2018

2018 happened in three chunks for me. So much happened in each of these chunks that it's as if I lived three separate years in one.

January-May

Spring semester is so far away that I can hardly believe it happened only this year. I took Writing of Fiction, Writer's Style, History of the Christian Church, Epic Literature, and a host of other classes, including a course about the history and geography of Israel to prepare for the spring break study trip to Israel that I went on! 

In the spring, I continued working as a Teacher's Assistant and as the Social Media Intern for the English Department. When my roommate Sarah and I decided we needed a break from sitting on the couch doing homework, we sat on the couch and watched sitcoms or Monk. One of the highlights of spring semester was attending my school's annual film festival with some of my closest friends. The lowlight of the semester was contracting some horrible plague, spending a day in the emergency room, and missing a week and a half of school because of it. 

May-August

School ended on Thursday, and over the weekend, my roommate and I moved into summer housing. On Monday, I started my first full-time job, cleaning the main dorm building with facility services. The work was hard (we moved desks, dressers, and mattresses; de-bunked bunk beds and put them back together again; vacuumed; vacuumed some more; washed walls, tables, and light fixtures; swept stairwells; mopped floors... If it was dirty, we cleaned it) but the company was great and made the job so much fun!

Summer wasn't all work, though... Sarah and I went to two weddings; Abby, Andrea, and I explored parts of the city; summer housing shenanigans abounded; I got to go home for two weeks to see my parents, bestie, and extended family; and I went kayaking for the first time and LOVED it. 

September-December

School began again, and this was the most exhausting semester yet. I'm no longer the Social Media Intern for the English Department, but I run the Instagram account for a student group, so I attended many of their events throughout the semester. I also continued to be involved in the English Department as both a TA and a member of Sigma Tau Delta. To keep a stiff upper lip as I faced such classes as Literary Theory (LACAAAAAAAAAAN), Structure of English Grammar, and Christianity and Writing, I dyed my hair blue and purple and, depending on my mood, felt either like a unicorn or an oil spill. 

Here on the blog, I participated in the Silmaril Awards and hosted The Most Mischievous Imp Silmaril. I wasn't able to post much else on here due to one of my classes where each student had to research a historical topic and build a website presenting their research in a user-friendly and interesting way. I did mine on the symphonies of three Soviet composers under the reign of Stalin. 

Check out my website by clicking this link.

One of my goals for this past semester was to be more focused on academics than on social life, but 2018 has turned out to be a year of relationships, and I'm glad. People are so much more important than grades. Sarah's family and Andrea's family have adopted me since my own parents live over a thousand miles away from school. Amidst the craziness of academics and obligations, my friends and I made time for wandering around a golf course, watching movies and playing foosball and Dutch Blitz in the basement, attending rad Halloween and Christmas parties (don't worry, most of the attendees were English Department people, so the craziest thing to happen was misplacing a modifier), playing board games and video games, attending school theater productions, and dressing up all fancy to go to the orchestra. 

Now, I am home on Christmas break, reflecting on 2018 from the comfort of my bed, even though it is 2:00 in the afternoon. I did a lot last year. I did well in school and at work. I made new and wonderful friends. We did and saw a lot of great things together. But what the pictures don't show is the emotional exhaustion and mental strain of trying to balance school, friendships, and self-care. They don't show the anxiety and self-image issues. They don't show the hard decisions and heartache. 2018 was rough (I know that because I only managed to read fifteen books the entire year!). I didn't achieve in full any of the goals I set for myself last year. 

Looking Ahead

Being at home for break—or, rather, being away from the pressures and responsibilities of being on campus—has been so so so good for me. I've been able to rest and recover from the total exhaustion of last semester, and 2019 doesn't look so dark as a result. I've felt the most myself that I have since Thanksgiving.

As some of you may know, I love lists (which is part of the reason why I started bullet journaling in 2018 and am going to continue this year). Usually, I make a list of goals for myself during the infancy of a new year, but I haven't done that yet because, frankly, I don't want another to-do list. I do, however, have a few vague ideas of things that I want to improve upon in 2019, which I shall put in a list for readability sake (also because I just love lists).

-I would like to move my blog to Wordpress and buy a domain name. 

-I would like to be confident about who I am so that I can stop the niggling voices at the back of my brain telling me lies about myself.

-I would like to stop being so self-sufficient and humble myself to trust God more. 

-And I suppose it would be nice to double my reading from last year and finish thirty books in 2019. (Okay, this is dangerously close to a goal. Time to stop.)

Pastors and parents talk about stages of life and how some are stages of waiting. Well, I've been walking r e a  l   l    y slowly across that stage for over a year now. I have no idea what any serious aspect of my future looks like, and that's frustrating and scary. 

I'm hesitantly optimistic that 2019 holds the answers to some of the questions I asked in 2018. I'm beginning to look forward to heading back to school next week. I've got some great classes and some great people to get back to. 

Productivity: Healthy Habits

I'm a busy college student, so I wanted to share some productivity tricks that I've learned that have helped me a lot. I can't say that I follow these tricks all of the time, but when I do, I feel healthier, happier, and less stressed because I know that there is time in the day to get everything done. These are some healthy habits that I'm cultivating:

1. Get up at the same time every morning.
Over the summer, I had a job working Facilities at my school, and I had to give up at 5:30 every morning to get to work at 6:00. After a few weeks, my body got used to getting up at the same time every day, and I knew that I wanted to continue that into the school year. I'm not still getting up at 5:30, because that's ludicrous, but I am getting up at 7:00 most mornings. When I get up earlier, I tend to get more done in the day because I'm awake earlier and don't feel groggy from sleeping in.

2. Go to bed early.
I need eight hours of sleep in order to be a functioning member of society. It helps me to focus better in classes and while doing homework, it makes me happier, and it makes getting up in the morning a whole lot easier. Also, sleep is amazing, so, if you can, make sure you are getting enough sleep for what you need to get done in the day.

3. Eat good food.
I am on the over-21 meal plan, which is only $235 a semester, so I do a lot of cooking for myself. In the past, I have not been great at this. My roommate and I always reach a point in the semester where we give up and just get fast food several times a week. This is not only unhealthy, but it is also expensive, so I have vowed to myself to cook more this semester, and, so far, it has been working well. This is better for my body and my bank account and is definitely a healthy habit that every busy person should develop.

4. Take breaks.
I take a lot of breaks. Mostly, it's between assignments. Sometimes, it's in the middle of assignments. My breaks are never long; I keep them to 5-15 minutes. Usually, I'll do something productive during these breaks. I'll clean something or make myself food or wash dishes. It's a brain break for me, but it gets chores done, too!

Do you do any of these things? Are you going to try any of these things? Tell me about healthy habits that you have!

Giving Myself a Medal

It's Silmaril Award season, which means that your favorite fantasy characters are in the running to win a Silmaril (see my last post for more details), but I figured I deserve an award, too. I survived the longest week of my life, so I am giving myself a trophy.

I have class from 9-2 and work from 2-4ish on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I have class from 8-12:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Since I am taking mostly upper level classes, almost all of my free time is reserved for homework, but this past week, I had several meetings to attend in the afternoons. In addition to all of this, I popped in and out of the Silmaril Awards all week. There were so many indie-published characters nominated! Woohoo! Tomorrow, voting begins and lasts all week, so make sure to come back.

Somehow, I managed to survive The Busiest Week Ever with my sanity and well-being in tact. I've wanted to do a blog post on productivity for a few months now, and after this week, I thought why not make it a series? Here are the topics I'm going to talk about:

1. Healthy Habits
2. Scheduling/Organization
3. Time Management/Discipline

I'm hoping to post every weekend until the end of the month, so look forward to that! Maybe the things I have learned will help you, too, whether you are in college or not.

Don't forget to come back tomorrow to vote for your favorite fantasy characters!

In My Life #2

I've finally admitted to myself that I am a horrible blogger when I'm at school. I thought that I could do it all, and do it all well, but I just can't. I'm balancing classes, homework, a job, an internship, and a growing group of friends. I'm sad to say that blogging and all things creative have moved to the bottom of my priority list.
Just what have I been busy with? Let me tell you!


Academics 

I've worked hard in my classes over the past two years, so you can imagine my excitement when I qualified for induction into Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honors society!
In addition to an English major, I added a History minor last spring... only, I've loved my time in the History Department so much that I decided to bump the minor up to a major. As of last week, I am a double major! Good thing I like to read so much...

Friends

Last year, my friend group was relatively small, but this year, I've developed deeper friendships with the girls in the English Department and made a few new friends in both the English and History Departments. We have a good time: late night drives to McDonalds... dressing up fancy for the Film Festival... going to see Ready Player One in theaters... hanging out in the dorm watching The Office... I am so grateful for the people I have in my life right now!

Israel

Over spring break, I went to Israel on a study trip! The picture above is taken from Mount Arbel, overlooking the Valley of Genneseret and the Sea of Galilee. It was an amazing trip. If you ever have a chance to go, don't hesitate: go. I want to do a full post on my trip eventually, but that might have to wait a month or so until I am on summer break.

And that is what has been taking up all of my time! Since I haven't posted in over a month, I figured that I should probably let you all know that I'm not dead, I'm just busy. I can't make any promises that I will be able to jump back into the blogging community any time soon, but I want you all to know that I care about you and miss you! Let me know what you've been doing in a comment. I'd love to hear from you.

Knows not where [s]he's going to...

I'm not cut out to be an editor.

My plan was to go to school, gain an English degree, become an editor to pay the bills, and write my own novels on the side.

And then I took Editing and Proofreading.

The class itself was great. I learned a lot, including that I don't want to be an editor anymore.
Before I continue, let me explain the different types of editors that we learned about:

These are the different types of editors that will work on books, but there are also editors who work on technical manuals, websites, and anything else you can think of with words that people will read. All of these editors have something in common, however: they work with style guides.
A style guide is used by publishing houses and other companies to make sure that everything they publish has internal grammatical consistency. In class, for example, we proofread an already-published book from Bethany House Publishers (BHP). BHP has their own style guide which dictates whether three dots in an ellipses is correct or if four dots are needed, whether or not orange-red needs a hyphen, and other nitpicky details.

THIS is why I don't want to be an editor anymore. They say the devil is in the details, and they (whomever they may be) are right. I consider myself detail-oriented, focused, and patient, but I simply don't like making sure that every comma is compliant with each other and with a publishing house's style guide.
I do not enjoy paging—or, in the case of modern technology, clicking—through a style guide to find out whether or not the publishing house wants to capitalize "He" when referring to God.
Although I enjoyed having the power to change organization, sentence structure, and even paragraph organization during our substantive and copy editing projects, I did not enjoy having to decide if strange sentence construction was distracting or if it was simply the author's voice.
I don't like how impersonal it is. Sometimes, an editor never talks directly with the author. If the editor does talk with the author, he or she is supposed to be polite but anything more is not encouraged. I understand that... after all, editing is, in a way, a business transaction. Like any business transaction, it should be polite and detached. But if I love an author's work, I want to tell them that. I want to become their friend and learn what was in their head when they thought of a particular scene or character. I want to tell everyone how much I loved their work. I want to work with them again. More often than not, however, editors and authors don't stick together, especially if the editor is freelancing (a.k.a. not working with a publishing house or company).

So, I'm not cut out to be an editor. As the song says, I "know not where [I'm] going to." If I'm not to be an editor, what am I to do? I asked a very similar question three-and-a-half years ago when I discovered that I was not cut out to be a full time, wage-earning youth/worship leader. It took me over a year to process that discovery, but at the end of that year plus, I decided to go to school to get an English degree. I'm not regretting that decision in the slightest, as I love love LOVE my department and what I'm studying.
But, I also don't know what I want to do with my degree once I graduate, especially since I've added a history minor and what in the world does one do with an English/History/Bible degree in this day and age?? Become a professor, I suppose. I don't know if that's what I want to do, but it's an option that I need to think and pray about.

I don't graduate for two-and-a-half years, so I have lots of time to think and pray.

What about you? What do you want to be when you grow up (even if you are already grown up, you can still answer!)? Have you ever had your plans derailed? How did you set the train back on the tracks again? Leave me a comment and let me know; I'd love to hear from you!

Five Things I Learned About Myself This Semester

1. My body needs at least eight hours of sleep every night.

That's my bed way at the top, two feet away from the ceiling. No, I never rolled out during the night. Yes, we did move it down a few notches for next semester.

This is a lesson I learned spring semester after sleeping an average of seven hours every night and being constantly cranky and sick. This semester, I set myself a loose goal of getting eight hours of sleep every night—or at least to go to bed earlier. My friend and roommate wanted to get more sleep, too, so together we were able to be in bed before eleven most nights. Even if I didn't sleep for eight hours, I made sure to be in bed at least eight hours a night. I was mostly successful, except for the week or two leading up to finals!

2. I like to cook and clean more than I thought.

In addition to having a full kitchen this year, I have a George Foreman and a freezer full of meat. I also have a dining fund that is significantly smaller than last year. I had to prepare a lot of my own meals, and I quite enjoyed experimenting with potatoes and eggs. I even made myself a vat of chicken soup! I surprised myself with how much I like cooking (when I wasn't stressed by other commitments). I also surprised myself with how much I like cleaning up my messes, too. There's something satisfying about seeing the tangible results of wiping up spilled salsa or scrubbing the soap grime off of the bathtub.

3. Listening to live music and walking by water make me happy and calm when I am sad and stressed.

I took a walking class this past semester that reminded me of how much I enjoy walking. Luckily, I live in the land of 10,000 lakes, so there is plenty of beauty around me to look at while I get exercise. Next semester, I want to continue walking several times a week. I also want to continue taking advantage of the concerts and plays that my school puts on while I am still a student and can get them for free! They make me feel alive.

4. I don't take risks if it involves making mistakes or risking confrontation.

This picture has nothing to do with confrontation, but it makes me laugh so I thought I'd share it.

I'm just not a risky person. I learned this through my internship. I was too timid to follow through with many of my ideas because I was afraid they would be taken badly. Next semester, my plan is to take more risks... because if I don't take risks, how will I ever make mistakes? And if I never make mistakes, how will I ever grow?

5. I'm not cut out to be an editor.

Yeah, I'm surprised, too. After all, one reason I chose the college I did was because they had an editing and proofreading class! I took said class this past semester and... really didn't like it all that much. I mean, the class was great, like most classes at my school, but I didn't enjoy the work. So, now I'm at a loss. If I'm not to be an editor, what am I to be?

I don't know, but I've got time to figure it out.

In my next post, I want to talk more about my editing class and share the things I learned and why I don't want to be an editor anymore. Stay tuned for that!

Until then, have you learned anything about yourself in the past few months?

In My Life

I'm on Winter Break, which means that I'm back from hiatus!! Hurrah!

This semester has been a walk in the cold wind of a Minnesota winter, when you simultaneously enjoy God's beautiful creation and hate your life because your face has frozen.

In August, I moved into a dorm-apartment, fully furnished with plumbing and moisture problems, a couch with a "chastity bar" in between each cushion, and a full kitchen...

In September, the English Department had a picnic...

In October, some friends and I went to an opera showcase in the rain...

Photo credit: Andrea

and to an apple orchard in the sun...

In November, the English Department had an English Tea...

Photo credit: Professor Hougen

and I got to meet Maggie Stiefvater...

In December, we went on an overnight trip to Duluth...

and the English Department had a Gatsby-themed Christmas party!

The main part of my days, however, was spent balancing seventeen credits of classes, one credit of internship, a job as a TA, cooking, cleaning, health, and mental health. I wasn't able to balance these things as well as I'd hoped, so this Winter Break I want to come up with a plan to be a better human in the spring. I learned several things about myself this school year, but I want to save that for my next post.
This post is just to catch you up on the last few months of my life, and to let you know that I am back in the blogging world!

Also...

Are you excited for Christmas? What are you doing for the holidays? Let me know in the comments! I want to hear from you all!

Kitchen Adventures: Eating at College

Dear relatives, friends, and parents who are concerned that I am a starving college student...

Food no longer looks like a word after making that graphic

Don't worry: I AM EATING.

Everyone at my school has dining funds to use at the cafeteria, cafe, and Eagle's Nest (which features burgers and ice cream almost exclusively). Since I am over twenty-one years old, I have $250 in dining funds, which is $1,200 less than I had last year, and I am SO happy about that! Last year, I had such a hard time getting rid of $1,450 worth of meal funds every semester, especially since cafeteria food is gross. Also, the only way to eat $1,450 worth of food is to eat junk, and I'm not about that life (usually).

This year, I am cooking for myself. I have a whole freezer full of meat and a George Foreman. I'm set.

I make a lot of eggs and a lot of potatoes.

Omelet

Egg scramble with potato

When I'm too tired to make myself dinner, I make myself burritos or quesadillas.

Sad, warped picture. I don't know what happened. 

When I'm not too tired to make myself dinner, I make a pork chop or a chicken breast or a sausage.

 

Sometimes, I order Chinese or pizza or Noodles & Company.

I also eat a lot of sandwiches.

I wouldn't say that I'm a great cook, but I'm slowly learning a thing or two. I wouldn't say that I'm eating the healthiest that I could be, but I'm not getting nearly as many stomach cramps as I did last year, so I must be doing something right.

All this writing about food has made me hungry, so I am going to go and make myself something to eat.

Some Thoughts on Poetry

I'd never have thought I'd say this, but... I'm enjoying poetry.

I've never enjoyed poetry because I'm a literal thinker, which makes it hard for me to understand imagery. Additionally, the poetry that I had been exposed to before coming to college was sappy and sad, and I didn't like that.
Right now, I'm taking a class on how to write poetry, and it has made me think about poems in a way that I never have before. Learning about how technical poetry is, reading a variety of poems, and writing my own poems have helped me enjoy poetry for the first time in my life.

Poetry is much like prose in that you have to think about what you write, use specific and concrete language, and the first draft is never perfect. Poetry requires just as much revision as stories, articles, papers, or blog posts. I would say that writing poetry is even more complex than writing prose.
Just like it takes a soprano years of practice and technique to make a Puccini aria sound as easy to sing as Old Mcdonald Had a Farm, it takes a poet years to master form (or lack thereof), meter (or lack thereof), and literary devices (such as simile, metaphor, synecdoche, synesthesia, and other types of imagery).
Because poetry is so specific (especially if you are writing within a certain form or meter), every word is carefully picked out and placed in its appropriate spot so that there are enough syllables in a line or so that a rhyme will be perfect.

Form refers to a specific type of poem, such as a sonnet or a ballad. My favorite forms that we've learned about are pantoums, sestinas, and villanelles because they feature repeating words and lines; if you change the meaning of a word or line slightly, your poem can go in a completely different direction than you had originally intended!
The villanelle, for example, contains five tercets (five stanzas of three lines each) and a quatrain at the end (one stanza of four lines). The first and third line of the first stanza repeat alternatively in the the following stanzas, and then both of them are repeated in the quatrain. The most famous villanelle is Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas. Check it out, and you'll see the form!

Poems can also be written in a certain meter. Meter refers to how many syllables are in each line of a poem. The most well-known meter is iambic pentameter. An "iamb" is a pair of unstressed-stressed syllables, such as "the dog" or "predict." An iamb equals one "foot." "Pentameter" means that there are five iambic feet per line. There are many more types of meter, but I won't list them all (unless you really want me to).
When reading a poem, you can do something called "scansion," which means that you are examining a line and figuring out what meter it is in. Then, you write a dash above unstressed words and little u's above stressed words. It looks like this:

I love the technical side of writing, so form and meter have been right up my alley, but my poetry class has also been learning about modern/freestyle poetry, which doesn't necessarily stick to a certain form or meter. It's much looser and relies more heavily on imagery. I enjoy writing poetry because I get to play around with words and sounds and syllables.

Here is the first poem I wrote in class. It's an epistle (which is a fancy word for "letter"):

A Letter Home
By Abbey Stellingwerff

If you sniff, the air is sweet here.
Sweet and warm.
Comforting like clean laundry or cookies.
A scent like cyclamen upon the wind,
with a snag of cow.

If you listen, it sounds of bugs;
mosquitoes.
They buzz like that out-of-tune piano.
Cicadas clatter all the day and night;
catalectic.

If you sit and watch the weather,
storms arrive.
Leaf-strained wind hugs strong like a long-lost friend.
A boom-crash! across the Midwestern Plains;
thunder smothers me.

If you eat, prepare to eat well:
casserole,
sweet corn—butter drips down face and fingers—
meat and potatoes. All American.
No yucca fries here.

If you look up, foreign faces
smile at you.
Friendly farmer's salute hides a headache
caused by a fixed world of red-checked flannel.
Pick-up trucks abound.

Distance destroys disagreements.
I recall
only the memories that make me smile:
laughing and walking and talking and you.
Love from, your daughter.

The Fire Alarm Fiasco

In last week's post, I mentioned writing a short story about evacuating my dorm room in the early morning hours, and I thought I'd share it this week! Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Without further ado... The Fire Alarm Fiasco:

Saturday, April 22, 2017, 3:40 AM.

A high-pitched screaming.

Cowering under the covers, hoping that it will stop.

My roommate shouting, “Guys! It’s the fire alarm! There’s a fire!”

This whole year has been leading up to this moment.

***

August 2016, Orientation week.

Rrrttt says my keycard as I swish it in and out of the lock on my dorm room door. I enter to find my two roommates talking excitedly by the window.

“Guess what happened?” Sarah exclaims.

“What?” I ask, setting my backpack on the floor.

“The fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate to the parking lot!”

“Wow! Was there a fire?”

“No, but three firetrucks came,” says Annie.

“What happened?”

“Someone on the boy’s floor boiled the water out of a pan of eggs.” Sarah’s posture and tone of voice say that she thinks boys should know better.

“I can’t believe I missed the excitement!” I say.

“Oh, I’m sure there will be another fire drill, Abbey,” reassures Annie.

She hasn’t a clue how prophetic her words are.

***

November 2016

We were going to watch a movie, but I can’t get the DVD player on my computer to work.

And then the loudest, the annoyingest, the shrillest noise attacks our eardrums. Silver flashing lights drive away any thought I had about my DVD player.

My heart starts beating quicker.

“The fire alarm,” says Sarah.

“Hnnnngg!” says Joseph.

“Should we go?” says Rebekah.

We gather our shoes and coats and Joseph’s keys and join the throng of students exiting the building.

“Let’s go to my car,” suggests Joseph.

So, we do.

The four of us huddle in Joseph’s car. Some of us are slightly annoyed. Others of us are slightly scared.

We hear the firetrucks before we see them, and we see their lights before we see the actual machines. The night is tinged blue and red. Three fire trucks arrive. Members of our bro-sis hall keep letting out the cozy bubble of warm air in Joseph’s car. They get in to talk with us. They get out to take pictures. Finally, Joseph—one of the annoyed ones—locks the doors and seals our bubble. We huddle under his backseat blanket.

Someone sounds the all clear and people walk back to the building. Had it been a drill? Had another boy made a gregarious cooking mistake? The mystery remains unsolved.

***

February 2017

“All I want to do is curl up on my bed with oreos and peanut butter and watch New Girl,” says Sarah from inside her black coat. She wears its faux fur hood over her hair.

“That sounds perfect. I’m going to join you,” I reply.

We trudge up the stairs, key ourselves into room 332, and lackadaisically drop our bags on the ugly, looks-like-the-80s-what-were-they-thinking-when-they-made-this-a-color carpet. We hurry to tear our coats off in our sauna-like room. Next, one boot off. Two boot off. Sweater off. Let the pit stains dry.

Then, a high-pitched, shrill EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

“NO!” yells Sarah.

The dreaded fire alarm.

One boot on. Two boot on. One arm back in the coat. Two arm back in the coat. We don’t zip ourselves up as we hurry out of the room and down the stairs. I had grabbed my backpack because homework is important, even in a fire.

But, it’s not a fire. It’s just a drill.

***

Saturday, April 22, 2017, 3:40 AM.

A high-pitched screaming.

I awake, thinking that it’s my alarm. I hit my clock a few times and figure that it must be one of my roommate’s alarms. I plug my ears, hoping the sound will go away. I’m in the process of sticking my head under my pillow to hide from the noise when Sarah says,

“Guys! It’s a fire!”

Immediately, I’m awake.

Of course it’s the fire alarm!

I don’t remember climbing down from my bunk. Somehow, I’m on the ground, shoving those sweat pants that my mom told me never to wear out of the house onto my legs. Shoving shoes on my feet. Shoving a jacket on over my oversized Walk MS sleeping shirt. Shoving my laptop in my backpack. My novel is on that laptop.

“Come on! We have to go!” Sarah urges. She has turned the light on so that we can see.

I grab my Star Trek blanket, and we leave the room.

Sleepy students rush to the stairwell and out of the building. Everyone is in their pajamas. Once outside, I drop my backpack in a patch of grass and go to Annie. She’s shivering. I am, too. I share my blanket with her. We look at our home, scouring the building for flames. I don’t see any smoke… Maybe the building is not on fire? The longer we stand in the freezing air, the more it seems like that is the case. I still shake. Partly because of the cold. Partly because of fear. My heart has not returned to a normal pace yet, but that could be because crush-worthy Peter is standing near to where I abandoned my backpack on the grass. My novel is on that laptop. I try to think of a way to get it back without having to interact with the boy from room 232.

“Where’s Joseph?” Sarah says suddenly.

He has not come out of the building.

She tries calling him. I realize that I left my phone in the building.

I see John, our RD, come outside with his newborn wrapped in a blanket. He deposits the baby in his car. His wife and young son join him. Groups of shivering, pajama-ed dorm-dwellers stand discussing the alarm and telling nervous jokes as firefighters (they only sent two firetrucks this time) examine the building.

The all clear is called. False alarm.

The next day, we learn the truth.

Someone on the boy’s floor burned orange chicken. At 3:30 in the morning. Orange chicken. ORANGE CHICKEN!

So, the year ends as it began: with boys trying and failing to cook.

The circle of life, indeed.

THE END

I Find Your Lack of Faith in Whimsy Disturbing

Being an English major is hard.
It's hard because everything we read is analyzed and overanalyzed until we find meaning where there is none. We don't read many whimsical or even happy stories because they, evidently, don't contain the same kind of meaning that depressing stories do. While it is fun to examine stories and poems to find hidden truths, I do not believe that everything has to have a deeper meaning. Sometimes, a story is just a story. Sometimes, a story is meant to take us away from this depraved world for a few hours and show us glimpses of God through noble characters, pure love, and humorous exchanges.

Star Wars is a story that does this well.

Geek fact: this Star Wars poster is by the Hildebrandt Brothers, who also drew pictures for Lord of the Rings calendars in the 1970s and '80s.

Noble Characters
Even though Luke Skywalker whines about staying on his uncle and aunt's moisture farm for another year, his loyalty is still to his family. When Ben Kenobi offers Luke an opportunity to get away from Tatooine, Luke refuses because he has responsibilities at home. When Ben warns Luke not to go home after they find evidence that storm troopers have been in the area, Luke returns home to see if his family is all right. He doesn't go with Ben until he is sure he isn't leaving his responsibility.
Although Han Solo is a scuffy-lookin' ruffian with a price on his head, he does the right thing by coming back to fight in the final battle against the Death Star.
Although Princess Leia was raised as royalty, she became a politician willing to die for her people if it meant destroying the Empire.

Pure Love
(We're overlooking the Luke/Leia kiss, okay??)
I think we all agree that Han and Leia's relationship is pretty cute, what with their "Your hands are cold" and their "I love you" "I know," so why don't we step back from Han and Leia and examine some of the other relationship in the franchise?
Han continually returns to his friends because of his love for them.
Luke, Leia, and Lando are willing to risk their lives to rescue Han from Jabba the Hut.
Chewbacca is willing to do anything to help his friends—including fighting off strange little recycling monsters who are trying to melt down C-3PO.
Darth Vader destroys his boss/mentor and sacrifices his own life in order to save his son.

Humorous Exchanges
"It's not my fault!"

"I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Why you... stuck up... half-witted... scruffy looking... nerf herder!"

And my favorite...
"We're fine. We're all fine here, now, thank you. How are you?"
"We're sending a squad up."
"Negative. Negative! We had a reactor leak here. Give us a few minutes to lock it down. Large leak... very dangerous."
"Who is this? What is your operating number?"
"Uh..." *shoots intercom* "Boring conversation anyway... Luke! We're gonna have company!"

Life—especially my life as an English major—seems filled with sad and depressing, yet deep and meaningful, stories. It seems as if whimsical and fun stories are viewed as the illegitimate offspring of Real Literature (insert person with a snobbish accent snobbishly rubbing his or her nose [here]).
While it's okay if a story is just a story with no deeper meaning, I want to remind you that fun stories can be just as deep and meaningful as sad stories. We find sad stories meaningful because we, like the author, have gone through hard times to learn life lessons, but lessons can be taught through happy stories, too. If you need an example, just look to Star Wars' lessons of friendship and sacrifice.

The Last Two Months in Pictures

I said in my last blog post that the past two months of school have been harder than all of last semester, but there have been good moments, too! Here are some of them:


I made dinner for my friends. Dutch stamppot and rookworst!



We have done a lot of studying at the library. This old man reading the newspaper with his magnifying glass caught my fancy.    



I went on my first "date" for one of Joseph's cinematography projects. Bekah was my waitress. It was a fancy restaurant. They served vegetable-oil-wine. (Well what else are you supposed to do on a dry campus??)



We went on several walks on the frozen lake.




We rode the shuttle, too. 



I'll leave you with the beautiful Midwestern sunset: