Hello again! I’m BACK!
I know it’s been ridiculously long since my last post and
that I completely failed to update all of you about my second semester at Mac
(and I’m sorry!). The piles of notes for my blog rather built up and I got
overwhelmed.
I’m going to try to do better this coming year (of course,
that’s what I said last time…). But the GOAL is to post every other Saturday,
and telling you all that that’s my plan will make it easier to stick to it!
This post is going to be a sort of FAQ one—I’ll tell you
about all the stuff I didn’t get to before and answer some questions about
things people have been wondering about. If I miss any (or create new,
thrilling questions), please e-mail them to me (or comment below) and I’ll try
to answer them next time.
1. How was the end of first semester?
Glorious! It was pretty warm (it RAINED during most of
finals week), my finals went well, and I had some glorious adventures with my
friends. One night, we walked to Izze’s Ice Cream (a decently long walk) together
in the COLD and had a generally uproarious time. I nearly froze to death, Keo
walked into a tree, and Emma didn’t stop laughing for at least a mile. (Also we
froze! Did I mention that part?) When we finally got back, we were all so
chilly that we went to Rachel’s room and had a dance party to the The
Proclaimers “500 Miles” (you can look it up on YouTube if you don’t know it),
which we have now decided is our anthem. It’s the perfect song to get
breathlessly giddy and warm to. And then we watched the Charlie Brown Christmas
movie for (my) first time. It was nice to know what everyone is talking about
and felt suitably childish and Christmasy for that particular evening.
For our last hurrah of the semester, a bunch of us piled on
to a bus (or, rather, several buses) for about two hours to get to Pizzeria
Lola, where we had kimchi, prosciutto and arugula, and potato pizzas and olive
oil-topped ice cream for dessert. It was all surprisingly delicious and
definitely worth the trek.
There are so many other things in my notes that I’d love to
tell you about, but if I get started on those, I’ll never finish! Suffice it to
say that it was a great end to a great semester.
Sorcha’s
Synesthesia Extravaganza (My friend Sorcha thinks of letters and numbers as
having specific colors, so she drew it out for me while I was working on a
final project that required colored pencils.)
Working at Great News on finals
Izzy's absurdity
2. What classes did you end up taking second semester and
how did they go?
I started out the semester in Cultural Anthropology, Poetry,
Chemistry II, and Greek Myths, but I ended up dropping anthro during that first
week (the professor was a bit sleazy and the material looked DULL) and switching
to Art of the East: Japan. I think that was a good decision.
I really enjoyed all of them, although by the end of Chem I
was a bit tired of it. The Japanese art class was also not as challenging as I
would have hoped (interesting, though), but Poetry was and Myths had some lovely, complicated reading that I really
enjoyed. I fell in academic love with my poetry professor (my myth professor
was pretty great too, but he only teaches Greek and Latin generally), so I’m
planning to take lots more classes from him, and possibly to ask him to be my
advisor.
3. How was second semester generally?
Quite good! I drank a ridiculous amount of tea (37 cups, the
one week I kept count), fell in love with a new TV show or two (Have any of you
heard me mention a little show called Sherlock?
Maybe once or twice?), did LOTS of homework, and had a generally lovely time.
It was a lot more stressful than first semester because not only does second
semester always feel harder and longer
to me than the first one, but also about six of my friends had various life
crises. Which were eventually resolved, but painful in the interim. There were
lots of good things too, though! The incredible sight of new flowers and leaves
in spring (WAY more exciting than I’d imagined from books and my experiences in
CA and AZ), the Oscars (Mac showed a bunch of the big movies in our presentation
hall, complete with snacks and a red carpet—including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which I would recommend to anyone and
everyone. It’s the quietest, subtlest, most refined spy movie ever made and
brilliantly crafted), and lovely, silly times with my friends involving bubbles
and beards and Sporkle (this puzzle game website that Sorcha loves). Also, I
finally saw a Monty Python movie (the Holy Grail) and thoroughly enjoyed it. A
whole new world of references has been opened to me!
Bear Wars!
Actual frost patterns! On my actual window!
The Return to Izzy's
Charmaine, Sorcha, and Tori impersonate wood-sprites. Interpretations of wood-sprite personality vary.
In Which My Friends are Talented
The Great Tea Escapades of 2012 (Charmaine and I returned to our room to discover that Sorcha and Tori had swapped our tea collections. This is all of Charmaine's tea on my bookshelf.)
Macalester is Pretty (Or, In Which Spring Comes to St. Paul)
Macalester is Silly (Or, In Which April Fools Day is Celebrated by the Mac Administration)
Mac Yarn Club made the rock a hat.
In Which Lily Discovers a Hitherto Unknown Love of Tulips
In Which Lily Fails to Rein in Her Infatuation with Spring
Cafe Mac picnic day!
4. What is this “poetry wall” you speak of?
I can’t believe I haven’t told you about my poetry wall
yet!! Charmine and I decided somewhere around the beginning of the second
semester that we should put up a lot of paper to put stickers on. We were
inspired by this Yayoi Kusama installation artwork,
(It started out as a plain white room, but visitors to the museum were given stickers to put on whatever they wanted to (furniture, walls, fixtures, etc.)...
...so as time progressed...
...it became ridiculously colorful!)
but, being (fairly) practical people, realized the folly of
sticking stickers directly on to the dorm wall. So we put up a bunch of pieces
of paper and a sticker on them. And then I drew a TARDIS (from Doctor Who) and a slogan from Sherlock and we left it alone. And then
Charmaine said, “There’s this lovely line of poetry that I found—do you mind if
I put it up?” and I said, “Why, of course
not!” and then, all of a sudden, we had ourselves a
poetry-(and-also-beautiful-prose-that-makes-us-happy-and-sounds-like-poetry-when-fragmented-and-put-up-on-shiny-white-paper)-wall.
We never really put up many more stickers, but we did start to rapidly fill it
up with all of these poetic moments from songs and prose and poems and the
occasional thing our friends said. And then
we left the paper and markers handily accessible and invited our guests to write
up any favorite quotations. By the end of the year it was bright and beautiful
and much beloved. We had several different handwritings on it, many a beautiful
phrase (and one repeated one because I am a doofus), and a couple of cute
doodles. It was such a nice thing to have in our room to notice at odd
moments—as we brushed our teeth in the morning, when walking over to close or
open the curtains, as I sat on my bed and stared into the vast unknown for
inspiration for an essay…
The whole thing, in all its glory!
A close-up.
Alas, when we tried to take it down at the end of the year,
it suffered the ravages of tape and time and is now sadly battered. We plan to
create a new, bigger and better, poetry wall next year with some of the same
quotations and many new ones, especially since part of the fun is watching it
change over time and get fuller and fuller.
5. How is your summer going?
It’s been great! Very lazy and full of books (which is
pretty usual for me) but there have been some adventures as well. Visits to
grandparents and VidCon (A giant conference of YouTubers that was started by
John and Hank Green—the nerdfighters my sister and I love so much. It basically
ends up being like a tiny version of Comic-Con for nerdfighters.) and lots of
delicious food (I’m stocking up on delicious before I return to the horrors of
dorm eating) and the OC Fair and various other exciting things.
Father's Day adventure
John and Hank sign things!
Hank sings!
The Fair!
Birthday cupcake menagerie!
Mother's Day tea
Butterflies!
New York is lovely.
6. What classes are you taking next semester?
Drawing I, Introduction to Visual Culture, Eighteenth
Century British Literature (with the Poetry professor I mentioned earlier), and
Harlem Renaissance (a literature course).
7. What major(s) are you planning on declaring (I have to
declare by the end of sophomore year, for those of you who didn’t know) and
why?
I’m planning on declaring a double major in Art History and
English.
For English, it’s something I’ve been considering for a long
time as a possibility, but it’s been difficult to judge whether I’d like it
after the last seven years of incredibly unfulfilling (and often wildly
frustrating) English classes (freshman year obviously not included). My Poetry
class last semester was so stimulating and fascinating and fun (as well as occasionally nerve-wracking, terrifying, and
intimidating) that it really jump-started that long-held wish. Poetry and Myths
were my favorite classes that I’ve had in a long time, probably, so I’d like to
keep taking more like them. (As a clarification: Myths was technically a
Classics course, but it covered literature and literary criticism in much the
same way an English course would have.)
Art History was added less suddenly. I’ve wanted to take an
Art History class for a long time, particularly since I got to sit in on one of
Clara’s Art History classes for a day. I was so interested in everything they
were talking about and wished I could be there to hear the information that had
come before and after. And later, helping her study for her final, I was
intrigued by the facts and trivia that she was trying to memorize. When I got
to Mac, I immediately signed up for Art of the West I to try it out, and
enjoyed the class hugely. It wasn’t very challenging, which was disappointing,
but I found the information I received very stimulating for other classes and
the artwork itself surprisingly moving. I wasn’t going to take an Art History
course second semester (I was trying to be a good girl and work on
requirements), but I found that I really missed studying it almost immediately.
After switching to Art of the East, I was a lot happier than I’d been in my
Cultural Anthro class, even though it was (again) not as challenging as I’d
hoped. I’m really looking forward to some of the later classes they offer,
though, particularly Art of the West II.
8. Why did bio and chem get dropped as possible majors
and/or careers?
I discovered that even though I’m really interested in these
subjects on a superficial level, I find them a lot less stimulating and enjoyable
as I get further into the fields. Like with math, I loved it up to Calculus,
but when I started (evil, evil)
Linear Algebra, it no longer became something I wanted to be doing. Similarly,
chemistry and biology are incredible fields, but I’ve reached a level of
knowledge that I’m comfortable with and I don’t really want to go much farther
(I might if I had unlimited resources and time at college, but, alas, I don’t).
I did consider minoring in one of these topics, but I couldn’t
face the thought of giving up either Art History or English, and for these
particular departments, it would be impossible to do a double major with a
minor.
9. Will you be living in the dorms next semester?
Yes! Charmaine and I will be sharing a room again next year
after a very successful year together before and are enthusiastic about our
decorations and poetry wall and general mutual excitement for tea, bubbles,
English, and anything adorable and childlike.
We’ll be living in Bigelow (I think this means I’m required to have some
Bigelow tea in my collection) on the third floor facing west. Cassidy and Emily
will be on our floor with us, Sorcha and Tori will be just two (connected)
buildings away, Emma will be in Dupre (which isn’t so far), and Rachel and Keo
will be far, far away (all of about three blocks) in the Veggie Co-op. It’s a
little sad not having everyone on the same floor together again (Doty 4 was a
pretty great group of girls), but I’m excited to meet all the other inhabitants
of Bigelow 3!
10. Are you excited to go back?
Very! It’s getting to that point in the summer when I’m
antsy to return (and that’s a feeling I’ve been missing the last several years
of high school!) and get back to work. I’m excited for my classes and getting
to see my friends and being back in the beautiful Midwest. I’m sure I’ll miss
home again before long, but right now……I can’t wait to return!
That’s all for now folks, but I’ll try to keep up with my
new schedule (forgive me if I miss a couple of weeks, especially at the
beginning and end of the semester) and I love you all!
(I’d love to hear from you all in e-mails, but my responses may not be terribly exciting. Most of my good material gets saved for this blog, and then I’m never sure what I’ve told whom and when. It gets confusing. So I’ll probably give you shortish responses, but you may also get little anecdotes that don’t make it to the blog. So write to me!! I promise to try to respond promptly.)
DFTBA!
(Again with the exclamation point sprinkler going overboard!
I need to get that thing checked. At least no one can accuse me of a lack of
enthusiasm.)
