2008 September Archive at Ben, ‘11

Archive for September, 2008

Energy Intake Low

September 26, 2008

Once again, you find me at 2:30 AM on a Friday morning. Somehow, I have already had one month’s worth of classes. I can’t believe it. Regarding this past week in my life, there have definitely been plenty of ups and downs. It seems like that is always the case with me. There’s a popular saying that I like. It goes like this, “Life is a lot like a roller coaster; they both have plenty of ups and downs, but you will never forget the ride.” Well, it seems like those ups and downs come daily for me now. I’ll start with the highlights.

Last weekend was Family Weekend, which is always jam packed with activities. I ended up attending Family Weekend Worship and Family Weekend Brunch for InterVarsity. I also went out to eat at a very nice restaurant in downtown Richmond. I capped it off by watching our football team play a fantastic game and win handily, then attending a great a cappella concert in the Greek Amphitheater with all four student a cappella groups. Oh yeah, did I mention that I didn’t actually have a family for any of this? I was an orphan, but two of my friends’ families adopted me. Thank you to Buddy’s family and Sarah’s family! Because of our fantastic football game, our team moved up in the rankings and is now ranked #1 in the nation for the Football Championship Series. The team is incredible and we are so excited for this year. However, in order to attend the game, I passed up the chance to see Madeleine Albright speak on-campus. I guess life has its trade offs.

InterVarsity Family Worship

Family Weekend A Cappella Concert

Preview of the Octave’s newest CD which I just bought

Other fun events happened Friday night. A friend won tickets to a concert at The National, which is a downtown Richmond music venue. We had never heard of any of the bands before, but the tickets were in the VIP lounge and the offer was too good to pass up. So we went. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was a fun way to spend a Friday night. We returned to campus just in time to watch a Mentalist perform. I remember his show last year and I definitely wanted to catch him again. What he does baffles me. While blindfolded, he can guess the currency of a bill in his hand and also the serial number of that currency. He also did some crazy mind readings and other tricks. Great show.

The concert at The National

Video of the this mentalist performing at other events

More fun events happened this week when we had a local TV reporter visit our Camapigns 2008 class. We had a very interesting conversation with him about how the media handles campaigns. We have been discussing this a lot lately, whether there’s a bias in the media and how certain topics should be discussed. Needless to say, it was pretty fun talking to a local TV celebrity and seeing how engaging and open he was. Our professor is a regular on the TV station, serving as a political expert for their news segments, so I guess he pulled some of his connections to get us this special visitor.

Lastly, I am writing a Narrative Speech for my Rhetoric class. I could hardly stay awake to work on it the night before my Speech Center appointment, but I pulled it off at the last minute. Naturally, I was worried that it wasn’t my best work. However, the speech consultants loved my speech, which really made my day. They also encouraged me to consider being a Speech Center consultant next year. All it would take is one more Rhetoric class in the spring and I would have a simple, well-paying job. I’m quite interested and it seems like it’s something up my alley. I can be academically critical at times and do enjoy proofreading papers, so I need to decide if that’s something I want to pursue. My Rhetoric professor is begging me to do it, but I’ll have to decide for myself.

With all of these things going on in my life, it’s easy to see that I don’t have a ton of free time. Adding on to my already long list of events, I have classes with difficult tests along with group projects that I take the lead on and so much more. Lately, however, I have been starting to get dragged town. I like what I do, but it seems like I am pouring so much more out of myself than I am getting poured back in. Frankly, my life violates the conservation of energy law. Energy intake is low, but energy output is high. Maybe I’m just cynical in thinking that not a lot of time and energy are being poured into me right now, but I think everyone who takes on responsibility in several area runs into this same problem. I know some of my friends are in the same boat. Whether it’s a frustration with the women’s Cabinet regarding a falling through of plans on their part, making last-minute schedule changes for an organization, attending training workshops, going door-to-door handing out things for Student Government, tabling in the Commons for an organization, or volunteering all Tuesday morning at a local middle school’s ESL program, I just feel that I am giving all I can into these groups so that they do well, but I’m not really being rewarded as much as I would hope. It’s even more frustrating when you set expectations for other people and they don’t meet them.

I’m trying to work out a solution to all of this, but I’m not there yet. This is just how I’m feeling right now at 3:30 AM. Somehow, though, I will be up and ready for class in four hours. I will make it work. I wish I could be all happy and cheery all the time, but that’s not the life of any college student. My life, however, is looking up for this weekend. I’m doing fanastic in terms of homework and my schedule is fairly light. Let’s just hope for the best. My friend got Rockband, a type of karaoke music band game, which has been a huge hit as of late. Maybe I’ll get some quality time in with that this weekend. Like I said earlier, my college experience has had a lot of ups and downs, but I know that I will never forget the ride.

My friends playing Rockband

Quote of the Week: “You grow up the day you have your first real laugh–at yourself.” - Ethel Barrymore
Thought to Ponder: Do prison buses have emergency exits?
Shout Outs: Buddy and his family as well as Sarah and her family for adopting me
YouTube Video of the Week:

My friends and I have been sharing this video all week

Published by Ben on September 26, 2008 in Sports Games, InterVarsity and Community Activities. 1 Comment

Never a Dull Moment

September 19, 2008

I’m back. It’s been a crazy week (with spectacular weather I might add). It’s late Thursday night/early Friday morning at 2:30 AM. I just finished a project that took me three hours. It was for Software Tools and taught me how to use the library’s online databases. So now, if anyone needs for me to tell them where to find the industry report for ice cream in Italy in 2005, I can tell them where to go. Yeah, pretty ridiculous. I apologize if some of this doesn’t make sense. It’s late. I’ve already caught myself typing December instead of September as the month.

Since I’ve been crazy busy, I’ll jump right in. After I left you last, I had a busy weekend ahead of me. I went to the Cellar, our on-campus pub/restaurant, on Friday night and listened to the live band and hung out with a good friend and one of his freshman friends. Then, we headed back to our dorm and watched some TV before turning in at 12:00. It was early, I know. However, there was a reason for it.

Last weekend was InterVarsity’s annual Virginia Beach Sunrise Trip. We all get together and drive to Virginia Beach at 3:00 AM to watch the sun rise over the ocean. It was quite amusing to see so many people still out and about on a Friday night as we were getting ready to leave. Both I and them were calling it a day, just in very different ways. They were heading back to crash and I was waking up for the day. I didn’t sleep at all in the car and this would continue the period of 43 hours in which I only got four hours of sleep. I’m a college student, so I can still put that off. I did meet some awesome people along the way to Virginia Beach and we had some very fun conversations. In all, we had 120 people go and we really reached out to some other organizations on-campus in the process. While the sunrise was partially blocked by all of the clouds, it was still a great trip.

Arriving to Virginia Beach in the pitch black night (5:30 AM)

Watching the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean with friends

Having fun on the beach

InterVarsity joined other groups and we had 120 people go.
It was an incredible turnout

Upon returning to school, we had a home football game that I went to. We won handily, mainly due to our five interceptions. Sadly, my driver wanted to leave early, so I missed some of the best parts of the game. Because of our great performance, we have now risen to #2 in the nation in the rankings for the Football Championship Series (D1-AA). We’re really excited. This week we have another home game for Family Weekend.

Kickoff of Richmond vs. Towson

I wrapped up the weekend on Sunday by attending church, watching the Packers’ game, attending a Council for Christian Unity meeting, and speaking at Investiture. Investiture is the annual event in which all of the freshmen men are officially accepted into Richmond College. I wrote a speech for it and represented the Class of 2011 in giving reflections on my experience here thus far. I thought it went quite well.

The hanging of the Class of 2012 flag

You are probably wondering when I actually do my homework. Well, I have had to become meticulous with my planning. I now have a fully-packed calendar with me at all times. Additionally, I’ve started keeping track of all assignments and when they will be do. So, I try to work ahead and save myself some stress of last-minute efforts. As you can see in the photo, I have every assignment due for the next two weeks available for me to check at any time.

My schedule, assignment tracker, and to-do list

Generally, I am on top of my assignments, but there was one last week that got the better of me. It was a rhetoric paper on “What is rhetoric and why is it important”. I experienced some of the worst writer’s block in my life. I just could not get it written over the weekend. Finally, after hours and hours of wasted time, it started to come to me. It was due Wednesday and I finished it Monday night. At the time, I was very pleased with it. After the last word, I refused to look at it until the next day. Well, I spent a lot of time on it the next day, but never read it. The work was for citations and technical aspects. Before I knew it, it was late at night and I was utterly exhausted. I wanted to do one more final proofread to make sure I was pleased with it still, but could not stay awake. I woke up at 7:55 AM on Wednesday. The computer was still on my lap. Oh yeah, did I mention the class started at 7:50? I had overslept. So, without having the chance to read it and ensure I hadn’t typed a string of nonsense letters on it while sleeping, I printed it and rushed off to class. Can you imagine running to turn in a paper whose content and quality you are unsure about? Yeah, it’s 15% of the grade for the class as well. I did get to read it again and it was fine, but that experience was not pleasant. I am so glad that paper is done.

InterVarsity also consumed a lot of my free time. I met with both staff workers this week for one hour each just to check in and see how I was doing as well as get a feel for how the group was doing this year. I also had to work with some alterations for the social calendar for IV. Somehow, I’m expected to work magic and it’s not always as easy as some people think. Still, I enjoy it. Other side notes include my Campaigns class helping with a voter registration drive. I also established my work site for Justice and Civil Society. I visited Tuckahoe Middle School and will be volunteering there on Tuesday morning with the English as a Second Language program. It’s part of the 30 hour service requirement for the course.

The United Methodist group had our weekly lunch on Thursday afternoon. I arrived and realized I was quite hungry for the Chinese food they had brought. It was at that point I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything except honey mustard pretzels and granola bars for 24 hours. I had those foods count as dinner since I was in a huge rush and then I slept in the next day, thus missing breakfast. Anyways, the Chinese food was great and the fortune cookies were even better. They said, “The star of riches is shining on you” and ” You will be successful in everything”. That was encouraging to hear. Being on the topic of food, I absolutely must mention something before I forget. Our dining hall has some new options this year and one of them is a Latin American Bar. It is INCREDIBLE. There is beef barbacoa, chicken cacciatore, fried plaintains, and so much more. I can’t say enough about it. I had it for dinner tonight and I don’t think I will ever get sick of it.

The last thing to mention is a Modlin Center event I went to this evening. Reduced Shakespeare Company came and did “The Complete History of America… Abridged”. It was a fantastic show, but slightly more inappropriate than I would have expected. They were very funny and definitely made my night. It’s nice to have some comedy in your life and to just be able to laugh. I went with one of my freshman friends and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company

Clips from the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s show on American History

Reduced Shakespeare Company’s version of the Bible

Reduced Shakespeare Company on Jeopardy

That week is now over. This upcoming weekend is very busy. It’s Family Weekend and, though my family will not be visiting, I have tons of things to do. I still have plenty of work, but I ‘m just trying to keep up this method of working ahead as much as possible. I should get some sleep now. Sorry for the chaos in this week’s post. Like I said, it’s late. Good night.

Quote of the Week: “Avoid making irrevocable decisions when tired or hungry.” - Robert Heinlein
Thought to Ponder: If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
Shout Outs: Any prospective international students
YouTube Video of the Week:

Give it some time and watch it all the way

Published by Ben on September 19, 2008 in Artsy Performances, InterVarsity and Football. 0 Comments

Meeting Celebrities

September 12, 2008

Before I go into anything else, I want to mention a cool story from one of my classes. My Leadership Studies class met on Thursday and we were told that we would have guests visit us during class. At first, we all just thought it would be some faculty members. As it turns out, we were surprised to have Marlon Wayans, Jurnee Smollett, and Tatyana Ali walk through the door and visit our class. We were all so surprised. We had discussed the role of citizenship in America and gotten onto the topic of voting. These three celebrities have been traveling the country and getting young people energized to vote in a type of Rock the Vote movement. It just so happens that they were in the area and able to stop by our class. Marlon is famous for the shows and movies he’s created with his brother, such as In Living Color, The Wayans Brothers, White Chicks, Little Man, and the Scary Movie series. Jurnee has appeared in Full House, The Great Debaters, Cosby, ER, Gridiron Gang, House, Grey’s Anatomy, and Selma, Lord, Selma. Tatyana is famous for her work on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Star Search. It was so cool to be able to see them. I think they were the last visitors we were expecting. They briefly talked about what they were doing and how important it was for young people to get involved with their country.

Marlon Wayans, Jurnee Smollett, and Tatyana Ali
with someone in my class

In other news, I’m three weeks into school and still settling into a routine. My life is still crazily busy, but I’m hoping that the next few days will allow me to settle down and take a deep breathe to recollect myself. I continue to try my absolute best to stay ahead of my work by planning my classes and events days in advance. Right now, I only have thirty pages of readings and one paper to write before next Wednesday, which is an impressive feat. Yes, the paper is daunting for me and I’m not looking forwards to it at all, but I’m hopeful that early next week will be quite enjoyable.

Since I’ve worked so hard to get ahead in my classes, I have had quite a bit of my time devoted to homework and classes, as well as organizations. Still, I did have a few other highlights throughout this past week.

I returned from Fall Retreat last weekend and two of my friends who lived on my hall used our residence hall’s kitchen to cook an amazing dinner for everyone in my program. There was roasted chicken, biscuits, vegetables, couscous, and chocolate chip cookies. It was so nice to just sit down and socialize with people on my hall. It was almost like a family meal in a way. We had good conversation and even a fun time washing dishes and cleaning up afterwards. Yes, we can get heated with each other in our Campaigns class, but this was just a good old-fashioned fun time. I think we’re hoping to continue this every few weeks throughout the semester. And I believe that is the guys’ turn to cook next time.

My hallmates and I enjoyed a fantastic made-from-scratch meal

I also relaxed by watching Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull at the Pier as well as the Packers game. As a big Green Bay Packers fan, I was quite pleased with our first game and the performance of Aaron Rodgers.

In more business-like matters, I also attended a panel discussion regarding Accounting. Yes, it was for extra credit, which was my main incentive for going. I also had Student Government drag on for an hour and a half for the third straight week. This resulted in me missing InterVarsity’s Large Group for the third time. I have yet to make it to a Large Group, unfortunately. Another meeting involved me going to an information session for the Jepson School of Leadership Studies. I will be applying this month to the school with the intention of minoring in Leadership Studies. That’s just another thing that I have to add to my to-do list.

Also for Student Government, my Cabinet and I hosted an event where we signed students up for our UR Alert, the system that e-mails and text messages students if there is ever a threat on-campus. In addition, we handed out tons of candy to people passing through the Commons. Watching people eat Warheads (which brought back memories of third grade for me and every other person who stopped by) was quite entertaining.

One of my friend reacts to eating a Warhead

Before I leave you for the week, I’d like to show you what some of the students who remained on-campus last weekend did as Tropical Storm Hanna passed through. Since there was so much rain, they decided to create a slip-’n-slide on the Intramural Fields. It looked pretty fun.

Enjoying the tons of rain that Hurricane Hanna brought

Soaking up all of the rain over last weekend

Quote of the Week: “It’s true that we don’t know what we’ve got until we lose it, but it’s also trye that we don’t know what we’ve been missing until it arrives.” -Anonymous
Thought to Ponder: How fast do hotcakes sell?
YouTube Video of the Week:

In Remembrance of 9/11

Published by Ben on September 12, 2008 in Class Cabinet, Campus Events and Student Government. 0 Comments

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