My room

At last, we have finished the re-organization of our room (for now)!

The process included the building of a loft, reorganization of most of the furniture, and purchasing of a couch. Now, our beds are right up at the ceiling, creating a ton of room. We also now have suitable seating for around a dozen people (2 people can lay on each bed, 4 people on the couch, and one person on each of the 3 chairs.) Of course we could fit more if we wanted to have people sitting on coushins on the floor. At any rate, it is technically against school rules (fire hazard?) to have more than 8 people in the room, but whatever. I doubt that anyone would actually care... or that we would ever even reach our new seating capacity. Anyways, it's still sweet.

The couch provides for an interesting story. We were thinking of going to Walmart or something to buy a futon... but that would cost $80, and we are college students who would prefer to not spend money like this. So, someone recommended that I send out a mass-email to everyone at Hiram, asking about a couch/futon. I took the advice and emailed the whole student body. I recieved four responses, including someone who was willing to sell me a couch for $5! I decided that if this couch was decent, I'd have to take it... because the price is right.

After looking at the couch (which was stored in this random office building near the Post Office), I decided to take it. It was worn, but still comfy and by no means disgusting. I found out that the money for the couch would be going to SEAC (student environmental action coalition), so I ended up giving $8 for it (though admittedly it was partially because I didn't have exact change :-)

This was about a week ago, and I finally went to get it today. My friend drove her car down there, but we decided do NOT try to stick it through the back seat. Instead, we put the couch face-down on the back of her car and I ran along with the car, holding down the couch. It was a workout! It might strike you as "not the safest idea ever", but it wasn't far, she drove slowly, and I assure you I've done worse things in my life. This picture is staged, but this is what it looked like roughly :-)


Moving the couch up to the third floor was another fun task, but I suppose it really wasn't all that bad. We then finished cleaning our room, put the couch in (after my roommate sprayed down every inch of it with roughly 13 gallons of Lysol), and viola!, we're done.

Here are the pictures of our newly arranged (and cleaned) room.

It's a really nice setup. I'm liking it a lot. The lofted beds are great... I've only hit my head on the ceiling once or twice so far (in about 2 weeks), and those weren't very bad at all! As for the actual wooden beams which are at head-level, they have been bubblewrapped heavily. That was another one of my creative ideas. We don't want anyone to get a concussion :-)

--David

Very Random Thoughts

It snowed today for the first time of the season! Well, technically it's maybe the third time, but this is the first *real* snow, as there is actually a little bit of accumulation. It's exciting, though I get pissed every time I have to walk anywhere and I have snow blowing in my face.

Umm, classes are still going well. Got a test back today in my Goverment class and I did well on it. Took a Calculus test this morning (even after being up til 4AM, due to a situation which was beyond my control)... I think that went well too. Hopefully I'll get it back on Wednesday.

I should probably be sleeping right now, but I didn't get back to my dorm until 3.30AM. I had been hanging out with some people at their dorm... Naturally, I decided it would be a good time to do some extra things such as organize my room, shave, etc... On my way back from the bathroom I ran into my neighbor, who is an international student.

Now, Hiram doesn't have a *ton* of international students, but I personally know two of them, and know who a few of the other ones are. It really is a cool opportunity though. I asked by friend Robin (who is from Nepal, I believe) what he was doing up at this ridiculous hour (4AM)! He said he was up doing work. (WORK?! I thought)

(That's another thing... based on knowing 2 of them, I have come to the conclusion that all international students have impeccable work ethics) Ya I don't know why I used two sets of parenthesese there but whatever. So I talked briefly to Robin and he asked me if I could take a look at the paper he had been writing. I was about to go to bed, but I don't have class tommorow morning so I was glad to help. Robin seems very smart (I had a discussion with him about a math problem once, and this kid knows his shit), but he certainly finds writing to be a bit difficult since English isn't his primary language. I am a pretty decent writer and was able to help him out a lot (I hope), and he was very appreciative.

That's not the point though... the point is just that there are a ton of incredible and interesting people in this college and I'm glad to be able to meet some of them. The international students are certainly an interesting group, and I feel that it's really cool to get to know someone who is from the other side of the world, and used to totally different culture.

However, it is now 5AM and I would prefer to not sleep until dinner tommorow so it is probably best for me to get to sleep.

--David

Fall Break

Fall break, aka "Fall Weekend", was great. It was actually only a 4-day weekend, but I got to go home and it was a lot of fun. I got to hang out with some older friends as well as some new ones that I met at Hiram. That's one of the little things that I like about Hiram: there doesn't have to be complete seperation between your school and home lives... the majority of the people (though certainly not all) are from Ohio, so I met people who I can hang out with even when I'm at home. I also got to judge a debate tournament, go to a football game, and visit my family.

At the moment, I'm doing pretty well. The wounds on my foot are almost healed and, for your information, I ended up getting to bed at around 4.00AM the last night I posted. Five hours of sleep isn't *that* bad.

Hmm, what else. Oh, we lofted our beds on Sunday. Now my roommate and I have a lot more room than we used to. Now we have to get a couch or futon... I'll post some pictures of this later. It's an awesome setup. I highly recommend lofts.

I took a test today in my Goverment class. I didn't feel as prepared for this one as I did for my last one... but I still felt pretty confident about it all. Tests in college are a lot different than tests in high school. In high school, I remember having all sorts of homework all the time. One result of this is that it gave easy points (usually) to people who wanted to do the work. Another result is that actual tests aren't as important because there are so many assignments. This is great for people who do their homework, but bad for people who can learn the material but are too lazy to do the work.

Logically, since the purpose of class is to get the student to know something, tests are the most important (though certainly some assignments, like essays, are also very important).

So I think college is great! In my goverment class, I have never once done any homework. There is none. We have reading, which is sometimes important, though it is often supplementary. As far as I know, the class has three grades: the first test, the second test, and the third test. In my calc class, the homework is almost always optional! Sometimes our professor will tell us (ahead of time) that certain problems will be collected. But for the most part, it is for practice. It's for learning -- the way it should be.

Clearly studying is important... but I'd much rather study and learn than do homework. This is why I love college academics thus far.

I need to go take a shower, so I'll write more soon.

--David

Homework

It's 2.00AM right now and I'm supposed to have read a 20 page essay... and tommorow morning I'm turning in a 2 page, double spaced response to the essay, as well as typing out a list of discussion questions regarding the reading.

Furthermore I have like 9 math problems to do which are about 3D calculus

I'm also supposed to have prepared myself for a class discussion/debate in my political science class.

I'm experienced in handling these situations, though. A few strategies

1) Prioritize -- the calculus isn't going to be collected. I'll do it over the weekend or something.
2) Selective/skilled/bullshitted writing -- I am an expert at writing about thing I have not read. I try to avoid it as much as possible, because it's a bad habit to get into... but sometimes it's necessary. Plus, it's possible to do a good job like this, too... if you read just enough, scattered pieces and parts, to have something to write about.
3) Procrastinate -- I can do my poli sci tommorow before class...

See? Now I only have to do 2 things instead of 4! And I'm going to skip the actual reading part. This is called problem solving.

(Oh, and for the record, don't get the impression that I am some slacker who doesn't care about his schoolwork... I worked on a calculus project today for almost 8 hours... it's 12 pages long)

Anyways, now I've wasted another 25 minutes talking online and writing this post. I should get to work soon... class is in 7 hours.

David

Pain

Last week I started a routine of going to the gym with my roommate. Jim has lots of experince with lifting and working out in general, whereas I do not... so it works out great, because I have someone who can sort of direct me. Anyways, on Thursday, we we worked out our arms and our abs. I have probably never worked my arms so hard in my life... but I felt great after doing it. I felt great the next day, too. (A little sore, but it's satisfying)

But then Saturday came. When I woke up on Saturday, my arms were all locked up. I couldn't extend my left elbow more than 90º. It was extremely painful and basically totally sucked. My mom is a physical therapist, and I'd seen her deal with problems like this before. It's simple: unless a muscle is torn or something like that, it simply needs to be stretched out (very slowly). I tried to do this, but I wasn't getting anywhere and it hurt too much.

After grabbing a slice of pizza for breakfast (11.30AM breakfast), I went to the Health Center which apparently is closed on weekends. This didn't make very much sense to me... I guess people can't have health problems on weekends? Ugh. But whatever... I went back to my dorm and layed down on a couch in the lounge, still trying to stretch it out.

After about 20 minutes of that, 2 friends of mine were going to lunch and they saw me laying there. I explained to them my situtaiton and went to lunch with them. Afterwards, my one friend let me use her heating pads (these big things that you put in the microwave and then put on strained muscles.). This helped, although the progress I made didn't stay... the muscle kept contracting.

Anyways, that sucked, but I made progress on it and wasn't about to let it ruin my life.

Then Sunday came.

I woke up on Sunday when my phone rang at 10.30. Jumping out of bed, I promptly fell down on the floor and (presumably) smashing my foot on the corner of one of our desks. This felt great, and I was talking on the phone when I realized that my foot was bleeding. I finished my phone conversation because I realized I had to clean off my foot.

I washed it with hot water, poured some peroxide on it, and threw on a band-aid. Then I put a clean sock on it and continued my day, limping around because I couldn't put pressure on my toes (where the cut was).

About 5.30 that night I had my shoes off and Surprise!, my sock is all red! Hmm. Damnit.

I called my mom again, mainly because I wanted to talk to her about my arms (she had been asking me if I wanted her to drive out and fix my arms, her being a physical therapist). I told her that my arms were getting better and it wouldn't be necessary. But... then I told her about my foot, and she basically said that the job I had done (peroxide and band-aiding it) was probably not enough. She wanted me to take that off, clean it up, put neosporin on it, and bandage the whole thing up. I told her I didn't want to touch it.

Soooo now having three reasons to come out (the third being that I had recieved a package at home that I wanted to get to school), I decided to ask her to come out. She did.

We took care of my foot first. It was much worse than either of us had anticipated. Since some people get very grossed out by details, I'll keep it somewhat vague (I'll include more details at the end of the post, for anyone who wants to read them...hehe)... but basically, I had split open 2 of my toes, one of them being split in 2 different places. She considered taking me to the hospital.

How this had exactly happened, we don't know. I didn't even remember kicking my foot into a sharp edge or anything, but it MUST have happened. Mom cleaned it all up, put ointment on it, and bandaged everything (which required some creativity, because it is in a VERY difficult place).

Hobbling around all day today hasn't been fun, but I'm surviving... and the foot is better than it was yesterday. I just went to the health center about a half hour ago (to have it cleaned and rebandaged). When I took the bandage off, the nurse was VERY impressed with the caliber of my injury (and she said mom's bandage job was very good). "I've seen worse," she said... but then became somewhat unsure, adding "Well, not much worse..."

Whatever... I'm going to live. And at the very least, I'm going to get a good story to tell!

In the future, though, I'll try to be a bit more moderate with my weight lifting (Hiram has very nice facilities now... especially considering how small we are)... I'll also try to not to butcher any other parts of my body.

Anyways, sorry if anyone finds these stories lame, but I felt a need to tell them. Read on if you want to hear the gruesome details.

--David




**Interesting Details**

Ok basically, if you look at your toes, there are two parts to it... a post (the main part of the toe), and a pad at the end of the toe. On my fourth toe, I split the toe right along that line, leaving a gap between the two parts of the toe. Also on that same toe, I sliced off a large part of the pad... it's sort of hanging there. My third toe isn't quite is bad (I think?), but there is a big split right in the middle of the long part of the toe. On Sunday night, it was pretty much totally messed up, with wet or dry blood everywhere. But even after having it cleaned off and rebandaged, I guess it continued to bleed... because when I got to the health center today, I found that it had started to bleed through the bandage. When we took the bandage off, it was very impressive. Not only was the whole area filled with blood, but there was a huge chunk of bandage that got stuck on my one toe... but when she looked at it, she realized that it wasn't part of the bandage. It was actually a huge chunk of my toe! That was kinda cool.

College Time

I was writing a paper yesterday, which I finished at about 4PM. Last week I wrote about 4 pages of it (double spaced), and yesterday I added another 4 pages or so. My Professor agreed to look over my paper for me (because it was due this morning), so I dropped off a copy of it for him to read. He said we could get together sometime in the evening to go over it.

He suggested some time around 10PM, but then never gave me an exact time or place... so I gave him a call at about 10.00. Turns out that he had a piece of his own writing that he was working on (a 30 page article about something regarding the history of Chinese culture or something like that). His paper needed to be submitted for publication no later than midnight, so he suggested that we get together at 12.15.

Now, I had his class at 9.30, so looking at my paper with him at 12.15 did seem a little late, but I wasn't bothered by this. I thought it was more funny than anything else.

I met with him at about 12.20 and talked until at least 1.00 or 1.15... as always, he had some excellent input about my writing, and overall he liked it a lot.

I got a bit sidetracked in revising my paper (I ended up wasting a bunch of time just hanging out with people instead of fixing my paper), and got to sleep at about 4.00... which isn't nearly as bad as it sounds since I don't have to wake up until 9.00. I usually go to bed late, anyways.

Basically, college is just amazing... I never would have thought that I'd get to chill with a Professor at 1AM. This is definetely one of the benefits of going to such a small school for undergraduate.

--David

Going Home

Being in college is great for a lot of reasons. I love being on my own and being able to do anything I want. I can do what I want with who I want, whenever I want to do so, and worry about the person I want to become. These are great things. However, this weekend I went home to visit with my best friend on his birthday. Although I was only at home with my parents for a few hours (I stayed with my friend), it really was a reminder of how great home can be. This was the first time that I've been home since I've been at school (about a month and a half).

Having a home-cooked meal was fantastic. Being surrounded by the people who love you most was great too (though we all know that we want to get away from them sometimes.). Seeing the house and my old room was fun (It has never been that clean before -- ever.)















I'm sure a lot of people out there can't wait to get to college so that they can get rid of their parents. I wasn't quite like that myself, but I was definetely ready to leave. Certainly I now have a greater appreciation of all the good things about being home, and all the good things about my parents. I'm sure everyone has things they can appreciate (or should appreciate) about home. At the very least, I know that I liked it when I didn't have to pay to do laundry.

Phil drove me back to Hiram on Saturday night, and I determined at the last minute that I was going to go to the Homecoming dance. (The picture below is of me, getting ready to go to the dance, and my best friend Phil.) It's slightly different from high school dances in that it is largely a social event -- you don't need to go with a date if you don't want to. Most people just go with friends (as I did). Furthermore, another difference is that unlike my high school dances, this one didn't cost me any money! (And a dinner was provided, too)

















In the end though, I never was much of a dance person, and I ended up getting bored and bailing out early. I don't blame the dance, though -- everything seemed to be put on very well (excellent food, great decorations, etc). Kudos to the Student Senate for putting on a good dance.

The night turned out pretty decent, though. Obviously not everyone went to the dance, so there were plenty of people to hang out with. My only complaint is that the dining hall was closed, which infuriated me. It's usually open from 7AM to midnight, with unlimited access!

Today I slept in, ate, did some math hw, and finished writing an 8-page paper. Time for dinner.

--David