Messy Room

I never have been an especially neat or organized person. I can certainly appreciate a clean area (in fact, I like it a lot), but I've never been able to motivate myself to keep a clean room. Luckily, college is forcing me to become more organized. Or, at least, it's making me clean my room more often. Here is an example of what our room looks like after about 4 days: (click to enlarge -- and Note: this is an especially bad case)





It becomes problematic when the room reaches the point that it can no longer be walked through easily, as can clearly be seen in these pictures. Luckily, this mess can easily be fixed in a solid hour if I work quickly.

Of course, my roommate blames it on me because I "forgot to remind him" to clean up his stuff. Yes Jim, that's how it works :)

--David

Winter Break

Well, break is now over... I just got back to school a few hours ago. I'm very glad to be back! Even the less-than-tasty dinner in the dining hall has not made me wish I were home.

My break was interesting, I suppose. I visited my family in Boston over Christmas. It was a good time:

My cousin Theresa with my new cousin Brea, who I met for the first time!

I tried on some interesting hats at the store...

Cousins

Gary and I

I also visited my family in Ann Arbor for a day. Gary and I had some good times with my cousin Brad. It was also good to visit (although briefly) with my uncle's Brad and Dan, and aunts Sue and Jill. Also, of course, we got to see little Madeline, who is actually starting to seem quite big.

Gary and I had to leave early, though, because he had to leave for the Sugar Bowl on Saturday morning and would need a ride to the airport.

For the rest of the break, I was pretty much home the whole time. The most eventful time was New Years, of course. My friend Robin (He's from Nepal, and he's my neighbor at school) was at Hiram all break. I felt very bad for him because Hiram is absolutely dead over break because there is almost nobody there. Very lonely for 3 weeks!! So, I invited him to come stay at my house during break. He had to work in the computer center at school over break, so he couldn't leave school the whole time. But, he was able to come up for 5 days around New Years.

We had some good times. We watched such true American classics as "Meet the Parents" and "Office Space", toured Cleveland, visited the Science Center, ate at Chipotle, went bowling, and did a number of other exciting activities.

(I bowled a LOT over break... probably 2 dozen games at least... it was awesome. Robin picked it up very quickly! I also bowled the best game of my life.. twice! First a 160, and a few days later a 170)

On New Years Eve, we had a little party with 4 guys -- it was exciting! Better than I expected, actually. Didn't get to sleep until 9AM!

Me, Phil, and Robin also cooked dinner for my mom one night. We made Nepali food, of course. After Robin went through all of the spices my mom had and determined that none of them were good enough (too old, too flavorless, too full of pesticides, etc), we went to an Indian supermarket where he was able to buy the necessary ingredients. It took the three of us about 2 hours to put everything together, but it was awesome.

Robin tends to the main course. Note the apron.The final product.

The only Nepali part of the meal was the chicken (I cooked the rice and the peas), but it was very good, even though Robin said it didn't come out nearly as planned.

I guess that covers the most important stuff. Of course I also did all of the typical stuff, such as staying up until 4AM every night, hitting up 24 hour restaurants with friends, spending time with my parents, etc. It was fun, but I'm glad to be back!

--David

Semester in Review

Looking back at my first semester, it was an overall positive experience. A few different aspects to look at. Unfortunately I organized this poorly and there will be some overlap, but whatever:

Socially -- I started to make some good friends this semester. I'm hardly a people person, but I think it's been pretty good. I've gotten to know a pretty good number of people, and hope that before long, I can turn some of these people into very close friends. One interesting point is that I really enjoyed being on an all Freshmen floor. Third Miller is a good floor. The only problem with it is that it is sometimes loud (ironic because it's called a 24-hour quiet floor -- haha, ya that doesn't happen). But, I think that being with a bunch of Freshmen is a great thing. Even though we're all adults now (well, almost), I think that it's still the case that most freshmen would be a bit hesitant to walk up to and converse with a group of seniors. This isn't because upperclassmen at Hiram aren't friendly, or that they are condescending (no, it's not like the stereotypical high school -- that crap is gone)... instead, it's just the obvious fact that the seniors are in their fourth year at Hiram and already have established social circles and lots of friends.


So, instead of having students of all 4 years on our floor, we're all Freshmen. It makes it easy to get to know everybody. The "community feeling" is pretty strong. Of the 20 occupied rooms on the floor, I'd feel comfortable going and talking to the people in 18 of them (Though I'm not claiming that I'd call everyone a "friend" really). I suppose those are some unimportant numbers, but the idea is just that my floor is good and it's easy to get to meet people and make some friends.

This is a character. Zack is a great contribution to Hiram's social scene.

A bunch of us eat pizza in the 3rd Miller lounge.

One interesting aspect about the social life at Hiram comes from its size. It's obvious if you think about it: having only a thousand students in the whole school, everybody knows everybody else! If you don't know a person, you know someone who does. This means a few things:

1) It's a tight-knit community.
2) It's easy to get to know people.
3) It's easy to find things out about people.
4) It's quite possible that two people you like will dislike eachother.
5) It's difficult to disassociate yourself from people -- you will have to see them.
6) It's more highschool-like.

Personally I don't mind it. I like small communities. Plus, it's not too much like high school for me, since I went to an all-guys school... so yes, I don't personally think it is highschool-like, but some people do.

Nothing to do -- Ok, I feel this needs to be mentioned. Yes, the college is in Hiram, OH 44234, and there is nothing to do in Hiram. Although this is sometimes annoying, it isn't a huge problem for me. I think that if you work hard enough, it will be ok. Oh, and it would probably be really nice to have a car. That would do a lot to aid the boredom problem that some people experience. Luckily, I'm not the kind of person that needs to be entertained with lots of exciting things.

The lack of things to do creates a need to solve Rubik's cubes.




Academically -- My first semester didn't seem to be that academically rigorous. My Logic class was difficult, but it was a 3-week class and was probably supposed to be difficult. Though I had to have discipline in that class (ie, to do a massive amount of homework problems), I wouldn't say the class was that hard. I generally feel that classes are only really hard if they have very difficult tests which are hard to get good grades on even for most students who study a fair amount.

OK it's staged, but we spent many nights up in the Kennedy Center doing homework for our Logic class. It would be a shame to not remember them. So here's a picture of Mike thinking hard about a logic problem.
I have a great idea! Also obviously staged, but whatever :/


I did really well this semester and I'm proud of this. Although I studied (sometimes a lot) for all of my tests, I don't think that it academics at Hiram are too bad. If you're a smart person and you care about your work, you'll do well. On the other hand, there are people who don't seem to care about schoolwork. As far as i'm concerned, this is not my problem... it just makes me look better by comparison :-). But, I know that this problem is especially prominent for freshmen, because we're still getting used to college and are celebrating our newfound freedom!

Anyways, I suppose a lot comes down to what you make of your college experience. People who really want to learn will find that Hiram offers the resources for an education that is just as good as the education that could be recieved anywhere else. Although it may be easier for slackers to "slide by" at Hiram than it would be in some very competitive school, I'd like to think that students who do care might even be able to get a better education at a place like Hiram.

Professors -- My professors were sweet! I sorta got to know all of my professors (two of them especially), and unlike at a big school, they actually know who I am! They know things about me, too. It's great. One of my favorite professor stories was when one night I was working to finish up an 8 page (or so) paper that was due the next day. I wanted my professor to look at it and give me input before I turned it in. We ended up meeting at like 12.30 at night, and talking until 1.15 in the morning. How ridiculous/sweet is that? This is the same professor who took us some of us to Cleveland to watch a movie pertinent to our class (and to a huge feast at a Chinese place), and who offered to take that same group to a Hookah bar in Kent at 1AM. Professor Cathcart is quite a guy. This man seemigly never sleeps.



About half of our class with Professor Cathcart in Cleveland

Dorm Life -- I already mentioned quite a bit about my dorm life earlier, but there are a few more things. First of all, it is certainly fun to be away from my parents. It's not like I've done that much that they would have disapproved of, but it's still good to be away. It's fun to be able to do anything I want. Secondly, I like my dorm in general. My room is a decent size for 2 people. I think we've done a great job of making it into a cool room. My bed is comfy. Third, I think it's a great way to learn practical skills such as how to deal with people. A lot of people have trouble communicating maturely about problems, etc. Well, welcome to college, where you'll have to live in the same room as another person who (your freshman year) you probably don't even know! My roommate and I get along (except when he annoys me and I smack him ;) , but it's still great experience. One of the most valuable things that I think college is going to teach me is how to deal with people and how to independently solve problems that occur in the real world. No more mommy and daddy.

The halls of 3rd Miller...


My first semester of college was a success!

--David