Coe College

It is so refreshing to finally know, 95% sure, where I want to go for college. After a long Friday and a brief Saturday in honor of scholarship weekend, I spent time in classes, with teachers and with students at Coe College. I've determined that I want to go there and I have the sweatshirt to prove it.


The teachers were great. They were all really friendly and tuned in with students (and visitors, like me). They were charismatic and entertaining on the whole. I met probably 10 faculty members and there was one 1 that was so-so. That's pretty good chances of having good professors most of the time. I interviewed with the history department and it was the second time in as many days I'd sat down and chatted with the same two fellows. It was really relaxed and enjoyable; I wasn't nervous at all.


I visited the writing center, intent on finding out what was involved in a writing minor/creative writing minor. And instead, I talked about a writing minor for about 5 minutes with a professor of professional writing and rhetoric. The rest of the time we talked about Coe and it's advantages, what I like to do in and out of school and various other topics until I really, really had to go to my next departmental open house.


The students were really nice too. Their dorms, not so great. But they were engaged and interested. Many of them offered help and advice about Coe and were interested in where I was from, what I wanted to study, what activities I was interested in continuing and what I was doing in school now. Most of the other prospective students were people I could see myself going to school with. (Don't worry, I don't have a roomie picked out... yet.) I loved the community atmosphere that the campus offered and it is just the right size. I wanted a small school... then a big school... and now I've settled on a school of 1300 people and I don't think it's a bad decision at all. It's in town and close to home; I'm thrilled that it has everything I want and I be home in 10 minutes.


Now that I know where I want to go next year... I'm really, really excited for college. I'm excited to try out cross country again to work on speed instead of distance. I'm excited to meet new people in a new place. I'm excited to be on my own but not too far away from home. I'm excited for new learning experiences and chances to learn more about myself, my capabilities and things I may love that I've never been exposed to before. A small liberal arts college in my city is just want I've been looking for.

Apparently, I got ready for hibernation too!

So I've been training for and running half-marathons for the last 11 months. I started up in March 2008, ran my first half-marathon at the Quad Cities Marathon in September 28th and the Walt Disney World half-marathon in January 10th. I've since been training to run the St. Louis half-marathon on April 19th. It's been going swell and I've been getting much faster since I had an issue with my IT band that I need to work on improving my form to get rid of. And my form is better when I run faster.

But running history aside, all winter I've been avoiding the scale and eating what I want. I've noticed some increase in the ring of pudge around my middle, but have tried to ignore it. But today, on a whim, I stepped into the upstairs bathroom and jumped onto the scale and was surprised what I told me. Before winter, I weighed about 119 pounds, give or take a pound on any given day. I expected, at most, 121... 122... but what did I get?

124.8!

How could this happen? Yeah, I eat Little Debbie treats and potato chips and sneak candy like nobody's business... oh. That's how. Maybe I shouldn't hoard food away in my room or sneak candy after my dad goes to bed or pig out every time I get a chance. Perhaps I shouldn't fill myself up completely at nearly every meal even though the food is good. I could always spend less time wishing I had food and spend more time thinking about other things. I could try not to compulsively eat whenever I bored or in the kitchen...

This sounds like a good plan.

It's February 11th and I have basically two months and 8 days to lose 5-10 pounds. Not only will this make me feel a lot better about myself, feel more healthy and make it easier to pick flattering clothes every morning, this will help me run a sub-2:00 half-marathon. My first was 2:18:34, my second 2:06:45 and this one I'd like to take those 7 minutes off... if not more. And losing 5 pounds at least would aid in that a lot

So let's see how it goes, shall we?


EDIT: My dad and I are now having a bet. He wants to lose weight too, so we are going to see who can lose 5% of their body weight the fastest. Whoever loses owes the winner the gap of the two percentages, times $5. It's quite fair and our first "weigh in" is this weekend. Nothing like some good old competition to get the ball rolling.

JANE AUSTEN WILL DIE!

Ugh. After reading nothing but Jane Austen novels for the last 2-2.5 months for AP Lit, I swear on my life I will never pick up another Jane Austen book for another 10 years. I am so tired of the humorous societal satire and the hand-touching, eyes-meeting romantics. Give me something, anything, with different themes and storylines!

I'm dying to read something new. I can't even open Mansfield Park without wanting to kill myself.

Hopefully, at the end of the term, I can get some people in my class to read The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce) with me.

At least, I can go to class every day, comforted with knowing I will listen to my classmates butcher the pronounciation of words and rhythm of speech for plays such as Othello, Oedipus and Tartuffe. That's not Jane Austen!

Wuthering Heights

(I thought I'd blogged about this already, but apparently I forgot.)
For the end of last term, my AP Lit class read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. And all I can say, is that I wish that that woman had written much more before she died. The book was fast-paced for a book written over a century ago, much faster than those of her sisters as well as others she is often compared with, such as Jane Austen.
I really enjoyed the book itself. It had a lot of gothic symbolism and there were tons and tons of character things that were great and essential. The plot was really windy and twisted and I was glad we did a acting-out of it before we read the book, or else I'd have been terribly confused (maybe, maybe not...).
All in all, I really liked the book. It belongs on my top list of classics that I enjoyed reading.
(I'd write more, but I really don't feel like it. I'm so lazy.)

The Twilight movie!

So just like millions of other girls my age, the highlight of my week thus far has been the seeing of the new Twilight movie. I went in with mediocre expectations, really expecting only to laugh most of the way through at the cheesy-ness of many of the lines. Some things work well in books and horribly in a movie; there was plenty of evidence of this. (Example: The lion/lamb conversation. Cute in the book, corny in the movie.)

Overall, I was pleased with the movie. It was cute and fluffy and the romance was slow-moving and then all of the sudden it was deep, passionate, never-ending love. But there were many things that were just... awkward or strange to watch. Such as the romantic scenes, the angry scenes, the facial expression scenes... but really, how can these people be expected to know how to be vampires? They're only human.

I'd give this movie about 3.5 stars. I spent half of the time whispering to my friend jokes about the movie, repeating certain lines and adding my own extras or making fun of the movie in general. But that was what made the experience all the more enjoyable, to be perfectly honest.

If you want to go see this movie, don't expect a masterpiece. Just enjoy the mindless, strange romantic-osity and don't think to hard about what they're saying, because sometimes it's just a "wtf?" or "aaaawkward" moment.

Wisdom teeth... GONE!

I got my wisdom teeth out yesterday. And despite the anxiety and how gross it would be and all the preparations I made for pain, discomfort and drug-induced sleepiness, I feel just fine. The surgery went great, although I apparently told the nurse when I was "coming to" all the food and Disney DVDs I had waiting for me at home. I do not remember that at all. I only remember saying that I felt intoxicated and that my arms were heavy. Then the nurse helped me walk to the van and my dad helped me into the van. I don't remember how we got to the pharmacy, but we did. And then my dad helped me out of the van and down the stairs, where I promptly went pee and started to come back upstairs but was told to go back down and lie down. I wanted a drink of water, apparently forgetting I had inches of gauze in mouth, making drinking impossible.

I stopped bleeding regularly around 3:00 - 4:30. In the morning, I was bleeding so much that the gauze was full and I had to spit every minute or so into a towl for an hour. But now the only time I bleed at all is after I eat a lot (which would be about 2 puddings cups, and I only eat one at a time) or laugh really loud (like when I was watching Scrubs last night).

Waking up this morning, I'm a little stiff and sore in the mouth area. But I haven't taken any pain killers or ibuprofen sine 11:00 pm yesterday. I will probably ice my face a bit and maybe take some ibuprofren afterwards. But this whole recovery thing is pretty easy and vaguely painless. I'm pretty used to mouth pain, having had braces for 3 years (thank God those are gone...) and having only lost 6 teeth on my own - the rest (plus two permanent teeth) were pulled by my dentist.

I have four days to recover and I think I'll be totally fine when I go back to school Monday. This time that I get alone and off work this weekend will be used to revise my script for our AP Lit paper and also to do plenty of work on my NaNoWriMo project. It's a story I started in the summer and I'm adding 50,000 to the 25,531 I already have. I've made a lot of progress. In 6 days, I wrote 13,679 words. Let's keep it going, right?

Okay, this is horribly long and has nothing to do with books or movies that I've watched. (I watched The Little Mermaid, Hercules Mulan and Casper yesterday and am reading Wuthering Heights for AP Lit. It's good, I like it.)

Oh, and I'm hungry. Pudding and jello are good, but not as filling as I'd like. But once done with one, I'm too sore to eat a second. Hmmph. But I get mashed potatoes and soup today, so hopefully that will be a little more satisfying.

Ahh, November...

November. What a great month.

It's National Novel Writing Month. This year, I am continuing a story I began this summer. It's historical fiction, WWII from a woman's American homefront perspective. I've done a lot of work with timelines and plot planning and put 25,531 words into it in July. So far, I've added 9,913. Hopefully, by the end of the month, I will have 75,000 words and a finished novel that I can edit and be happy with. Check out my profile!

It is also a time for freak nature occurences. Last week, it was 40 degrees. This week, it's 70. Not that I'm complaining. Plus, thanks to daylight saving time, it is light out when I go to school, even though it sort of sucks that it gets dark between 5:00 and 5:30.

The only thing that sucks this month is the cumulation of long-term projects I should have started and finished weeks ago instead of leaving to the last week. And I have to get my wisdom teeth out in two days, which sucks. But at least it will be over with.



PS: Happy voting day!
And happy We Have a Black President Named Barack Obama day!

Requiem for a Dream

This weekend, I downloaded the soundtrack to the film Requiem for a Dream. It's a gorgeous soundtrack, with a lot of repetitive themes. But it inspired me to rewatch this horrifically beautiful movie as well.

First of all, the movie has distinct, symbolic style. The movie all about addiction. Mostly to drugs, but also to other things we may not even consider like food or television. There are close-ups to the pills that Sara Goldfarb takes, as prescribed by her doctor (but are actually amphetamines), the drugs that Harry, Marion and Tyrone are taking, and their eyes dialating as the drugs take effect. This is to symbolize that the drugs fill their whole world, just as they fill the screen. There are many other things that may seem stylistic in the filming of the movie but are actually symbolic.

The film is quite explicit, which cannot be denied. There is drug use and it's effects, such as the grossly infected arm of Harry Goldfarb. There is murder and prostitution and the terror of a mental hospital, accentutated by the loud warning bells heard in the soundtrack. The music is used continuously to make sure you know that the film isn't going toward a white light at the end of the tunnel. There is the "overture" theme, which is classic for movie trailers. Everytime I hear it, I think of Sara Goldfarb cleaning her apartment in a time progression scene where the camera moves slowly from right to left and she moves in fast-forward from room to room, cleaning every surface. Then there is the "dreaming" theme and the "fear and tension" theme. There is also the "party" theme, which is used in either party situations or high tension situations (like the heroin run on the supermarket).

This movie is not for the weak of heart. There is nothing to keep you away from seeing what they feel. You see the blood splatter on Tyrone's face. You see Sara's fearful eyes when they hook her up for electroshock therapy. You can see the pain in Harry's face as his arm becomes infected. You can see the breaking of Marion's heart as she realizes what she must do for her next fix. And you watch all their hopes and dreams crumble, destroyed by the harshness of addiction and reality.

This movie is haunting, beautiful, compelling and explicit. I find it absolutely facinating and once I've watched the ending, I want to start it all over. You always hope something will change, but nothing does.

If you care to watch the film, you can watch it in its entirity on Hulu HERE.