Ben, ‘11

March 7, 2008

So, I’ve spent the past few hours trying to figure out how everything went down. Here’s what I’ve determined thus far:

Who: Ben
What: Took 3 Midterms
Where: University of Richmond
When: One 24-hour span
Why: He doesn’t want to fail his classes
How: THE BIG UNKNOWN

Life had been fairly quiet up until this week. However, everything began to converge the week before Spring Break and my life felt crazy and overwhelmed at times. Let’s take a look back and see what caused this crazy week.

Sunday night was spent relaxing while attending a Bobby McFerrin concert here on campus. He is most famous for “Don’t Worry. Be Happy”, but he didn’t even sing that song. He and his group called Voicestra had a very unique style where they didn’t sing in English, but just with different tones. It was a little weird for me, but a decent performance.

Bobby McFerrin and Voicestra perform

Then, it all began Monday. I found out early in the morning that I was accepted to Lakeview for next semester. I will be in the Campaigns 2008 program and I’m excited. Not only was I accepted, but my friends Andrew, Buddy, Jimmy, and Caleb also were accepted. The odds that we would all get into the program of twenty was quite small. However, we only had two days to accept the invitation and everyone was frantically trying to find out who else was accepted to get an idea for roommates, since the administration refused to release a roster to us. In the end, I’m in it and will figure out rooming arrangements after break.

There was also a meeting for the Collegiate Disaster Relief Team on Monday. We met for the second time and went over the basics for our Spring Break trip. I’m excited to be going to New Orleans, but am also ready for any break in general.

Along with CDRT, Relay for Life has begun to pick up. I’m the captain of the InterVarsity team and we’re a little slow in getting other InterVarsity students to join because it’s a busy time in everyone’s life. There are lots of teams, mainly sororities and fraternities, and, as a campus, we’ve already raised $11,000. If you want to check out my team’s progress and get an idea of what Relay for Life is like here at the University of Richmond, you can find that here.

Also with InterVarsity, I officially turned in my application to be on InterVarsity Leadership next year. It’ll be another activity for me to handle, but I think I can do it. Additionally, I went to Small Group, but was exhausted, so I didn’t contribute much. Everyone in the group was facing a long week and was just trying to crawl to Spring Break. Finally, 3000-12 officially wrapped up. In case you forgot, I did 3000 push ups and memorized 12 Bible verses over the course of two weeks. We got together Wednesday night and some of the guys finished their final 400 in half an hour. One guy was way behind and did 700 in 40 minutes. I had already finished, but still sat around talking and relaxing before heading to my room to do more work.

Right in the middle of the week, amongst hectic studying of finals, D-Hall had a Carribean night and had typical food from the region and brought in a live band. It was pretty fun and a nice break. D-Hall does a great job of providing specialty nights for the students.

They brought in a Carribean-style band to play their drums and perform
They had Cuban custard, conch fritters, and other Caribbeann-style foods
A fruit station with canteloupe, honeydew, kiwis, and coconut next to the palms

Student Government went really late this week due to some important issues and funding requests. Everyone wanted to get out of there to go study, but we just had a lot to cover. I guess it could have been worse. The women’s meeting ran two and a half hours. I showed them the winning design for the class flag for the Richmond College Class of 2012, since I’m in charge of it as the Class Chair of 2011. I would show it to you here, but I’ll keep it a surprise. I think it’s pretty cool.

I have been working on a project that lets students know what Student Government is doing to address their main concerns and wanted to finish it this week. I’ve been in touch with a lot of the administration and just met with the director of Dining Services this week. It doesn’t look like I’ll finish the project by Spring Break, but I tried. That alone took up a fair amount of my time.

Through this all, I had midterms and classes to deal with. I tried to study as much as I could. I was given awesome study guides in all of them and basically knew the essay questions for each midterm, but I still studied a lot. I ended up getting to bed at 4 AM, 2 AM and 3 AM trying to get in some more studying. I voluntarily added the third midterm because it was currently scheduled for right when we got back from break and I wanted it out of the way and felt confident enough about it. All three ended up falling within a 24-hour time frame and I just wanted to get through them. Well, I did it and am still alive somehow. I feel good about them and just have to wait for the grades to be returned.

To celebrate after my last final, I went to the coffee shop, got a frozen lemonade and chocolate peanut butter dessert and did two hours of math homework. Fun, I know. I did realize that I have a ton of money left in my meal plan to spend at our coffee shop, smoothie place, and on-campus bar and grill, so I’ll need to start treating myself a bit more.

My treat from 8:15 at Boatwright (our coffee shop)

I also celebrated by going to Natalie MacMaster at Modlin. She is a Celtic fiddler and did a good show. I enjoy Celtic music, so I was excited to put everything else out of mind and just relax for the first time this week. She had a cello player in her band that was incredible. Oh yeah, he had just turned fourteen years old. He made me feel like I, for my age, hadn’t accomplished much yet in my life.

A song by Natalie MacMaster and her band

Anyways, this week may not have sounded incredibly busy, but I was always moving. Besides that, the stress of everything catches up to you after a while, along with the sleep deprivation. So, I’m going to get some sleep and then wake up bright and early to embark on a long bus ride to New Orleans to begin our service trip to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. The trip entails fifty hours on the bus, so I’ll have time to wrap up whatever work I have left at that time.

Quote of the Week: “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” — Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
Thought to Ponder: If bald people work in a restaurant, do they still have to wear hairnets?
Shout Outs: Grandma for continuing to check up on me
UR Spotlight: Mock Trial Our Mock Trial team is doing incredibly well this year. We are sending two teams to nationals, which is a big deal, and everyone who’s in it loves it. I have a good friend who swears “its the easiest/funnest one credit you’ll ever take”. The level of commitment varies, but most people really enjoy it and get pretty committed, some comparing it to the participation level of a high school varsity sport with 6-8 hours a week at busy times of the season. My friend told me that “you aren’t required to go to any tournaments, but you’ll most likely have so much fun that you’ll want to”. The team has participated in at least eight tournaments this year, at places such as Yale, Duke, George Washington, and Rhodes College. My friend who is on Mock Trial says it’s a great way to make friends since you do lots of road trips and flights as well as stay in hotels together (all paid for by the University). I can tell that he’s having a great time and if you’re interested, you can contact me and I will put you in touch with some contacts who know all about Mock Trial.
YouTube Video of the Week: