I don't know about you, but I came to party.

Tonight was a great night. And I don't know why.

Classes were okay... I handed in my first paper for Cinema... I interpreted the very first shot from the first Godfather.... as I was typing my paper last night at midnight, I realized how much more I've learned about film after my first three weeks here at Augsburg... and then I realized that I am only 2 chapters into our text book... I guess you could call it a humbling experience... I'm not quite sure.... I know I've got a lot to learn. Oh, and today I took my first test for my film class.. which went okay. I know that i forgot a couple things (what are the three main aspect ratios used in film over the last century?), and some of the questions i had to B.S. my way through... but i did alright... a lot better than the 75 percent I got on my first spanish test (worst test of my LIFE... i NEED a tutor.. mostly for motivation)

Today I wanted to take a nap at every opportunity i had.. but i refused my instincts... i was both mad/proud at the same time.

And tonight I had play practice. Every honors student is required to take part in the "Scholars Citizen Theater Lab". Basically, all honors students work together to put together a play about the themes in our book "The Question of God," a book about the conflicting ideas of Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis. Most former honors kids say this is one of the best experiences in their college life so far.... tonight we started writing our one act play (The honor kids are split into 4 different groups and each group develops their own one act). We decided to have a somewhat connected theme by everyone creating a mock t.v. show type thing... My groups play (which I am the stage manager for) decided on the television show "Blue's Clues"... except our show deals with sex, violence, love, and death... ya know, basic Freudian principals... I'm liking the way things are going so far.

And the best part of the night....

Doing laundry. 

I did laundry. And I hate laundry. Fortunately, I have awesome friends who also do laundry with me.

We stayed in the laundry room for a couple hours... and all it took to make good out of a pretty boring situation was a couple cans of rockstar. Now I don't normally drink caffeine. I actually never drink pop, and i don't like coffee. So after 40 ounces of energy drinks, laundry is no longer as crappy as it may seem. Sitting down there with my best friends from Augsburg reminded me a lot of "Breakfast Club" but the laundry room version.  We easily entertained ourselves. 

By the time our laundry was finished, the caffeine fully kicked in... Luckily, Andy, who suffered a shoulder injury from flag-football, is on a prescription of vicodin... this makes for some high-fueled dance parties.... or just people laughing at us.

And now i've got another 100 pages of reading to do  :)

good night.

Any Given Sunday

None of us were in a party mood last night.

So we all went for a walk.

One of the best things about Augsburg's location is that it is sooo very close to the University of Minnesota. We're on West Bank (where downtown Minneapolis is) and the U of M is on East Bank (dinkytown) so it's only a short walk across Washington Bridge. Last night we met some of my friends that go to the U and they gave us the grand tour. After chilling in Blake's room for a while (which he said was "clean" because his parents visited him that day...), we got hungry and they suggested Mesa Pizza... so we went. Getting to Messa meant walking through Frat Row, which was an experience in itself, of course....

I've never been through Frat Row before... I've actually never seen it at night, so i was amazed at how many people there were. Some of the houses looked pretty crazy to. If you ever need a party to go too, there will always be one on Frat Row... It must be very hard for all those studious frat kids to ever get any homework done....

And finally we made it to Mesa Pizza. It was awesome... definitely a place for college kids. A huge slice of pizza only costs 2 dollars. And it's soo good. They even have macaroni and cheese pizza... which i heard is delicious (i wish i would have tried that... i got hawaiian instead).

And then we walked back.

And I went to bed.

And woke up at 11:45 AM. If the Vikings weren't on today, I probably would have slept a lot later than that.

Debate Time.

Oh, i love fridays.

3:30 every Friday is probably the best time of my week. At 3:30, it is officially the weekend for me. When my spanish class get's out, I feel free. The best thing is.... i dont have to worry about going home and doing chores, laundry, the dishes, babysitting, and all that jazz.... i can go in my room and take a nap... or watch some tv... or go to the Mall of America.

That is until Sunday night when I remember how much homework I have to do.

I also had a meeting for all Film Majors today... I found it very interesting... It's kind of weird to hear of all the movies that my proffessors and the uperclassmen enjoy. It's interesting to hear why "Transformers was the worst movie I have ever seen" and why the only time my proffessor walked out of a theater was doing the new King Kong movie... I definitely think I'll learn a lot.

And tonight's agenda:

Watch the debate at 8. I'm really looking forward to it. There are a couple spots on campus that are set up for "debate watching parties", and the entire financial crisis makes things even more intersting. I am glad that the debate did not get cancelled. I strongly believe that tonight's debate is an important event that does not need to get pushed back.....Most people here at Augsburg take politics pretty seriously.... It's pretty cool.

And then after that... I don't know what I'm going to do....

Not homework, that's for sure.

Spin

Some certain themes have become pretty apparent after my first few weeks here at Augsburg College. First of all...

Thursday nights are for Spin.

Spin is a night club in downtown Minneapolis. Thursday and Saturday nights are 18 plus, and a lot of people end up going down there together.

I have yet to go... I'm not really the clubin' type (even though I've never gone to one... but I've got a pretty good imagination). I probably will end up going one of these nights... just for the heck of it.

And while a few of my friends went out to dance (i was feeling pretty tired/had homework), I took Katie out to eat at Dinkytown. Luckily i have a loving aunt that lives in Minnetonka and she dropped off some food for me then drove us to Dinkytown. 

We ate at Loring's Pasta Bar. It was delicious. I don't know if it's quite at a college kid's income level (just our two meals cost 30 bucks), but you can only eat taco-bell so often (there's also a jimmy-johns pretty much directly on campus... it's my new favorite place). And after we got done with our meal, we decided to walk home because it was a beautiful night. 

Then we watched a movie (Rocket Science... great indie flick. i def. recommend it) and ate ice-cream (i swear i've bought out the Winner Gas Station of ice-cream already.. i don't know what i'd do without a freezer/fridge combo). And I was just about to go to bed when Claire came home, looking very sad.

She forgot her ID, they wouldn't let her into Spin,  and so she had to come back home. Rough night, huh?

And now Katie and I have to console her until her roommate gets back from the club... hopefully soon so i can get some shut-eye.

Spontaneity

You wanna know the best part of going to Augsburg College?

Yeah, it's a private school and i have small classes.

Yeah, people are surprisingly nice.

Yeah, the school is tiny enough to recognize everyone's face but still be able to meet new people.

Yeah, there are a million other reasons, but my favorite one is....

Spontaneity is entirely possible.

Tonight, at 5:30, my friends and I decided to go to a twins game. It was random. I just felt like going.

Not only are tickets only 4 dollars (if you show your student id) but there are also dollar dome dogs (which taste heavenly when they only cost a dollar). AND, i love the Twins. AND, they are sooo close to winning the division and we played the white sox tonight.

It was sweet. And it was only a 4 minute lightrail ride away. :)

On the downside, all my professors are giving out the most homework i've gotten all semester. I feel like they all got together and said "hey. lets give out some homework right now because we love our students and we want them to get smarter so we'll give them sooo much homework because we know they love it."

but really. it's piling up. and i need to do it right now  :) it will be another late night.

So Here We Are

So i promised that i'd talk a little bit about my movie night...

Requiem for a Dream: one of the most depressing movies i have ever watched. Technically speaking, it was very well made. It had a well defined (formalist) style that was amazingly maintained throughout the entire movie. The best part of the movie was the acting, especially by the older mother. The characters were REAL... that's the best way to describe it... Did I like the way they ended up? well... no, not really... but could it have been done any other way? definitely not. I would recommend not watching this movie at 2:00 in the morning either... it might make you to sad to go to sleep... seriously. This movie is the definition of pain.... the journey for pleasure... (insert other deep themes here). It was good. I would recommend it for the sole reason of finding out exactly how you don't want your life to end up.

Last night I was going to write a blog about my day... unfortunately, my day was way to busy... i had class... i had sooo much homework.. and then we had our pepfest.

The pepfest was ok... nothing too special.

They lit fireworks off in the middle of murphy park, which was awesome.

Tonight they had a campus-wide game of capture the flag. I was sooo pumped for that...

Unfortunately, Tuesday nights are "First Year Experience" meetings.. two members from each res. hall floor are selected to represent the first year class and decide what things need to be changed on campus...so yeah... no capture the flag for me... oh well, I've gotta make sacrifices.

And last night i stayed up till 2:30 reading... so sacrificing sleep seems to be a recurring theme. But my body's used to it by now.

Requiem for a Dream

Yeah.... it's 4:00 in the morning.

D' and I just finished watching Requiem for a dream.

And before that, a whole bunch of people chilled in my room and talked.

And before that we had a dance party on floor 2.

And before that, I did the normal, college, saturday thing and relaxed, homework-free.

It was an eventful day......

A lot of people went home this weekend... I got some people together though and we put on a little dance party. Alex supplied the AWESOME speaker system, Lewis was the DJ, Katie and Hannah were in charge of decorations, and Brad let us use his strobe light. It was pretty sweet. There weren't that many people here at Augsburg this weekend (I guess the three week mark is when everyone goes home to visit), but we still had a lot of fun...

And afterwards, a lot of people went to the U for parties and all that jazz... I decided that i was tired (even though I'm still not sleeping), and that i would stay home tonight... despite my decision, people still ended up coming in my room and talking....

Eventually, it was just D' and I. It was pretty in depth... you know, God, life, and politics... all that jazz... and then at 1 in the morning we decided to watch Requiem for a Dream. Being a film major, I am ashamed to see that I have never seen this movie before... but D has... and he said he hated it, even though he said he considered it as one of the top 5 movies he's seen... so he made me watch it.

And i've never seen anything so depressing.

In fact, I don't even want to talk about it right now. I'm going to bed, and hopefully, I'll wake up to sunshine :)

Oh, and you'll get my critique soon.

Testing, 1, 2, 3

Today started out EXCELLENT....

I took the first college quiz of my career on Monday for Scholar  Citizen, my honors class. It wasn't too hard, but I still had some first-college-quiz-ever-jitters. 

So today I got the quiz back and... i got 95 percent :) So yeah, i was pretty darn happy. 

BUT THEN, i had a spanish test today.... and it was probably the worst I've ever done on a test, EVER. It was a total buzzkill. I'm not looking forward to getting that test back and seeing how terrible I did.

But I'm over it.

Now I know that I need to study more... or i might get a tutor for spanish, considering they're free. 

And another story: after my scholar citizen class (which ended at 10:00) i went back to my room to take a nap. I set my alarm for 10:52 so i could make it to my cinema class by 11:00. Unfortunately, I set my alarm for 10:52 PM.... so i took a nap a little bit longer than i was planning on and showed up for class 20 minutes late.

And tonight's agenda: homework, homework, homework... mail a few letters, reorganize my room, other boring stuff, etc....

SONG OF THE WEEK: "Butterfly" by Mason Jennings. CHECK IT OUT. Mason Jennings is good.... It will make you happy. Listen and repeat.  :)

Down to Business

I've been busy lately... what's new, right?

On Sunday night I had a banquet for honors kids... it was our first meeting together as a group and we basically just established how some aspects of the program work. The program is split into four houses (not literal houses) that serve as a way to organize different parts of the program. I am in the Pike House, a group that focuses on Alumni relations and that kinda thing. So after the big group meeting, we split into our houses to elect House Presidents....

And I was elected.. somehow.

It made me really excited, and I am totally looking forward to getting involved... while I'm not quite aware  of all my responsibilities, I know that the Honors program at Augsburg is one of the things that the college is most proud of and I am happy to be a part of it... not only that, but they told me that this was the first time a freshman has been selected as a president of the pike house... :)

And then tonight, I had both a Barack Obama meeting at 7:30 where we planned a few things on campus, and then I had to go to a "First Year Experience" meeting at 9. The first year experience committee is made up of two representatives from each floor of the dorms on campus and serves as a way for students to voice their opinions on what they would like changed at Augsburg.. the committee was responsible for some renovations to dorms and also played a small role in changing the food provider at Augsburg this year. 

Tonight we voted for executive board positions, but I knew right away that I didn't want to spread myself too thin and become more exhausted... in fact, i spent most of my day sleeping because i only have one class on tuesdays... 

oh, and i still have my main goal of becoming one of the four student council members on campus...

oh, and i'm planning a floor 2 dance party this saturday....

everyone's invited  :)

From Cafe Street Corners

Last night was random... After spending 20 minutes relaxing in the middle of Murphy Square (which sometimes somewhat feels like laying in my backyard back home), D came up to Andy, Claire, Katie, and I and told us he just booked a show at the Acadia Cafe on Ceder-Riverside... he wanted us to go check it out with him, and because we had nothing to do of course we walked there at 11:00 at night....

And I am so glad I did.

It was a really chill place... a bar and food and drinks and all that jazz... and a show was going on when we got there. It was a woman (with an EXCELLENT voice) accompanied by a man on bass guitar and sometimes cello. They were really really good. Not only was the music good, but i started to partake in everyone's favorite hobby: people watching.

There was such a wide variety of people in the cafe, and they were all laughing, telling stories, and of course enjoying the music... One man (i think he was of Somalian descent) actually came up to us and said something along the lines of, "You know that today is 9/11 right? And you know what's so good about this country? Years after such a tragedy, we can all still sit together here, and listen to this music. Music brings people together. It's beautiful.... so please listen, because on the inside, she is crying as she sings... pouring her heart out...and it's beautiful"

And as I listened, i stared out the window of that little cafe and watched all the people passing by.... a wide variety of people... and it was truly beautiful.

It was a near-perfect night.

New American Classic

Today I started a list.... The Adam list... a list of movies, music, books, all the stuff that i need to see/listen to/read... Here's a little taste:

MOVIES I WANT TO SEE
burn after reading
Kabluey
the last mistress
boy a
kicking it
overnight
savage grace
mister foe
reprise
my own private idaho (old)
casablanca
the godfather pt 2
murderball
bigger, stronger, faster
raging bull
startup.com

Books
'This history of love' by nicole krauss
"Rant" by Chuck Palahniuk

music
kate nash
mason jennings
elliot smith - memory lane
a rocket to the moon
brighten

google/watch/read any of that stuff... then thank me later. :)

I also started making a list of concerts that I want to see (Girl Talk, The Academy Is..., JACK'S MANNEQUIN!), but then i realized that i have spent a lot of my money on books and school junk... I definitely went out to eat a few too many times the first week or two of college. I have already decided to cut back on that (but i still have a "free sub" card for Jimmy Johns, my new all time favorite place).

But as far as good news goes, I'm all caught up on homework. which is good.

and I had a meeting for the "Students for Obama" organization (although we're not quite official) tonight, and things went well... On tuesday I clipboarded (which consists of me walking around the christianson lobby asking people if they support obama and then taking their contact info) for about an hour and got about 25 new supporters, which is pretty good. thursday we're planning on doing a door-knocking thing all over campus, which should be fun.

and now, I'm going to go watch a movie... probably Kill Bill Vol. 2.

"With a little help from my friends"

I just decided that I am going to run for student senate....

It really wasn't that much of a "spur-of-the-moment" kinda thing... I of course had thought about it before I even knew which college I was attending... The only reason I was pretty hesitant was because I didn't know how busy I wanted to be during college... But after a summer of relaxing, I know that I want to get involved again.

So tonight I told my roommate Nate that I was running for a spot on student senate... 10 minutes later he had already created a facebook group for me... it was pretty exciting. I've already appointed him as my campaign manager. He knows A LOT of people on campus and I'm lucky to have him helping me out.

I've still got to go down to the Student Senate office tomorrow; i'm hoping to talk to the current student body president and find out exactly what I'm getting in to... Either way, I'm about 99% positive i'm going to go through with it...

And by the way... in case you haven't noticed... i'm sleep deprived...

And it's totally my fault.

I think (know) that i need to settle down a little bit. Knowing that, I denied a movie night tonight to go up to my room, finish a reading, type this, then go to bed.

I've only gone out Fridays/Saturdays, but almost every other night has been spent chilling in someone's room or watching a movie... And of course I've been getting my homework done... And i've had a lot of homework... and a lot of reading...

But it leaves so little time for sleep.

I've got a routine now that I'm all settled in, and Augsburg is really starting to feel like home. I've gotten to know sooo many people in the last week and I'm surprised how friendly everyone is.. it definitely makes the transition a lot easier.

BUT, it's not bed time :)

It's not so bad, It's not so bad

Things are going great.

So today (Saturday) marks the first official weekend of my college career. I started things out right by not getting up until 3 minutes ago (11:30). It is pretty sweet.

I had my other classes on Thursday: my Augsem, Honors Search for Meaning and Vocation (something like that), and then a film lab. (All my other classes are on Monday, Wednesday, Friday). So thursday was a good day of classes too. For the Vocation class, we have to read A LOT of books, which makes me pretty excited. One of the books is titled "The Year of Living Biblically", and it tells the story of a man who lives a year trying to follow the bible as literally as possible.... I pretty much want to start reading it right now....

For my Augsem (Augsburg Seminar), our teacher just went over a couple of the things we'll be doing in the Minneapolis area, and then he explained how the Minneapolis street system works, which was helpful. We got down a little bit early so I went with a couple of friends to see Howard Dean speak on campus (Chairman of the Democratic National Committee). Now... I like Howard Dean a lot... he's a funny guy, but mostly because of his early disapproval of the War in Iraq. (Oh, and Keith Ellison was there, and he is bomb). However, I am getting slightly sick of all the finger-pointing going on between both parties... sure, it is a (somewhat) cleaner election than past years, but both parties have been saying "All they do (point finger here) is bash us... They don't know what they're doing and they don't talk policy..."

Well I'm still waiting to hear policy.... and that's my rant for the day.

ANYWAY. After listening to Howard Dean, I had to run on over to my film lab. Every thursday for Intro to Cinema we watch a movie and then discuss it. This week's pick was Alfred Hitchcock's "The Rear Window", and excellent choice considering our week's topic was the Voyeur and why people are captivated at watching others (especially through film). I was pretty impressed with myself and all the notes I took.   :)

SOOO, the agenda for today: I don't know yet. Possibly organize my room a bit... maybe go to the Mall of America/ Ikea... The possibilities are endless.

"Back to school"

I think last night was the first night since I've got to Augsburg that I went to bed before midnight... It was so nice to get all that much needed sleep....

I had my first ever college class at 9:10 this morning. I really had no idea what to expect. Half of me was thinking that I might be sitting through a long, excruciating lecture, and the other half had no idea.

My first class was 'The Scholar Citizen', a somewhat general honors class that prepares students for other honors courses and the liberal arts (at least that's what i think it is). My prof (who seems very cool) talked about his life (which seems very interesting) and the course (which might be one of my favorites) for the first few minutes of class... after that, he made us all sit in a circle around the room, introduce ourselves and then tell others in the group about our life...

And that was it.

There was a lot of good discussion, but the thing i found most interesting was the assortment of people that were in that class. So many of the students had lived such interesting lives, far different from my own, and I know that I have something to learn from every single person in that classroom.

And then I had my english class "Intro to Cinema Arts". I have been SOOOO extremely excited for this class.....

Until, a couple minutes after my teacher gave roll call, I realized I was in the completely wrong classroom..... My class had been moved to a different building.

"Welcome to (insert name of hard sounding math class here)" were the first words I heard... and then I got up and left the classroom, somewhat embarrassed. The prof was cool about it though, and pointed me in the right direction...

And then I got to my cinema class 10 minutes late, and luckily my prof understood. This class was also full of mostly discussion.. I found it very intriguing, and I can't wait for my film lab tomorrow afternoon.

And lastly, I had Spanish class, the class I was most worried about... My spanish was a little rusty, but it was harder for me to stay awake than it was for me to remember some of the spanish that I had learned. It was the prof's fault at all, but by 3 o'clock i was extremely exhausted...

And then we watched "Matchstick Men" in my room, went to eat at Davanni's, and then watched Borat tonight... everyone was pretty tired and wanted to just chill...

And now I'm going to bed.

Augsem Q

Recent Events:

So i promised this story a couple nights ago... It was the second night on campus and a couple of us were looking for something to do. We decided to take the bus down to Dinkytown. First of all, we waited 25 minutes for the bus to arrive... the last one left basically 2 minutes before we got there.... And then finally, we got on the bus and went down to Dinkytown. Right when we got there, I looked at the bus schedule and noticed that the last bus going back to Augsburg was leaving Dinkytown in about 25 minutes... meaning we had only 20 minutes to spend down there... which sucked... because we wasted so much time... and i was exhausted.. and i was sad.... and i learned my lesson, which is good.

BUT, things got better...

Today was definitely the best day so far:

We had an opening ceremony where all the teachers and faculty welcomed us to Augsburg. First of all, the woman singing was amazing. And the speeches were pretty good too.

And then we got together with our Augsem, a group of students (my group is made up of all honors students) and all Augsem groups went to a different location in the city to do community service projects.

My group went to a church in South Minneapolis, The Holy Rosary (Santa Rosario). The church is attended by MANY minority groups, immigrants, and refugees. One of the main goals of the church is to act as a bridge for these people to the community and to help them live a better life here in the cities. Specifically, one of the things that the church does is serve meals to many of the locals in the church basement. Because the state and federal government have very strict regulations regarding sanitation at these kind of events, it was the job of my Augsem to thoroughly clean the chairs and tables.

I never knew chairs could get so dirty, but i don't think any of us minded at all. Between all the introductions and talking, it went by pretty fast. Afterwards we were taken upstairs where one of the Sisters talked to us about the mission of the church. We watched a couple videos and it was very interesting..... Then something very cool happened.

Our group got into a discussion involving immigration....Just as we were about to wrap things up, a girl in my Augsem, who happens to be of Mexican decent, raised her hand and began to talk about all the things that she has had to overcome in her lifetime. She spoke directly from her heart.... Her testemonial was one of the MOST honest, sincere things I have ever heard anyone say.

It was the best experience I've had so far at Augsburg.

It wasn't just some documentary, or some news clip on TV. It was such a personal experience, not something I could have learned in a textbook....

And the weird thing is, I didn't even start my actual classes yet....

I need a power nap

So today was another event-filled day. I woke up and did my run in the weight room... It was so very tempting to just sleep for another hour but you know what they say about the freshman fifteen.....

After my run, I randomly ran into Joe (a kid from my neighborhood group) and we decided to go get breakfast. Unfortunately, it was 10 o clock and thus breakfast time was over... which was sad because i was starving. Joe and i then decided to take an adventure over to the gas station and buy some milk because my mom loves me and packed me an excellent assortment of cereals. Joe and I then proceeded to watch some funny show on comedy central and chilled in my extremely hot room.

After TV time, we went down to eat lunch, which was surprisingly good. I've heard horror stories about the food here at Augsburg, but luckily they just got a new dining service provider. Today the chicken sandwhiches were excellent.

And then we proceeded onto an educational talk about drugs, sex, and sleep. I was dreading this, but it turned out to be a good presentation. It was funny how straightforward the speaker was, and she did a really good job.

Next, we had free time, which has been hard to come by the last couple days. A couple guys and I came up to my room and we watched (slept) the Harold and Kumar White Castle movie (mostly because Cal Pen is coming to Augsburg for a political action type thing and we were excited).

After waking up, I ate lunch, then we all went to a play by the Pilsbury Theater group (i think i got that right). It involved a lot of topics like racism, sexism, drinking, etc... Your typical college stuff, but it was done in a unique play presentation. It was good. It was funny. It was entertaining.

And best of all, I was impressed by the discussion afterwards. When the play was done, one of the women facilitated a discussion between the entire class of 2012, which, initially, i thought would be a bust. I was wrong. People (a lot of people) had really good opinions and input. It was intellectual. I liked it.

And now i'm going to ignore my body's want for sleep and find something to do tonight.

So move-in went excellently well. 

It was kinda hot, which sucked, but everything went according to plan. My dorm room layout worked out even better than i expected. 

After I got everything out of our vehicle and into my room, we (almost) instantly had to go to our neighborhood groups. It was slightly awkward for everyone. There were a lot of new faces and I've never had to force myself to try and be so social. I was exhausted and wanted to nap.

And then we went to the chapel and were entertained by all the extremely excited Orientation Leaders. We had a motivational speaker also, which was alright. Finally, after all the festivities were over, it was time to go meet people once again.

And then..... we tried to find something to do that night for fun... and it was both a terrible and useful experience, and I will tell you about it later because I am late for dinner and my tummy is grumbling.  :)