This afternoon, I felt a compulsive urge to go and see the Rose Garden at Scripps. As it is not directly in the path of any of the dining halls from my dorm, I hardly ever make a visit there. However, I wanted to see if the roses were in bloom. I think the wisteria in the Margaret Fowler Memorial Garden may be beginning to bloom, but as the Garden is closed on the weekends, I can’t tell.
I’m working outside, and if I look at the reflection in the screen of the computer I see the wisteria beginning to bloom behind me.
There were slim pickings in the Rose Garden, as most of the roses were only beginning to bud. However, Callie found a red rose, and I found a pink one. It was absolutely beautiful; I’d like to think that we chose roses based on what we wearing, for Callie’s red rose complimented her pinkish skin, blonde hair, and cream-colored shirt, while my pink one complimented my more yellow complexion, brown hair, and skirt.
Walking back to our dormitory on our beautiful campus, I felt at peace. The surroundings are truly indescribable, and with the warmth of the sun beating down upon me as we verge upon April, I knew that I had made the right choice in going to this college, and I thought about just how lucky I am to be here, to have been accepted here. I can’t imagine of all the things that I may have given up in going to this college instead of any another, but with what I know now and what has occurred, if I had the choice, I would choose Scripps over and over and over again.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Afterthought on that Last Post
I hope that I won't regret posting that last post... all you viewers seem to be pretty mecurial in the amount that you follow and respond to what I say.
Naked Blogger - Almost
The following post is my article that will appear in the upcoming, brand-new publication [in]visible this semester at Scripps College - be sure to read it when it comes out! This article is pertinent because it's all about blogging and my experiences so far in this online form of publication. It's all raw, straight from my Word-document that is now being processed by the editors, so please keep in mind the intended audience: students at a women's college as well as the students in the surrounding four colleges. I also apologize for the preachiness, but the theme around which [in]visible is centered is providing college women a positive self-conception that is not purely based on physicality and images.
"Journal-writing is something I do for myself so that I can look back, see the progression life has taken, and then look forward to the blank page’s expectance of new experiences. A journal can be as poorly written as the writer wants it to be because it is not meant for anyone else to look at. Journals contain personal thoughts to be hidden away and infrequently divulged. Blogs, on the other hand, are another matter entirely.
"Blogs are meant to be public, to be shared, and provoke discussion, insight, and commentary, something I did not understand when I started my own blog in order to write this article. Since I started my blog, I have discovered for myself how public it is. It has an audience, and I found myself putting more and more thought into my posts, examining how they were written, and wondering if they were polished to a sufficient degree. I wanted to make my blog understandable and exciting in order to make friends of mine want to read it for pleasure, instead of feeling obliged to do so by a link I posted on their Facebook walls.
"For me, writing is a tool to make sense of confusing issues, ranging from academic to personal and everywhere in between, as well as a cathartic exercise. After having written down an event that caused me frustration, such as a heated phone call with my sister, I am cleansed because I have physically expelled those feelings from that call. Thinking that a blog is a type of electronic journal that few people would see, I wrote that I missed home late one night. My plan backfired spectacularly, as I received several responses condoling me when I thought no one would notice my post. In all honesty, I was not that homesick, and I felt naked that others had seen my confession of weakness.
"Although blogs are handy for writing down a quick update on one’s life, blogs can be open to as many people as stumble upon them. My problem was that I did not realize just how open to the world a blog could be. At first I felt as if I had been invaded, but now I publish what I am doing or thinking about with a little more caution than I did at my the start of my blogging experience. I did not want to be critiqued for what I was saying, to have my friends think that what or how I thought was weird or odd. Journaling is like being in a crystal tower – I could think and express myself, but I was not willing to share what I thought, and to let myself accept the fact that others may think I was wrong or miss the point of what I was saying. My self-confidence does not have its foundation on what others think about me. My thoughts are valid in their own right because I am a thinking human in the midst of achieving her higher education.
"Life and thinking are not solitary things. They cannot be pent-up and written only in a journal; what we think must rub against what other people think. A blog, and the internet, as many people have already discovered, is a pretty good way to do that.
"Needless to say, I have learned what to publish, whom to invite to see my blog, and to not be afraid when people may challenge what I am thinking about, and to not be put out when people do not respond to issues that I may think are important. My self-worth lies in the fact that I am thinking, not what other people think."
"Journal-writing is something I do for myself so that I can look back, see the progression life has taken, and then look forward to the blank page’s expectance of new experiences. A journal can be as poorly written as the writer wants it to be because it is not meant for anyone else to look at. Journals contain personal thoughts to be hidden away and infrequently divulged. Blogs, on the other hand, are another matter entirely.
"Blogs are meant to be public, to be shared, and provoke discussion, insight, and commentary, something I did not understand when I started my own blog in order to write this article. Since I started my blog, I have discovered for myself how public it is. It has an audience, and I found myself putting more and more thought into my posts, examining how they were written, and wondering if they were polished to a sufficient degree. I wanted to make my blog understandable and exciting in order to make friends of mine want to read it for pleasure, instead of feeling obliged to do so by a link I posted on their Facebook walls.
"For me, writing is a tool to make sense of confusing issues, ranging from academic to personal and everywhere in between, as well as a cathartic exercise. After having written down an event that caused me frustration, such as a heated phone call with my sister, I am cleansed because I have physically expelled those feelings from that call. Thinking that a blog is a type of electronic journal that few people would see, I wrote that I missed home late one night. My plan backfired spectacularly, as I received several responses condoling me when I thought no one would notice my post. In all honesty, I was not that homesick, and I felt naked that others had seen my confession of weakness.
"Although blogs are handy for writing down a quick update on one’s life, blogs can be open to as many people as stumble upon them. My problem was that I did not realize just how open to the world a blog could be. At first I felt as if I had been invaded, but now I publish what I am doing or thinking about with a little more caution than I did at my the start of my blogging experience. I did not want to be critiqued for what I was saying, to have my friends think that what or how I thought was weird or odd. Journaling is like being in a crystal tower – I could think and express myself, but I was not willing to share what I thought, and to let myself accept the fact that others may think I was wrong or miss the point of what I was saying. My self-confidence does not have its foundation on what others think about me. My thoughts are valid in their own right because I am a thinking human in the midst of achieving her higher education.
"Life and thinking are not solitary things. They cannot be pent-up and written only in a journal; what we think must rub against what other people think. A blog, and the internet, as many people have already discovered, is a pretty good way to do that.
"Needless to say, I have learned what to publish, whom to invite to see my blog, and to not be afraid when people may challenge what I am thinking about, and to not be put out when people do not respond to issues that I may think are important. My self-worth lies in the fact that I am thinking, not what other people think."
Friday, March 13, 2009
A Different Fate
I almost laugh at the cheesiness of this title. And then I almost gag.
This afternoon, I had a Biology lab that consisted of counting the number of ants on sugar-soaked cottonballs every ten minutes for two hours. My group was out in the throes of nature at the Joint Science Department's Bernard Field Station - complete with the sound of car traffic and airplanes thundering overhead in sunny Southern California - for a sunny, breezy day, so it wasn't as bad as it might have been. It could have been better, though; I could have not had to count ants at all.
After the ordeal was over (okay it was only a few bugs), my lab group was walking back to the science center when we spied a trash can. We had no use for the sugary cottonballs, some of which were still ant-laden, and other members of our lab section had already tossed away their lab tools, so we decided to do so, as well. As I cast mine in with the other discarded cottonballs, I noticed something a little unusual. Sitting at the bottom of an almost-empty trashcan was a volleyball, perfectly round. Being a former volleyball-player in high school, it pricked my heart a little at such a waste. It hadn't looked lopsided from my perspective; just to make sure, I took another peek.
There it was, sitting at the bottom of the trash can, a blue, white, and gray Tachikara volleyball, probably a Soft-Touch by the look of it. It looked a little lonely, and I'd been itching for the past week to play volleyball; however, I had no one and nothing to play with. This might just have been my chance.
I reached over the rim of the trash can and poked it; it was even still inflated! A group of students must have broken into the Field Station and either lost or left their volleyball behind, which an instructor or an environmentally-conscious Pitzer student must have picked up and thrown out. A perfectly good volleyball!
Despite the stigma of picking things out of the trash, as well as the stickiness, I plucked the volleyball from its impending fate and took it home with me. I washed it multiple times with dish soap and hand sanitizer; I hope that's enough. My loving caresses alone should be enough to eradicate any miscreant microbial entities, but one never can be too sure. Wow, I'm alliterative this evening.
And now, as I sit typing this blog post, my new volleyball sits on the floor. I am immensely proud that I now not only have a volleyball, but also the means through which I obtained it. I feel good that I saved it from being lost in the abyss of a trash dump, I don't feel guilty about not finding the original owner, and I feel even better that didn't have to pay a cent for it. Their fault they left it behind; my gain that I had the guts to take it from the trash. And now... anyone up for playing a little bit of volleyball?
This afternoon, I had a Biology lab that consisted of counting the number of ants on sugar-soaked cottonballs every ten minutes for two hours. My group was out in the throes of nature at the Joint Science Department's Bernard Field Station - complete with the sound of car traffic and airplanes thundering overhead in sunny Southern California - for a sunny, breezy day, so it wasn't as bad as it might have been. It could have been better, though; I could have not had to count ants at all.
After the ordeal was over (okay it was only a few bugs), my lab group was walking back to the science center when we spied a trash can. We had no use for the sugary cottonballs, some of which were still ant-laden, and other members of our lab section had already tossed away their lab tools, so we decided to do so, as well. As I cast mine in with the other discarded cottonballs, I noticed something a little unusual. Sitting at the bottom of an almost-empty trashcan was a volleyball, perfectly round. Being a former volleyball-player in high school, it pricked my heart a little at such a waste. It hadn't looked lopsided from my perspective; just to make sure, I took another peek.
There it was, sitting at the bottom of the trash can, a blue, white, and gray Tachikara volleyball, probably a Soft-Touch by the look of it. It looked a little lonely, and I'd been itching for the past week to play volleyball; however, I had no one and nothing to play with. This might just have been my chance.
I reached over the rim of the trash can and poked it; it was even still inflated! A group of students must have broken into the Field Station and either lost or left their volleyball behind, which an instructor or an environmentally-conscious Pitzer student must have picked up and thrown out. A perfectly good volleyball!
Despite the stigma of picking things out of the trash, as well as the stickiness, I plucked the volleyball from its impending fate and took it home with me. I washed it multiple times with dish soap and hand sanitizer; I hope that's enough. My loving caresses alone should be enough to eradicate any miscreant microbial entities, but one never can be too sure. Wow, I'm alliterative this evening.
And now, as I sit typing this blog post, my new volleyball sits on the floor. I am immensely proud that I now not only have a volleyball, but also the means through which I obtained it. I feel good that I saved it from being lost in the abyss of a trash dump, I don't feel guilty about not finding the original owner, and I feel even better that didn't have to pay a cent for it. Their fault they left it behind; my gain that I had the guts to take it from the trash. And now... anyone up for playing a little bit of volleyball?
Monday, March 9, 2009
Looking Forward to Spring Break...
As it is easy to infer, I have not posted in a while. March is a busy time - that said, I still have Biology to study for (ahh I don't know the difference between a chromalveolate and a choanoflagellate!) and a nice pile of Econ to get through tonight, in addition to investing a good chunk of time at Social Dance.
I look forward to this Thursday evening with growing impatience. Once Thursday's here, Spring Break begins...
That said, I have nothing more to say.
I look forward to this Thursday evening with growing impatience. Once Thursday's here, Spring Break begins...
That said, I have nothing more to say.
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