [voice dripping with condescension]: Young lady, we’ve been in a recession for over a year.
ME [if I‘d spoken my mind]: First of all, you idiot, we’ve technically been in a recession since 2001. Second of all, bagels are still the cheapest thrill you can get. They’re a freaking dollar. Why don’t you go over to Starbucks four doors down and complain about the price of lattes?
ME [in real life]: I know, sir. I’m sorry.

See what happens when you enter food service? You wind up taking shit for Wall Street. But getting fifty percent off the best scone I’ve ever tasted (the orange scone, in case you’re wondering) made it worth it.

So I just wanted to give a fuller picture of what an entire gap year entails, because it’s not all fun and games in the jungle. But the whole of it is an incredibly worthwhile experience. The point is, not everybody’s ready for college at the same time, and a year off is a wonderful way to - excuse me while I foray into corny territory - learn more about yourself and the people and life around you. Because if you step back a moment, you’ll realize it’s the first extended break you’ve had since kindergarten, and the stretch of an entire year ahead of you carries possibility and potential that summer vacation cannot. A year’s time to think even led me to choose different school than the one I was previously considering. And Trinity wound up being a perfect fit. Although the bagel slicers here kind of suck too.

Trinity Tidbit: Speaking of theater, rehearsals are starting for the last show of the season, A Servant of Two Masters! It’s my first Mainstage production here, and I’m super-excited. I play a girl who’s pretending to be a man, which means I get to sword fight. So you can look forward to hearing about that in detail. Because what’s better than sword fighting, I ask you? Nothing.

So, I’m thinking if I go on about this indefinitely (and the agreement on my long-windedness should be pretty unanimous by now), then I wouldn’t technically be fulfilling my duty to my school. So instead of a veritable serial, I’ll wrap it up in a couple more parts, and in the meantime, include an awesome Trinity tidbit at the bottom.

Now where was I? Oh yes – life at Cano Palma. Every day, we’d be assigned to a couple different surveys. They were, in no particular order:

Bird survey: bird-watching and species-census-taking along the canal
Morning census: a three-mile walk on the beach to record new turtle nests laid overnight
Excavations: digging up nests that had hatched a couple weeks before and examining the unhatched eggs to see why they didn’t (it was usually fungi/bacterial infection, which led to the catchy adaptation of a famous song that went something like, “I’m bringing fungibac…” Trust me, Justin would be proud.)
English lessons in the local town
Jag walks (wait for it, this one is coming)
And…night walks! My first one went something like this:

It’s late. My alarm goes off. I climb out of my bed, pull on my clothes - all black, as per instructions. I feel dangerous, ready for action. (Are you feeling the film noir tone yet?) I scoop up my backpack and strut to the kitchen. Sarah, Dan and I are about to be debriefed on…measuring turtles and counting eggs. That’s right. We were taking off, in the dark of the night, to record and measure real live turtles as they laid their nests (and to count their eggs for the data records). But as we stand in the kitchen, listening our leader explain the various tools, we hear a sound that would come to be even more dreaded than the alarm clock at four a.m.
Rain.
It started softly at first, but precipitation in Costa Rica goes from zero to sixty in under four, and before we knew it, it was pounding thunderously on the tin roof over head. We still had to go out, of course. Because turtles like it, you know, wet. So we left, and after a half mile of striding along the tide line in the pouring rain, we saw a set of up tracks. With no set going back to sea. Which meant a turtle was still nesting.
My heart leapt into my throat as we stole up the beach. Jon (the leader) had his red penlight out, and as we came closer, that small halo of light lowly revealed a huge, almost inert form on the ground. Her carapace was approaching three feet, and she was already in the trance female turtles enter when they’re actually laying their eggs. I moved in to measure her just as she began disguising her nest, which involved her using her powerful hind flippers to whisk clumps of sand over her egg chamber – and into the face of anyone who might be behind her.
I had to straddle her to get at both ends of her carapace, and it was quite difficult to ignore the respectable amount of sand thwacking me in the face. So I closed my eyes, and felt to the tips of her shell with my fingers. As I did, the rain went from hard to “pissing,” as the British put it. But I reveled in it, unable to believe I was actually touching the back of a green turtle.
Thwack, thwack, thwack. I don’t think the admiration was mutual. I wiped the wet sand from my face as best I could and decided to name the turtle Maria Theresa, after Marie Antoinette’s mother, for being such a spitfire-y bitch.
And then she was done. She turned around and began slowly making her way back down the beach, flippers rhythmically carving grooves in the sand. The lapping water slowly swallowed her up. We admired the beauty for a moment, and then moved on. We still had three hours to go.

But three hours of night walking is nothing compared to the toils of a jag walk - or, if you weren’t being euphemistic, dead turtle walk. We did these once a week to keep a record of the numbers of turtles being killed by jaguars (deforestation was forcing jaguars out onto the beach, they were seeking new prey…bad news for turtles). So that meant walking the fifteen-mile shoreline from Tortuguero to Jalova in the blazing hot sun (usually), keeping an eye and a nose out for what is possibly the worst sight and smell ever.
The big sighting came at about 10:30 a.m. It had been raining off and on (mostly on) all morning. During one of the drier spells (in which I was still damp and cold), I was walking along in the vegetation when I saw the others stop and converge at the middle of the beach. I joined them and, looking ahead, was stunned to see a jaguar stalking the vultures Simba-style. I hurriedly dug into my backpack and pulled out my camera, but by the time I had it up the animal had disappeared. “Did the jag go back into the woods?” I asked Dan.
“There isn’t one,” he said. “We’re just looking at the tracks. They’re really fresh.” And he pointed to a mess of prints in the sand.
“But there is one,” I replied. “It was right over there.”
“Nuh-uh,” Sara said confidently, just behind us.
“Yeah!” I insisted. Then, behind a log flush with the ground, I saw a movement. “It’s behind that log!” I cried. “Its ear just twitched!”
“Emma, what are you talking about?” Sara asked. “That log is tiny.”
None of them believed me, but I insisted we move forward. We’d advanced a good seven or eight steps when, about thirty meters away, the jag pulled up from behind the log and shot into the woods. Sara, Kirstie, and Dan were agape and we all started celebrating. Upon inspecting the log, we found a small pile of poop. We literally scared the shit out of it. He wasn’t going to be eating any turtles that day.
And that is how we do conservation at Cano Palma.

Trinity Tidbit: Tonight, I got to go see Dustin Lance Black (“but all my family and friends just call me Lance, so you can just do that”) speak at Laurie Auditorium. I got there early enough to be second row center. There were so many sound bite-appropriate quotes, I should have written them down. Naturally, I didn’t, but I have to say that he was so relatable and inspiring. When he wrote his screenplay for Milk, no one bought it because Warner Brothers had already had a project in the works for a looong time. So he offered his script to Warner Brothers, who rejected him because “honestly, we’re looking for an Academy Award-winning screenwriter to do it.” He was told repeatedly that doing Milk would ruin his career. But he was so passionate about it, because he had known from the age of six that he was gay, and that this story not only deeply meant something to him but was a story that needed to be told. So he kept pushing it. And - naturally - won an Academy Award.
Getting to listen not just to people but to stories like that is one of the things that makes me really, really glad I’m here.

Seeing jaguars is the awesomest.

Also awesome: DLB.

I’m sure everyone’s been waiting with bated breath for the second installment, probably to the point of neglecting their real lives.
Probably.
Without further ado, Plan B: I signed up for a wildlife conservation expedition in Costa Rica. It was a simple enough task to just pick it – it seemed like the next best trip on the website. It was late at night; I bookmarked the page so I could send in the application the next day. If my life was a movie, though, there would have been something to mark the moment. A cut track from the August Rush soundtrack or the trailer guy’s voiceover, like Cameron Diaz gets in The Holiday. Because it was a big moment. I was hoping it would change my life to some extent, and it did. (True melodramatic statement.)
So fast forward a bit: many a waitress shift, lots of reading, bank-account emptying, and one long night of magically fitting enough stuff to cover my living room floor into one sixty-liter backpack. A couple days later, we - the group of expedition members, or EMs - were floating down a tannin-tinted river on a forty-five minute boat ride to base. (This already after a seven-hour bus ride.) I had been taking pictures of everything since we’d arrived in San Jose, and I wasn’t stopping now. I took pictures of the cows grazing at the edge of the river, and I was from Wisconsin, for crying out loud.
Finally, the river opened up into a beautiful canal. The space was actually wide open, like a lake, and the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The verdure was high and dense, suggestive of motion like a frozen waterfall - an intricate tangle of leaves and vines that looked like something out of Jurassic Park. I half-expected a tyrannosaurus Rex to burst through the wall of green; my stomach actually clenched a little.
Finally, we pulled up to the base. A Costa Rican and a Canadian flag hung side-by-side from the roof of the wooden boat dock. We eagerly clambered out, and the first thing I said was –
“Coffee?”
In the kitchen, the staff had laid out a spread of fruit, juice, and coffee for the welcome meeting. It was at least ninety degrees.
Rebe, one of the head GVI staff who had met us in San Jose and brought us to base, winked at me. “True coffee drinkers find it most refreshing when it’s hot out,” she said. I merely nodded. This country was already foreign.
Rebe pulled up a small PowerPoint on a laptop as we all gathered around the table. She gave us a primer on Costa Rica – a little bit of history, some useful Spanish, culture –
“And the national catchphrase is ‘Pura Vida,’” she said. “This can be used for anything: as a greeting, a response – like, ‘How are you?’ ‘Oh, Pura Vida!’, or as an adjective – ‘These rice and beans are Pura Vida!’ Pretty much anything. It isn’t just the national catchphrase; it really sums up the attitude of Ticos.”
Pura Vida. Pure Life. I liked that.
The transcendental spell was broken, a bit, when we walked into our coed dorms. The wooden bunks had slats for the bottom and mattresses so thin they might as well not even be there. Lizzie, one of the EMs, slung her bag onto a top bunk. A slat fell through. “Well, let’s face it, there’s not going to be any romance in these beds, is there?” Chris, another, asked rhetorically.
And so began life at Cano Palma. The next few days were filled with sightings of howler monkeys (the world’s loudest land mammal, and yes, every cliché ever written about alley cat noises applies), hummingbirds, water-running basilisks, and more. This, of course, amongst all the training and tests we had to undergo to be qualified biological study-conducting lackeys.
Right. This might be a good time to tell you what the purpose of the expedition was (if you already haven’t checked out the website - eh? eh?) The Costa Rica expedition mainly involved studies on the nesting populations of green turtles in Tortuguero, the second-largest nesting beach in the world. We worked with the turtles, their hatchlings, and went on “jag walks” to explore the effect of jaguar predation on the population.
But that generic sound bite is just a brief way of encapsulating all the wonderful things that awaited us in the months to come. Naturally, I’ll have to give the highlights as much attention to detail as I did the cow-on-the-river-bank sighting.
But I can rest assure you, it was all Pura Vida.

Howler Monkey!

Our beautiful boat dock...

...and learning from the genius Diogo. From left: Kirstie, me, Sarah, Diogo, SJ, unidentified forearm

As much as I’d love to be the next Daniel Bergstein, I’m not under any illusions that my blog is all that widely read by anyone besides my family. I know the purpose of these blogs is to give kids ideas about what is life at Trinity, maybe even - dare I say - attract them to the school? (I know, I would totally suck being on an advertising/propaganda committee. I‘m so transparent. A commercial starring me would go like this:

Emma is sitting at the breakfast table, eating Fruity Pebbles. Maribel (her kick-ass roommate) comes up to her.

MARIBEL: Hey girl, whatcha doin?
EMMA: Eating Fruity Pebbles.
MARIBEL: Are they any good?
EMMA: Um, yeah, that’s why we’re doing this commercial. Plus I get to be on TV. [Turns to face camera] Fruity Pebbles are delicious…Hey, Mom and Dad!

And if I was asked to incorporate subliminal messaging? A complete loss.)

Anyways, so I know the purpose of the blogs is to give potential students insight about life here, but Trinity is a small school, and I’m sure for every resourceful, research-heavy kid like Maribel there is one like me who just goes to the “Students Say” section on the Princeton Review and has done with it. And that’s fine. Most of the time, I am a-ok with writing this self-indulgently. But this time, I really, really hope someone is reading, because I feel like this time, what I have to say could be really important to the right person:

It is okay to not go to college right away.

Now, I know it’s not some people’s bag to go to college at all. They find their calling in the military (in which case, thank you and God bless), working, or any other number of endeavors. But for some kids (and I’m guessing it applies to many in the Trinity applicant pool), college is a given. It will follow high school as surely as high school followed middle school. Maybe they want it. Maybe their parents want it. I don’t know. But what I do know (know, I say) is that many of you probably don’t know what you want to do with your life. Eh? Eh? And yet you’re going to college anyway. Why? Because you never thought otherwise. Neither did I. I assumed. I didn’t know where I was going to end up or what for, but I knew that starting in middle school half my baby-sitting money had to go to my savings account for school.

Until my life went down the crapper junior year. It is a long story, but it involves a failure to finish training for the English Channel and major depression, amongst other things. By senior year, I was a functioning human being again, but I was actually dreading the thought of going to college. I had been so detached the last couple of years that I’d forgotten how to make friends. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and not in the “hmm-I-wonder-what-I’ll-wind-up-as” way but the “what-if-I-don’t-take-the-right-path-will-I-ever-be-happy” kind of way. (I’m sorry, I know I’m being totally Debbie Downer, but I want to give you guys a brief background so you don’t think this whole thing was capricious. Although I didn’t know it, this was in the making for two years.)

So anyways, while all my friends were getting really excited, buying Twin Cites sweatshirts and putting dorm items on their Christmas lists, I was secretly panicking. I nodded and smiled when people rhapsodized about next year, I filled out applications, but on more than one occasion, I cried to my mom that I didn’t know how I was going to do it. My mom repeatedly told me if I wasn’t ready when the time came, that I could take a year off if I wanted to. But I waved her away. As if I wouldn’t go to college right away. I just redoubled my efforts to convince myself that I’d be ready when the time came.

But the time did come, and I wasn’t ready. After eight months of me having spontaneous breakdowns and my mother telling me I didn’t have to go to school, I decided to take her up on it. It was, I believe, the second week in July. To which I say, better late than never. So my parents and I had a talk. Multiple long talks. My parents knew what was driving me; part of my depression over the English Channel was the lost opportunity to travel and do something that it would have provided. And [fast forward, fast forward] they finally agreed to let me do it.

My next step: to Google volunteer trips on the Internet. Boy, was I picky. I didn’t have a lot of money, and I wanted to go to another country for a while, long enough to make taking the year off worth it. And I wanted to see a true facet of the country, not what the tourists got. And I wanted to do something good. After lots of searching, I found the website for Global Visions International ( www.gvi.co.uk - yes, that is an invitation to go and check it out inmediatamente). So many trips. I trolled around and found the one I wanted: a thousand-mile trek over three months through Patagonia, collecting information on the condor. I showed my mom (two dialogues today!):

ME: Look! Isn’t this fricking awesome? [I was so buoyed with hope I was again using adverbs.]
MOM: What is it?
ME: A thousand-mile trek through Patagonia. Isn’t it awesome? [Clicking through pictures]
MOM [Guardedly]: Yeah, it looks pretty neat. Challenging, though. What does it involve?
ME [Click, click]: Mountain climbing. And lots of hiking. We’re collecting data on this bird - [coming across a particular picture] Ooh! And rappelling! Look at that!
MOM: I - oh my God, is he climbing an ice wall? Is that what you do on this trip?! You’re not climbing any f*cking ice walls.
ME [grumbling]: Fine. Plan B then.

Plan B - which you’ll have to stay tuned for - turned out to be the best thing I could have ever done. I feel so blessed that I got to experience; it literally changed my life. I really cannot say how much gratitude and delight I feel even thinking about it now. All superlative adjectives are still insufficient to describe it.

Incidentally, this is also how I feel after eating a bowl of Fruity Pebbles.

If there was one thing I thought I could definitively say about my college life in advance, it would be that I thought I was never going to be a part of Greek life. I mean, I'd seen Legally Blonde and Sydney White, which meant I'd seen enough of sororities.
And then I got to Trinity and, walking down the dorm halls the first week, I saw all the little blue flyers with the "Interested in Service?" headings.
"Interested in service?" I thought. "Heck, yes. Thanks to this school, I just finished reading about Paul Farmer and feel guilty as s***." (To learn more about this amazing man and experience guilt and motivation of your very own, check out the book Mountains Beyond Mountains at www.bn.com.)
So I went to the informational meeting, even though the organization putting out the flyers was written as three little letters: APO. Alpha Phi Omega, a Greek service fraternity. But I wanted to do some kind of volunteer work, so I decided to check it out. Turns out, I couldn't have made a better choice. While it's true that on both of the outdoor service excursions so far I've gotten attacked by fire ants (turns out I'm allergic!), I can honestly and non-clichedly say I've met such cool people I wouldn't have otherwise, and done some fantastic things! For homecoming, the theme of our float (read: golf cart) was Office Space, so we covered it in Post-It notes and had a fax machine on the back that we beat up with tree branches. (So we were a bit short on props. But we did have a quiet version of "Damn, It Feels Good to be a Gangster." We cleaned up a highway outside of Gruene, we've played with puppies at the animal shelter and tons more. The service list is ever-expanding. And we do it all without ever donning a toga.
So maybe it's not a fraternity in the traditional sense. But it's Greek life nevertheless, and it has taught me that in college, as in life, you should never say never.
Except for bongs. Well, drugs in general, but seriously, bongs look like those plastic musical instruments PlaySkool designs for toddlers. Way to look like a three-year-old, guys. Besides, I waste enough brain cells on pop culture, and at a school like this, I can't afford to lose any more. It's just, you know, a good rule of thumb: stay away from drug paraphernalia.
And fire ants.

Quote of the Day, from Dr. Judith Norman:

“Socrates was an actual historical figure. He lived and breathed and…annoyed people in 4th century (B.C.) Athens.”

Socrates was also apparently very ugly, with “googly eyes.” After my giggle fit subsided, I realized I was rather surprised. I mean, I’ve learned a bit about Socrates before, but I’d never heard about his Elephant-Man-like appearance. You’d think people would mention this; some famous names just evoke characteristics that go with them. Like Truman Capote and the high voice. Or Woody Allen and the glasses. Johnny Depp and the intangible sexiness. How do you pass over bugging-out eyes? If the man needed a paper bag, by all means, tell us.
But that’s a bit besides the point. People listened to Socrates (and sometimes got the hots for him) because he was so wise. Philosophy = love of wisdom, Socrates = wisdom… lots of people loved Socrates. See the Symposium for further details about debates about love of wisdom and…other things.
Some other tidbits you should know about HUMA:

The “classics” mentioned in the course description are not the slick little paperbacks from the Barnes and Noble Classics Collection. You do not start with the Iliad and work your way up to Charles Dickens. The “classics” mean the Greek and Roman classics, and that’s it. Or maybe you’re not an idiot like me and knew that already.

The Greeks recycle the same characters again and again. And again. Apparently there wasn’t as much creative initiative back then, or any copyright laws. In fact, they were so keen on sharing ideas they probably would’ve published my Harry Potter fan fiction.
Just kidding. I don’t ever actually write fan fiction…down.

The ancient Greek heroes are not the same as modern-day heroes. Back then it was acceptable to sulk, whine, cheat on your wife, blackmail, brawl, and do any number of other unsavory things and still be considered heroic.

So obviously, when I’m talking about modern-day heroes, I’m not talking about politicians, many athletes, or anyone who is consistently featured in People. Just in case that was unclear.

So why ramble about this class? Because it’s worth taking. It’s not what I expected, not what I signed up for, is challenging, takes lots of effort to do well in, and truly opens up new perspectives. It’s like a little microcosm of…real life.

Where you also might occasionally run into men with googly eyes.

My very first blog! I’m feeling so Doogie Hauser/Barney Stinson right now.

Some things I’ve discovered since moving to Texas:

1. Allot approximately twenty more minutes than you think you’ll need for any given task. Because you’ll inevitably run into someone and wind up talking for ages. “Pish,” you say. “That’s bound to happen on a college campus.” But I’m not just talking about friends. I’m talking about strangers. Strangers are more dangerous than friends (and I don‘t mean in the they-reel-you-in-with-candy sense). Everybody’s so damn chummy here that I’ve had more heart-to-hearts with the local baristas than I’ve had at some sleepovers.

2. Sixty degrees is considered too cold to be thrown in the fountain on your birthday. Back home, sixty degrees was the minimum acceptable temperature to get in the pool for swimming lessons. I will gladly take it in February.

3. A Wisconsin accent is a charming novelty. Apparently not everyone thinks of Frances McDormand in Fargo.

4. Whataburger.

5. That I got really lucky with Trinity.

I love it here. I really do. And I’m not just writing that because the purpose of these blogs is to get potential students psyched to go here. The idea of the Chocolate Festival, every-other-week Cheesecake Night, free nacho Wednesdays, the annual Rocky Horror Picture Show and Calvert ghosts traditions can accomplish that end. I love it here because I can call my Acting One professor and faculty advisor Susanna (although I still cringe at not addressing adults by “Dr.” or “Mr.” or “Mrs.”). Not only that, but she’s as open and available as being on a first-name basis would imply. I also love it because in biology, my professor let us choose a theme song for our sex unit. (There’s nothing like coming into class at 9:55 to the strains of “Sexyback.”) I love that our dean has a blog and an open office door. I’m grateful that this school is distinguished enough to attract the likes of David Walton and Pervez Musharraf, and I love that the kids here are so caring, inquisitive, and intelligent, that they not only go to these lectures, but give a standing ovation. And I love my roommate and our Jeeves and Wooster alarm clock, although that really isn’t due to any real effort on the school’s behalf. (Well, the alarm clock, anyways; my understanding is they really do try hard to pair you up with a good roommate match. God knows what they were doing otherwise with my housing application all that time.)

Still sounding propaganda-happy? Well, believe it, because I write the same stuff in my own personal journal at night, too. Only with less consideration for grammar. Actually, I don’t even own a journal. But I do reflect upon these things. So it, you know, counts.

And if you really need a dose of cynicism, I can prattle a bit about my HUMA homework. Because you don’t get on the Princeton Review’s top schools list for Chocolate Festival.
No matter how much of a selling point it might be.