The Post About Katie

What happened to me blogging semi-consistently?  I admit, this blog is not one of my top priorities, but I don't want to stop.  It really is nice to just write once in a while.  Math and economics don't allow for much individuality or creativity.  I need this.

But what I'm going to post right now is something I wrote a week ago:

Friday, February 18

So it’s about 9:45, and I just got off the phone with my best friend Katie.

Generally, we don’t spend that much time on the phone with each other.  Admittedly, neither of us is the best with the whole constant communication thing.  This is probably due to the fact that our friendship began after getting each other for potluck roommates freshman year.  We loved each other (once we got to know one another), lived together for two years, and the rest is history.  Anyway, it was much easier to talk when we saw each other every single day.  Now we’re older, busier, and she’s…

ENGAGED!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!  That is what she just called to tell me.  Sorry for the long lead in, but I thought this announcement deserved a little build up!  I cried when she told me.  It’s not every day your best friend gets engaged to her soulmate.

Of course, nobody is going to see this until everybody else knows anyway.  Katie is in a sorority, and she should be having her candlelight ceremony Monday.  I don’t plan on spoiling the surprise!

Anyway, there go our grades for our final semester of college.  We have more important things to attend to… namely, A WEDDING!

I’m so, so, so excited.  It’s been a long time coming; she and Zack have been since first semester of freshman year.  Everybody knew it was coming, and we’re all glad Zack finally proposed.

I had to get this out, but I don’t want to say everything I’m thinking right now.  I’ve got to save something for my toast at the wedding.  ;)

^ I am still just as excited as I was a week ago.  Yay yay yay!  And P.S. I cried again during the time when I knew she was having her candlelight and again when I went over to see her and her ring!  I can't help it.

I'm so excited to get closer to Katie and all of my fellow bridesmaids over the next 5 1/2 months.  Not long to plan a wedding, right?  But this is going to be the best kind of busy ever.

Until next time, readers!

Edit:  Here's a picture of me and Katie with her RING!

V-Day or D-Day?

Today is February 14th, Valentine's Day.

For some people, it is among the greatest days of the year.  For others, it is among the worst.  And of course there are plenty of people who are totally apathetic about it.

If I had to put myself in one of these overgeneralized categories, it would be the last one.  I am neither in a romantic relationship nor incredibly spiteful toward those people who are in relationships, so I can't say I belong in the first or second group respectively.

Let me reiterate: I am not bitter about my single status.  My lovely friends reassure me that the right guy will come along eventually.  And I think they're right!  I just have to trust that someone other than me has a hand in it.  Once I'm out of school, I think guys will be less prone to be intimidated by my intelligence.  Particularly if I don't ever get a job!  (The last two sentences are in jest, by the way.)

All that being said, I see where the many people who loathe Valentine's Day are coming from.  As noted in my title, the abbreviation "V-Day" bears a striking resemblance to "D-Day."  A little history refresher for my readers, D-Day was June 6, 1944, the day the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, France.  The mission was a success, but there were a lot of casualties along the way.

Forgive the loose and possibly distasteful analogy, but that's kind of exactly how Valentine's Day is for single people.  Every way we look on Valentine's Day, we are subjected to displays of love that are not for us (like enemy fire).  It can really hurt sometimes; thousands, if not millions, of emotional casualties I tell you!

So, a few words of advice to those of you who are taken: try not to rub your happy relationship in other peoples' faces just because it's a holiday.  But please do enjoy the day and feel extra grateful that you have somebody who loves you.  Valentine's Day always reminds me that I have plenty of people in my life who love me, even if it's not romantic love.  V-Day is a holiday for all sorts of love!

I don't even feel like discussing the whole argument that Valentine's Day is an evil plot by the greeting card, flower, candy, and jewelry companies.  We all know they make bank off this holiday!

However, I do want to include a little something from my favorite movie, "500 Days of Summer."  The main character Tom writes greeting cards for a living.  He's especially good at it when he's high on love, but his work suffers when his relationship with Summer goes sour.  One day Tom just can't take it anymore, and he goes on a bit of a rant about what "service" greeting card companies provide.

"This is lies. We are liars. Think about it. Why do people buy cards? It's not because they want to say how they feel. People buy cards because they can't say they feel or are afraid to. And we provide the service that let's them off the hook. You know what? I say to hell with it. Let's level with America. Or at least let them speak for themselves. Right?"


I'll leave it to you to interpret that.  So I guess that's all, folks!

P.S.  Happy birthday to two of my best friends Katie and Lauren.  I am glad I can focus on the fact that today is both of your birthdays when I don't want to think about Valentine's Day! ;)

Procrastination and Education

This is not a real post.  It can't be a real post; I have a math test in 8 1/2 hours for which I still must do a lot of studying!

So I guess it's an imaginary post!  And what better to write about than what is currently one of my biggest troubles?!  Advanced calculus?  No.  Although that really is my biggest problem right now, I doubt many of my friends would care to read about that.  What I'm writing about is procrastination!

Just about every college student I know claims to have a problem with procrastinating.  You think we would've learned our lesson after the all-nighters, poorly written papers, and bombed tests most of us have had because of putting things off until the last minute.  But very few of my friends have been so adversely affected by procrastination that they've sworn it off.  Lord knows I haven't!  Procrastinating actually usually turns out well for me.

In the morning, I'll have to drag myself out of bed to take my test tired and bleary-eyed.  But hopefully I'll be awake enough to spit out all the information I "learned" the night before on my test paper.  I can usually pull off that much, at least.  Too bad I'll probably forget loads of the material as soon as I leave my classroom.

So what good will my procrastination do me?  Well, hopefully it will get me a decent grade on a math test.  But that really isn't what I should be striving for as a college student, is it?  I really do want to learn, and I feel like the way the American education system tests my learning (and has tested my learning since I started elementary school) is not terribly effective.

I may have a 4.0 GPA, but I don't feel like that says much about my intelligence or my abilities.  I think it much more appropriately measures my ability to cram and spit out my "knowledge"on a piece of paper.

There's the problem, and I wish I had a practical solution to propose.  All I can really suggest is that our education should be more focused on experience and application rather than on memorization and regurgitation.  I think it would better prepare students for the real world, whatever that is.

But who is going to listen to what I have to say?  I'm just an insignificant product of America's public education system.

A Morning Without Twitter

In honor of the crisis in Egypt, I left all of my electronic devices at my apartment today.  Okay, I'm lying about my reason; I was just in a big rush this morning and forgot my phone and iPod.  It wasn't a political statement, but perhaps it's appropriate given the oppression in Egypt.  The difference is that I'm on the Internet and able to post this blog now...

Anyway, I felt super disconnected from the world (and totally clueless about what time it was) as I rushed from Ten Hoor across the Quad to Gordon Palmer and couldn't even tweet about it!  I reached the 3,000 tweet mark yesterday, so you can probably infer that I am a prolific tweeter.  I tweet when I'm feeling happy, sad, angry, annoyed, bored, pensive, and creative (and most often when I find something hilarious or appalling and need to share it).  It's a great outlet to break up the monotony of a day.

Since I didn't have that outlet this morning, I decided to do a little stream of consciousness thing on, get this, real paper.  I cannot guarantee each of my thoughts will be shorter than Twitter's character maximum of 140 since I'm not writing on my phone, Twitter, or a word processor, but I'll try not to be too wordy.  Enjoy the things I would've tweeted today:

• (As I was half running across the Quad to math class) Power walking is fun.  It's boosting my metabolism to burn extra calories in class!
• We just worked problem 2b from a section in our math book.  Nerd behind me said, "To be or not to be?"  Thank God nobody laughed.
• Stop asking open-ended math questions and expecting any of the ten people in this class to answer.  It's too early for this academic back and forth; just teach.
• No joke for 3a, buddy?
• What is the limit of my boredom as time in this class approaches INFINITY?
• Why are there not clocks in classrooms anymore?  It's like you want students to check their cell phones in class.
• I am going to assume my math teacher let us out late.  I may not have the time, but I feel like it's a safe bet since he always does.
• Things I hate #1: Stupid assignments.  I am here to learn, not to spend my valuable time writing an exam for this class. #givemeabreak
• Things I hate #2: When it starts raining between classes.
• (And so begin my GBA 490 "tweets.") I am obviously not cutthroat enough for the business school.
• Gotta love the debate about cussing in the classroom.  It doesn't bother me, but I don't thing censoring bad words takes anything away from the learning environment.
• Most important qualities in a wife, according to a guy in my class: ambition > fitness > sense of humor > intelligence.  Awesome, business school senior.
• The girl next to me is breathing so loudly.  You're awake, homegirl.  Stop snoring.
• Lakeside may have a lot of good memories, but the food and music are nothing short of horrendous.

I wouldn't have actually tweeted all of those things.  Mostly because I don't want people to unfollow me for tweeting every few minutes, but also because it's hard to text in class sometimes!  Haha.

Anyway, that was my morning and what I thought was an interesting reason to update my blog for the first time in a week.  I hope you enjoyed my rambling!