03/03/2008
So this is the second half of the most recently Top-5 list. My bad for not putting this up until now.

Top-5 Places to Eat at Miami – Off-Campus Edition

• Steinkeller’s: German, sit-down, good food, awesome fries, and great draft beer options. This place only ever had one downside and that was that it used to be really smoky since it’s in the basement of a building. Since the law in Ohio changed, however, that hasn’t been a problem and I couldn’t be more pleased. Truly, the draft beer choices here are the best in town and the food, while somewhat pricey, is quite good.
• Fiesta Charra: one of my favorites, the only reason this place isn’t number one is because I haven’t been able to get horchata consistently there. Sometimes they have it, sometimes they look at me like I’m crazy for asking for it. Even if I am crazy, I don’t like people looking at me like that. Digression aside, the food is decent, prices good, and it’s very speedy (so a good choice if you’re hungry now). I’m a big fan.
• Pita Pit: made-to-order pitas, this place is relatively cheap, the choices are excellent (even if I only ever order turkey), and I am always a fan of watching my food prepared. The only negative I’ve ever had was biting down too hard on a pita once (my fault, not the pita’s), I chipped my tooth. Not a fun experience, but not really Pita Pit’s fault. All in all, a good eating choice and healthier than most fast food joints.
• Smokin’ Ox: I put this and the next one on the list tentatively. I can’t think of two that I like better, but I’m pretty reticent to jump on board with these guys. Smokin’ Ox bugs me on a couple levels. First, I want the “g” on Smokin’, call me silly, but I go the distance. Second, there is one guy there, who I think may be a manager, who’s a little creepy. He’s only ever been super nice and polite to me, but he sets me on edge. Third, the food is only ok. I’ve never walked away saying “wow, that was awesome.”
• Bagel & Deli: This is a neat place, but I’m not sure, like I said, it should be on here. Until I think of two to knock this is Smokin’ Ox off, though, they’re staying on the top-5. Bagel & Deli makes made-to-order bagels (go figure), and you can put darn near anything on them. I’ve seen options with bananas literally cooked on the bagel. Never tried it, but the people who ate it are still walking (I think), so maybe it’s good. I like the versatility and choice you get here. My beef is that it’s not much food (you can’t pack that much onto a bagel, no matter how much you try) and it’s fairly expensive for what little you get. On the plus side, it’s open pretty late and they generally play very good music in there.

So there’s the second (of two) Top-5 on where to eat. Until we meet again, the case is solved.

02/25/2008
A short blog because I’m rewarding myself.

I have now finished the first draft of both the introduction and conclusion to my thesis. This means that I have completed the entire thing in its first draft form, which is good. What stinks is that my long-winded (I know this will surprise some readers) ass took over 100 pages to say my piece, so now I have 100+ pages to edit and revise before the second draft is due in. I am looking forward to such an unpleasant spring break it’s not even funny.

At the same time, I can now stop feeling guilty about my superhero party which prematurely celebrated my thesis’ first draft conclusion, so I’m patting myself on the back.

For any of you, O my audience, who would like to read the final copy, you have until late April to e-mail me (dave.sheehan@hotmail.com) and ask for an emailed copy of it. That version will be fully edited, formatted, and probably near 115 pages long (wowzers!).

Here’s some general advice on theses, should you decide to do one:

Don’t bite off more than you can chew. It just makes the whole thing long and the back-end process of revising and editing becomes a huge drag. It should be a relief that I’m done with my first draft, but it’s really hard to get excited when I know how much back-log I have to wade through just for a second draft. Remember, if you write it, you’ll have to re-read it when it comes time to edit, since no one is perfect.

02/18/2008
Of late my focus has been entirely bent towards finding a job after I graduate. This week there was a career fair and I had to do considerable catching up to prepare for it, although it is a story with a happy ending.

First things first, the career fair: what is it, where is it, and how often does it occur? If you’ve asked yourself any of these questions, congratulations, I’m going to actually answer what you’ve asked for … for once.

Miami puts on a career fair twice a year, once in the fall (which I missed because I’m a moron) and once in the spring, which I rocked like a 12-year-old fighting with first graders. At these career fairs, which almost always take place at Millet Hall because they are big affairs that require lots of space, many business (mostly from Ohio but also from some nationwide places) come and set up tables where they leave representatives for you to go up and talk to. Almost all of the participating organizations put info up online prior to the event so you can read up on what they’re looking for (position), what their company is about (context), and what majors they’ll accept (accessibility).

So preparation for this shindig was lengthy. First I had to update my resume. Couple of things about resumes: first, I haven’t apparently updated mine in like three years, because it was out of date as hell and I had to spend considerable time tracking down and remembering all the stuff I’ve done since then just to get it sort of back to modern day Dave. Second, no one can agree on what makes a good resume. I literally made and remade, formatted and reformatted the damn thing a dozen times because each person I’d ask about it would give me different advice (sometimes contradictory, which was really super cool… not). Eventually I came up with a final draft and only just became aware before final printing that I had spelled the section heading “ACADEMIC & RESEARCH” as “ACAMEDIC & RESEARCH”. Read it again. Got it? Yeah, that would have been embarrassing had it not been caught!

Also for preparation, I had to go through over 70 businesses’ pages about their companies, trying to sort out which companies to see and in which order. I wanted to make sure I got to the most important ones early on before the people turned their brains totally off after talking to tens of Miami students, so after I read all these profiles and decided who to see, I then planned out my route to make sure I could speedily swoop around, wowing and amazing where necessary.

As I said, the whole affair had a happy ending: I got an interview the next day and have had several follow ups (including two more scheduled interviews) since.

Here’s a couple general tips from my experience:

• Get sleep. For some unknown reason, I had sugar before bed and couldn’t get any sleep the night before, so I wasn’t quite at the top of my game, but still good enough that most everyone around me still seemed… well, not me.
• Keep your resume up-to-date. Seems like easy advice, but I didn’t do it and wished I had.
• Be personable and confident. I talked with several representatives who said that based on my major, if they’d just received my resume and never met me, they wouldn’t have accepted it or looked for an interview. Because I came up and confidently applied myself, however, I have seen some very positive results.
• Be more assertive than I was to get the cool stuff they bring. See, most companies bring some sort of nifty toy or pen or water bottle or gadget to entice you to come talk to them. I must have done something wrong during the day since I only walked away with a pen, a pad of paper, and a rubber band ball (which, to be fair, is pretty sweet).

02/11/2008
Ok, a quick blog to clear something up that is unnecessarily convoluted.

University Honors students who come to Miami are expected to complete ten Honors “experiences” during their four years here.

Oxford Scholars students who come to Miami are expected to complete ten “enrichment points” during their four years here.

Why the program decided to use two fairly long words that begin with “e” is beyond me, but no one asked my opinion and now I just try to make the difference clear to those who don’t understand it. Hence this blog.

So here’s the rough and dirty difference, to make it perfectly clear what the difference is and so that there can no longer be confusion.

ENRICHMENT POINTS are endeavors a student undertakes based on the relative rigor and time commitment associated with said activity. Tougher, longer projects are thus worth more enrichment points than short and easy ones. There’s a veritable slew of enrichment point activities and pretty much anything you can do for an Honors EXPERIENCE also counts as an enrichment point, only you get more for it as an Oxford Scholar than as an Honors student (because the Scholars program is designed to be more flexible than the Honors program).

EXPERIENCES, on the other hand, are a based on a one-to-one ratio. That is, you do ONE activity and you received credit for ONE Honors experience.

Let’s use an Honors class as an example to distinguish between the ENRICHMENT POINT and the EXPERIENCE. If an Oxford Scholars student takes an Honors class, they receive three ENRICHMENT POINTS for completion. If, on the other hand, and Honors student took that same class, they would receive one Honors EXPERIENCE for successful completion.

So there’s the difference. Now I should never have to explain it again, I can just say go to my blog page and read up (+2).

02/04/2008
If I haven’t said it before, I’m saying it now: I love Valentine’s Day. Single or chained, there’s something about this unabashedly commercial, profit-mongering holiday that just makes my heart leap. Of course, this could be from all the sugar, but I like to think it’s all the hearts that get filled with joy (or jealousy, depending on your attitude) that just gets me going.

If you’ve never been on an official Miami University visit, then you’ve never taken one of the Miami Tour Guide tours. If you’ve never done this, congratulations, you’re an hour smarter than your unlucky fellow humans. No, I’m just kidding – I was a tour guide for a year and a half, after all – but one thing that always bother me about the tours was the Upham Arch story.

Miami has a stupidly high percentage of its student body who wind up marrying each other. Average percentage nation-wide is like 4%, we’re up around 16% last I checked (and by last I checked I mean that’s what runs in my head). Now, this freakishly high percentage (they have a name for it, how scary is that? “Miami Mergers”) should be considered decent proof that Miami students aren’t all that intelligent, but let’s put aside my thoughts on marriage for a second and get back to what I was supposed to be talking about, the arch story.

Part of what contributes to this high percentage is this superstitious story about the Upham Arch. Upham is an academic building that houses various departments (History, Sociology, Anthropology, etc.) and programs (College of Arts & Sciences administrative offices), and it’s shaped (from above) like a “U”. If, however, you’re just looking at the building from a normal view, at what would be the bottom of the “U” is an archway, which allows passage under Upham, rather than around it. On the ceiling of this archway is a hanging lamp.

Now I know what you’re thinking, nothing says romance like administrative offices and departmental programs surrounding a lamp. Turns out, you’re right, because, as the story goes, if you kiss your significant other under the lamp at midnight, especially on an important evening such as, say, Valentine’s Day, you’re destined to be together forever.

Nothing like legend to ruin the commercial goodness that is Valentine’s Day, huh?

Anyhow, various people apparently believe this nonsense and go to the arch/lamp area at all times of the year to smack lips and seal their fate. But not me. Oh no, I swung wide of Upham every time I was with Lindsay, and sometimes by myself just to be safe, for the 13 th, 14 th, and 15 th, just for good measure.

So there’s the story. I never used to tell it on my tours because a) I’m not superstitious or a dipshit enough to believe it, b) it’s not that compelling of a story, c) there are more important things to talk about (Barry), and finally, d) I think it’s hooey.

[Author’s note: You wouldn’t believe the number of unhappy comments this blog received from my editor. Well, maybe you would.]

01/28/2008
Fact: From time to time I feel uncharacteristically helpful and informative.
Fact: Rarely do these times occur when I am writing blogs.

Since this is one of those opportune moments, O my audience, I suggest you listen, especially if you are a prospective student. This week’s blog is another Top-5 list for you but, instead of doing some category of cinema, I thought I’d theme this one around another favorite thing of my life – food.

Now, I had initially planned to do just one of these Top-5 lists, which would cover all food options, both on and off campus. But then I decided, why not get paid twice for the same idea? And, to be fair, there are some really decent eating options and I just couldn’t cut my list below seven.

So here is part one of my next Top-5:

Top-5 Places to Eat at Miami – On-Campus Edition (insert dramatic music with ascending drum roll)

• Scott: Scott hall, which is an upper-classmen residence hall in central quad, has not just one fabulous eatery attached to it, but two! One is called Encore and the other Ovations, but I have never bothered to learn which was which and, just for your, O my audience, I am not going to now either. For those of us (the vast majority, I think) who don’t know which side goes by which non-descriptive name (seriously, how much can you tell about food at a place called “Encore”? Does it comes with a wailing guitar solo and a dimly lit stage?), we refer to the two Scott dining options as the “hot” and “cold” side of Scott (even though both serve both hot and cold foods). What is really funny, and somewhat sad, is that I am not even sure of the difference between the hot and cold names. Instead, I like to distinguish between the two by the main food staples they offer. One side has various pasta choices, a make-your-own stir fry (they cook it in front of you but I’ve never seen anyone lose an eyebrow so it’s not that exciting) area, and then a full service custom-made pizza/sub-sandwich station. These last two options in particular make me very happy as it allows me to pick a base food (sub or pizza) and then apply whatever my mood fancies. The only bummer is that you then have to wait roughly ten minutes for the food to cook.
• Scott: The other side of Scott, which I don’t prefer quite as much, but which is still pretty sweet, has a deli line where you can make wraps, sandwiches, etc., a pretzel area (think Auntie Anne’s but without the stupid name), a make-your-own smoothie lines (you pick the base and fruit, they blend it into juicy goodness for you and add ground ice), and a made-to-order grill. This last option rocks socks off, especially the angus burger (I’m still sponsoring vegetarians, remember), which you can have cooked and added to in any way you see fit. Cheese? No problem. Mushrooms? You got it. Mayo and ketchup? You bet. Delicious burgers with only a relatively short wait while they cook them. Oh and both Scott options are a la carte.
• Hamilton : A buffet style option, this dining hall is awesome for two reasons. First, as far as buffet style dining halls go, I’ve had the best food experiences here and the atmosphere of Hamilton is usually pretty subdued. The second reason my editor completely cut, mainly because it deals with the typical gender distribution being tipped highly in my favor… so this is me not saying it. Really, the only negative to Hamilton is that almost every time I’ve been there they have had country music playing, which means you have to wear headphones or accept your brain matter bleeding out of your ears.
• Alexander: Located on western, this dining hall is only this far down on the list because I’m lazy and don’t like to walk. And, when I haven’t eaten, riding my bike to food just isn’t terribly appealing. Anyhow, Alexander is buffet style, so don’t expect anything terribly new in that regard, but what Alexander does have is a stellar fruit and salad bar. This made it a favorite for weekend breakfasts, where I’d drag my rear out of bed, mosey over, and gorge myself like a bat or some other fruit-consuming critter.
• Shriver: last and only barely on the list, Shriver’s food options aren’t anything to write home about, but they make the top five simply because of convenience. Haines Food Court, an a la carte option, is open until the wee hours and the market near it is always open, making Shriver the prime place to go if you’re hungry and it’s ridiculously early.

01/21/2008
This week of classes has not been so hot.

To celebrate the finishing of my first draft of my thesis, I decided to throw a small gathering over the weekend in a Superhero-themed party. Yes, I wore spandex and a cape and a muscle suit. Yes, I had a huge “A” emblazoned across my chest to notifying one and all my identity as Captain Awesome. No, I did not get out of control. Yes, the planning and preparations for this event kept me from actually finishing the first draft of my thesis.

Unfortunately, my planning didn’t take into account that on Monday I would wake up with an intestinal flu so powerful that even Captain Awesome’s impressive immune system (the equivalent to having 400 Swiss Guard and one woman in charge to make sure everything runs smoothly) couldn’t handle it.

Here’s a daily recap thus far:

Monday: Slept all day. When I was awake I was in the WC. If you don’t know what a WC is, you’re not French, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it isn’t necessarily a good thing. Last I checked, verdict was still out. Dave’s Daily Day Indicator Reading: Sucked.

Tuesday: Felt a little better, decided I shouldn’t skip classes. Went to TA for Latin and stared blankly at my desk most of the time. Went to broomball and decided it wouldn’t be that big of a deal not to wear elbow pads (dumb choice, I went down hard on them like 2 minutes in). Went to capstone, which is in Benton Hall, about on the other end of campus from where I live, which, when you have intestinal flu, is a long walk. Dave’s DDIR: Partly Better with a splatter of Sucked.

Wednesday: I’ve pronounced this as Punishment Day. Mainly because my body decided to punish me all day for being scholarly the previous day (as if it hadn’t already punished me Tuesday evening and night). Dave’s DDIR: Super-Sucked. Technically, it was a better day than Monday because I hurt a little less, but it sucked more because I was awake (and thus suffering) more of the time. Plus, Wednesday night I walked into a wall. Yup, I made a spectacularly graceful choice in, while sick and stumbling from bathroom to bedroom, deciding not to put my hands out before me in the dark.

Thursday: So I broke down and went to the health center, which is how I found out I had an intestinal flu (can you guess which day I’m writing?) I feel better today, but only a little. According to the doc, my intestines are a little like a pulled muscle in a runner’s leg. I don’t like running from anything except bears, so I try not to think about what that means, but I assume it means I should be getting better soon. Dave’s DDIR: Okay.

Update: I just spilled 7up all over myself. DDIR: Okay with a chance of shower.

01/14/2008
If I haven’t mentioned it before, I always enjoy the first week of classes. (Note: if I have said it before, I just earned 2 clever points for getting paid twice to say the same thing.) You get to see old friends (and enemies – squirrels, I know you’re there even if it’s cold), you get to meet new professors and see whether your schedule needs abrupt changes to be made, and you have almost no chance of having a paper due.

Unless you haven’t finished your thesis. (Insert that Jetsons’ dog saying “Rut Roh!”)

As the new semester dawns, I’d like to impart some useful wisdom about pre-semester preparation, particularly the buying of supplies.

The biggest thing is the procuring of binders, paper, notebooks, pencils, pens, etc. (not including books, which are another topic I’ve discussed already). In all likelihood, you probably have plenty lying around from the previous semester, so buying lots of new ones just means wasted space on shelves, in closets, or under beds. So instead of buy, buy, buying away (watch out economy, I’m after you next!), take a look at your resources first.

I like to start by throwing away the useless stuff (namely old paperwork and illegible notes from classes I didn’t like) and thereby freeing up some three-ring binders. Then, I look at how essential the notes I did take (and can still read) truly are. If they don’t pass the “I could use this information during a bear attack” test, I can ‘em and move on. Oftentimes I find that between my tendency to doodle rather than take notes, as well as my willingness to recycle darn near anything I write leaves me with several only barely used notebooks at the start of each term.

The next step is guessing how many of the classes I will be taking will require me to have either a notebook or three-ring binder. Broomball? Note likely. Independent Study in film history and theory? Maybe, but a steno note-taking pad will be crucial there. Thesis? I’d have to do work for that, plus, I already have a binder for it from last term. Capstone? Probably. Teaching Assistant for Latin? Definitely.

From there, I can figure out C (how many notebooks or binder to buy) by subtracting B (the number of them I’ll likely need) from A (how many notebooks and binders I’ve salvaged), using the following, highly-complex, formula:

A – B = C

Here’s the best advice though: just wait until after you’ve been to your first class for each class you’re taking. Then you’ll have a pretty good idea whether a folder, binder, or small bin will be the most useful storage container for what you’re going to be receiving in the class.

01/07/2008
Happy 2008.

So it’s a new year and that calls for that thing we love to hate best: resolutions. Here are some resolutions I have:

• Don’t procrastinate on my schoolwork (thesis not included). I had a heck of a good time last semester at the end because I did my work in a timely fashion and didn’t put it off until I had to work like crazy just to turn it in on time. I like that and would like to make a habit of it this year.
• Get a permanent job. This seems like a no brainer, but I’m a big fan of checking the little boxes off on a to-do list and will sometimes split a single, multi-task job into its components just so I can check them off as I go. By putting “get a job” on the resolution list, I’m sure to be adding a checkable area for myself (I rule! +3).
• Be more prompt with my updates on this blog. I was a bit of a recluse last semester when it came to fulfilling little girls’ and boys’ dreams across the world, but I’m determined to be better about getting these suckers churned out more frequently than finals week. Plus, since this is the last semester I’ll get paid to do this, I might as well make the most of it.
• Paint more. I did a final project for one of my classes last fall and part of it included doing some paintings. I really enjoyed painting in high school, but had largely cut it from my habits since I’ve come here to Miami. But, now that I’ve resumed it a bit, I think I’d like to continue doing it, as I find it very relaxing and gratifying.
• Avoid having babies. Like the job thing, this seems like a gimme, but let’s just be sure and safe and put it down so no little spuds come cropping their strikingly-old-man-like heads up anytime in 2008.
• Find a new editor. Just kidding, Lindsay.

I already got one.

Just kidding again.

12/31/2007
This break I have three goals: to finish the first draft of my thesis, get my resume together, and catch up on sleep.

Fact: It is week three of break and my thesis isn’t done.

This week, I have a new Top-5 for you.

Top-5 Ways to Avoid Doing Your Thesis

1. Do pleasure reading or prolong the reading you’re doing for your thesis. In the latter case, it looks like you’re doing your work AND you’re putting off doing your work.
2. Watch movies. Come on, what’s two hours time gonna hurt? Except motivation, nothing!
3. Tell others about your thesis. Like prolonging your reading, this particular approach makes you feel like you’re working on your thesis – after all, it can’t hurt to discuss your ideas with others, right? – when in reality you’re just not doing your work.
4. Continually outline, organize, re-outline, and re-organize what you have done on your thesis already. Somewhere along the way that organizing will come in handy… right? … right?
5. Write a blog on how to avoid doing your thesis. (+7 Clever Points)

12/24/2007
Every once in a while I like to take a break from my diligent writing and retreat into the recess of my mind. In the well-spring of all creativity and awesomeness, I contemplate how I can best serve you, O my audience, in each blog.

This week, I decided to let my editor, Lindsay, have a chance at more glory than just editing my work. What, you may rightly ask, is more glorious than getting to read my words, unedited and straight from the source? Well, getting to do that AND getting to write a guest blog for me.

As before, I will make notes throughout, just so she knows her place (editor, not writer), as well as award Clever Points for the witty things I say.

One final note, every once in a while she just starts yammering on and on, soI’ve shortened hers a bit for both our sakes. Try to enjoy and I’ll see you next week.

12/17/2007
I’ve received some disconcerting news from some of my more dedicated readers concerning a previous post. More specifically, several of you, O my audience, appear to have missed the intent of my blog about a proper PowerPoint presentation.

Fact: That blog was written sarcastically.

Fact: This means that when I said you should “totally, totally, totally DO” those five things, I was kidding; actually, each of these bullets represent some common mistake that I have noticed a lot of my peers (and profs, eek!) commit.

Fact: I really thought I was pretty obvious in not being very serious.

Since my subtlety was apparently greater than my hyperbole in writing the blog, I’d like to take this opportunity to run back through that bad boy so I can show you, O my audience, the numerous (if not obvious) clues that I was joking, awarding clever points where applicable.

12/10/2007
In the spirit of the upcoming holiday season, I decided to do an understandably themed Top Five this week.

Top Five Holiday Movies

1. Love Actually – British, but human in scope, this film is actually a kaleidoscope of the various manifestations of love set to a Christmas theme. Initially, I really dislike the movie, thinking that it tried to take 7 or 8 sub-plots on at face value and never developed any of them fully. Upon later viewings, however, I realized that the intent of the movie is not to show one plot’s love, but how love pops up in so many ways. My one complaint is that the film’s producers were serious wuss wimpletons and cut out a same-sex love plot. Basically, love is ok except for people of the same sex – a statement I think is both short-sighted and problematic.
2. Groundhog’s Day – Guess which holiday this one focuses on? This is just a very clever and amusing film with a somewhat cheesy happy ending. Its message is still good though and because it includes some of the funniest lines ever written, it makes the list (for example: “If we wanted to hit mailboxes, we would have let Ralph drive!” and “Don’t mess with me, porkchops.”)
3. It’s a Wonderful Life – I almost didn’t put this one on because it’s such a gimme, but then I thought about it, everyone expects me to not put the gimmes on, so I have to do it. Decent acting, a cute story, and a happy ending. Go ring a bell and feel good, but know that most of the world lives in abject poverty while the Mr. Potters make the most important decisions and mostly denounce the growing environmental problems as distorted science.
4. Boondock Saints – Ok, so I’m stretching it here, but this is just a sweet film and it does play up the St. Patrick’s day, making it somewhat acceptable to be on this list. If you haven’t seen this movie, watch it. If you don’t like violence, remember it’s a movie and not real, and then watch it.
5. Trains, Planes, & Automobiles – Because everyone knows at least one person who’s as irritating and clingy as John Candy. I myself have three or four I can’t seem to shake. This is film, which I think many viewers forget is based on getting home for Thanksgiving, has some good messages and great lines (“Those aren’t pillows!”).

Now, it’s worth noting I haven’t seen every movie, and there are probably some I’m forgetting. That’s ok though, I reserve full rights to saying your opinion is wrong and even amending my own afterwards. Think you’ve got a better list? Write me at dave.sheehan@hotmail.com and maybe over my holiday break I’ll look at it as a special gift to you.

12/03/2007
So it’s the end of the semester. Here’s where I tell you what I’ve learned from social dance, and give a nice, compelling recap on how the experience, upon reflection, has bettered my life:

Finals week is generally my favorite part of any semester. If I’ve ever written this about some other time, and you really feel like calling me out on it, drop me a line at dave.sheehan@hotmail.com, but know that I won’t care.

Anyhow, especially this semester, finals week has none of the usual requirements (class, readings, meetings, etc.). Instead, all you do is write final papers, prepare for final exams, and pack up and go home.

For reasons I cannot explain, I got a sudden surge of energy the week before finals week and had both of the two final papers I had to do finished before the week began. The only other requirements I had for finals week were a take home final for hockey (which, since I don’t know anything about hockey and just like playing, was surprisingly more challenging than I expected), a presentation for Latin (which I had figured out weeks ago), and I had, of course, to go to a final social dance.

Like I said, I can’t explain how I didn’t procrastinate. Knowing oneself is an important thing and I know that on things that don’t matter and I know won’t take much time, I tend to put them off. For whatever reason, then, I decided mentally that all my stuff was important, and I systematically went through it and finished it in a timely fashion. Strange, I know.

Here’s a word of advice, however, from personal experience: if you have a final presentation to give at 7:30 in the morning, don’t set your alarm clock for 6:30 pm.

I made it there halfway through and got to give my presentation, but I paid for it by a full letter grade on the project. All for not looking more closely at that damn alarm clock (the third bane of my existence after dancing and squirrels).

11/26/2007
Bored and perusing Facebook lately, I have noticed a curious phenomenon: an inordinate number of people I graduated with either have a child or are currently in the process. Now, I’m 22, and about average-aged for my class. Yet babies are as far from my mind as Chuck Norris is on the scale of awesomeness from Sleepy.

So what’s the deal? While pondering this seeming coincidence, of all the people I graduated with popping out spuds, Jason came into my room and to ask me a question.

One of the greatest joys in my life is to interrupt whatever plans Jason has in an effort to divert his attention to something else. Sometimes I entice him by knocking on his door while he’s doing homework, and when he says “yeah?” I reach in my hand holding nothing but a remote control for a video game console. Other times I’ll wait with a foam sword I bought until he comes out of his room to go to the bathroom or feed himself, and then I strike. And sometimes I just speak before he does and ask him about something that will completely make him lose his train of thought.

So I asked him, “Jason, have a lot of people you graduated with been having babies? And if so, why?”

Jason said he had also noticed this trend but, like me, he didn’t think it was because of our age. When I asked him if he was thinking about growing any potatoes in the near future he said “I’m going to wait until I’m older and can afford kids… or when I have no more friends.”

Laughing, I asked him why and he replied, “Kids are what you have when you get bored, because they have to hang out with you… that’s how grounding started.”

Jason, rest assured, forgot what he came in for, and, with his sound advice in mind, I have concluded that the people I graduated with must be really bored, because I still can’t figure out any reason why anyone would want to produce something that doesn’t do anything but cry, scream, sleep, and poop. And don’t give me the “aw, babies are so cute” line either, I’ve already written a blog about that (see previous blogs).

So here’s some advice if you’re aged 25 or younger (because those are the people with the least sense not to produce such a creature): buy a plant. If it doesn’t die in two years, upgrade to a small mammal. If that’s still alive after 5 years, you should be around 32 years old, which means you’re too old to have kids anyway. It’s ok though, there’s 6 billion other people, so no loss… now you can get a dog.

Oh, and don’t buy a dog that doesn’t come from a pound. There’s tons of great dogs getting put down while people are dropping several hundreds of dollars just because it says “pure bred” on the dog’s paperwork. Pure-bred is a joke – technically all dogs came from the same place so, in a sense, they’re all pure-bred.

On second thought, keep buying them, because if you’re silly enough to buy an animal based on its short-sighted classification, you probably don’t deserve the money you’d save by buying a cheaper animal anyway.

11/19/2007
I have to say that I take a diabolical glee in the current writers’ strike. Not only am I a fan of people getting paid for writing… … … (everyone get it who’s going to?), but I’m also a supporter of the higher ups every once in a while getting checked by the people who make them oh so much money.

But on top of all these things, the part I love the most about the writers’ strike is the fact that so many people are put out from having their spoon-fed mindless activity on a regular basis.

I have a really deep-seated loathing for people who plan their lives around a weekly installment on television. I think it shows a real lack of creativity, imagination, and impetus (heck, they don’t even make the effort to break their own schedule). Moronic technological advances like TiVo have made it even easier for TV junkies to get their fix.

But not now, not with the writers’ strike.

The people I know are guilty culprits of TV fanaticism I try to regularly ask what they think will happen each week on their given show. They always have a glimmer of hope in their eye, thinking that maybe, just maybe, the strike has ended and I somehow found out about if before they did. Hah hah ha, then I bat them down with “oh, that’s right, there’s a strike going on, isn’t there… I guess nothing new will happen on the show this week.” Sometimes I include a maliciously evil laugh at the end, sometimes I feign innocence. In either case, I don’t care one bit how long it lasts and I hope that all the writers overthrow their executive restraints.

I do like shows put on DVD format, however. More like a movie, no part of the show controls the viewer and with the power to pause, shut it down, or fast forward, I find this approach to watching “TV” ok.

Why bring up the strike and TV on the blog? Well, a surprising amount of college work gets put off, rearranged, and disregarded in my peers’ efforts to make sure they get their fix. This bugs me, so I figured, why not share it?

Don’t be a robot, cast down your bonds to television.

11/12/2007
One thing every student can look forward to in the fall semester is Thanksgiving break. That time when you are forced to show for class on Tuesday afternoon because it’s being taught by the same professor who is advising your thesis and is making you re-do a section due (you guessed it) on that same Tuesday. That time when you get to trek home and eat food and answer your family’s questions about how your semester is going when you know there looms a pile of work to do, waiting and lurking in your room. That time of year when, if you’re my family, you gather roughly 20 people (and I say roughly because I think that number might be low) for a meal and then an after dinner entertainment.

This year, the gathering decided that that wanted to see Lindsay and me show off what we’d learned in social dance. Imagine what expression is on my face right now, thinking about it, now multiply that face by the thought of puppies getting killed, my unfinished thesis, and squirrels… that’s pretty much how I looked when I realized there was no way I was getting out of dancing.

I pointed out that we didn’t have enough space to dance on the kitchen floor because we’d set up a table for all the food there.

That table got moved.

I mentioned that we didn’t have any swing, mambo, or waltz music to dance to, conveniently forgetting that I myself had access to some of each in my own music collection.

Music was found.

Finally, I tried poisoning Lindsay’s drink, hoping that in the hubbub, I could make my get away and be free from dancing.

What I thought was poison turned out to be cranberries, which is apparently festive for that time of year.

Did we dance? Yes. Was I ashamed? Yes. Was I awesome, even though I was performing an action inherently anti-awesome? You bet.

Ah, Thanksgiving break. That time when even squirrels get a rival for the bane of my existence.

11/05/2007
Way back during the first semester of my freshman year of college, I was taking an introductory Classical Mythology course. One of the readings we covered was The Iliad, that millennia-old story about Achilles’ battles at Troy. While reading it, I was continually struck with how likeable a character Hektor, the Trojan Prince, was. Now, The Iliad was an epic written for Greeks, by Greeks, which means Hektor was technically the bad guy. Why make him so cool, then?

Fast forward a semester: spring semester, freshman year. I’m now taking Roman Civilization, another introductory Classics course. We’re reading book 21 of Livy, a historian of Rome, and he is recount the second Punic War (between Rome and Carthage). Out of no where, Livy goes into this long description of the Carthaginian general, Hannibal Barca. Now, while at some points what Livy says defames Hannibal’s character (he calls him incredibly cruel, for example), overall, the picture Livy paints is a generally positive one. Like Homer, Livy makes his bad guy at least admirable and, in some cases even likeable.

I was intrigued.

Fast forward two years: summer between junior and senior year. I am now studying the ways Roman historians constructed an archetypal Roman enemy by analyzing various Roman enemies (shocking, I know). Among others, I finally get to look at Hannibal for the figure that he is in Livy, and how he conforms or undermines the idea of the hero.

Fast forward to senior year: I’ve decided that the two things I’m really interested in are the hero and superhero movies – the former because it’s this amazing commonality that spans human existence, the latter because, as stupid as they can be, they cry out to be analyzed with this larger heroic tradition. So what do I do with these interests? I undertake a senior Honors thesis.

Now, I’m rather proud of how many ways I’m getting this project to count for me (double-dipping in credit is always fun). First, as an Honors student, so long as I complete my requirements I’ll graduate “with Honors.” However, if I do a thesis in any field, I get classified as graduating “with Honors with distinction.” Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? So there’s one form of credit for my idea (Credit #1). Secondly, I’m doing the thesis within the Classics department, which means that by completing it, I’ll get recognized as achieving “departmental honors” on my transcript. (Credit #2) And, because there is no “departmental honors” class in the Classics department, my two-semester project has to be done as independent studies. The way the Honors requirements work out, you can get two of ten met by doing “independent study related to departmental honors,” which, if you’re counting, means I’m getting a fifth of my total requirements met by this one project (Credit #3).

Perhaps the best credit I get, however, is the fact that I’m study exactly what I have been interested in and thinking about since my first semester of college. This project is really the culmination of 4 years of on and off thinking… and I get to watch superhero movies as part of it (+42 Awesome Points).

From what I’ve said thus far, one might get the impression that a thesis is sweet, and in some ways, that’s true. That said, every coin has two sides and as nifty as my project is on the theoretical side, there looms the ever-present reality of having to spend a year of my life just to complete this damn thing.

Fact: I’ve been working on my project for nearly a semester now and I still haven’t gotten to screen one of my superhero films yet. It’s all been background, preparatory, theoretical work so far. Ugh.

As much as I enjoy the Star Wars saga, one part of The Empire Strikes Back has always bugged me. When Luke is training with Yoda to become a Jedi, he has to carry Yoda on his back through a series of physical feats that test his endurance and stamina.

Doing a senior thesis, I have found, is a lot like that part of Luke’s training. No matter how good any day has felt this semester, no matter how chirping the birds are or how green the grass is, there constantly hangs on my back that irritating feeling that I need to keep working on this project which, while it’s something I want to do, is a really pain in the ass. What really bums me out is that when I’m done I won’t even be able to move things with just a thought.

10/29/2007
Fact: This semester I took a history class on War and Cinema.
Fact: Each week we watch a film about World War II and then discuss what it shows about the war, the time the film was made, and about how film historicizes events.

This week, I thought I’d do a Top Five since I haven’t done one in a while. So here it is:

Top Five War Films (not limited just to WWII)

1. Ballad of A Soldier – A Soviet film, this seemingly simple story is laced with ideas about the war and social critique. It’s at once a very sad but also very moving story.
2. Days of Glory – Following a band of French-Algerian soldiers as they liberate France, this movie is what Saving Private Ryan could have been if it hadn’t sucked at the end. This film is also impressive in that it literally changed the political situation it addressed in France.
3. Saving Private Ryan – Even though I hate the end, this movie gets on the list because it has one of the single-most disturbing scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie: the scene where the translator watches the Jewish soldier die is both haunting and thrilling in its composition and inclusion.
4. Home Alone – just kidding, number four is actually Hero – even though this film isn’t about WWII, and it’s fictional, I see it as a war film and, as such, include it on this list. I choose Hero because it is both one of the most beautiful movies I know of as well as one of the most intriguing films I’ve seen in how it shows how the individual fits within the wider context of war.
5. In Which We Serve – Non-linear progressions, interesting commentary on social status, and a truly impressive view of how one film can encapsulate a national ethos, this film isn’t great, but it’s good enough to make the list.

10/22/2007
This blog is for students. Here’s my advice on what not to do at an honors visit or something like it (i.e. college visits).

1. Don’t not talk. I know that’s a lot of negatives, but I’ll bank on your being able to figure it out. All too many times I sit down with students and their parents, and I might as well be talking to a mannequin. You’ve traveled all the way to Miami, having scheduled a visit with me, you’ve done all this work in getting here, only to say nothing and ask no questions. Now, I know I’m decent at what I do, but I also know that I don’t cover everything. There isn’t time or space to do so. So I leave it up to you, as the student, to fill in the gaps of what I missed by asking about the stuff you think is the most important. It doesn’t help you out at all to sit there silently, since I don’t know what to tell you more about and you don’t get the information you want or need. It’s a lose situation for you (I don’t say lose-lose, because I frankly don’t lose: if I talk less, all the better for my vocal chords). Also, by not talking, you invite your parents to fill the gap for you with questions they (but not necessarily you) think are important. It’s ultimately your college decision, so don’t let someone else ask the questions about it. Get the information you want!
2. Don’t fall asleep. Even though I found it funny the first time, if it were to happen again I’d have to blame it on myself, not you the student, and that wouldn’t be fun for me.
3. Don’t try to be Mr. or Ms. Clever. Making snide little clever comments in general just makes me reticent to give you time and, generally, the students who do this come off more irritating and arrogant than amusing. If you have a joke, great, but I rarely enjoy having them made at my expense when I’m trying to professionally convey important knowledge to you.
4. Come informed. A shockingly large percentage of people I meet with have absolutely no idea about any of Miami’s Honors & Scholars programs. Now, to a certain extent I’m happy to fill in the knowledge gap – it is what I’m there for after all. But at the same time, you have a limited amount of time you can spend discussing things with me, and if I waste a portion of it just going over the basics (which, coincidentally, can be found at honors.muohio.edu), you won’t be able to use our time together to the maximum potential. I’m not saying you need to read every bit of publication and website we have, but doing a quick run through of some general knowledge will show me that you care enough to look into it ahead of time, and really help you use your information session time in the best way possible – by getting answers to questions or clarifications of confusing information. This is a good practice to get into for all admission programs, not just the Honors & Scholars program.
5. Don’t use me or the information session to make a point to your parents. This is sort of the whole distance from home thing I wrote about last blog, but in reverse. If you want to duke things out with your family, do it on your own time, not mine. I’m a big supporter of people growing into adults by going out into the world, discovering their place within it, but also keeping family close and respecting the advice of those who have some experience on you. I’ve certainly had my battles with my own parents on the whole give-me-some-space-for-independence topic, and while they aren’t fun, they are important and most of the time and essential part of separating a sense of “home” from the physical place where you grew up (which is a major step into adulthood). This doesn’t mean, however, that I support people having this battle when I’m trying to answer your questions about the Honors & Scholars Program here at Miami. Do it somewhere and sometime else.
6. Finally, be patient with your parents. They’re, in all likelihood, just doing what they think is best for you, and that’s admirable, even when it can be irritating. If they’re involved, it’s because they care, which isn’t a bad thing. This make come as a surprise to some students, since in part I think most kids have a bit of a vision of their parents as knowing what to do all the time, but it may be that your parents are just as clueless as you are about the who college search process. They may, in fact, be asking a lot of questions and stabbing in the dark quite a bit in an effort to try and appear confident, despite not knowing a lick about what they should be asking. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the whole process of letting you grow up into an adult, of which the going-to-college experience is only a part, can be really, really tough on your parents. Think about it, they’ve been working for almost two decades on trying to keep you safe, sound, and doing as well as you can, and suddenly you want them to just cut the ties and let you do your own thing. There’s a reason they call it empty nest syndrome and not irritating parent syndrome. It can be a trying time for parents to have to release some control of you, but despite how frustrating this release may be, it doesn’t mean they are doing it to be mean. I’d guess that most of the time they’re just trying to do what they think is best.

That wraps up my advice to students and parents for college visits. These aren’t complaints so much as suggestions for how to best use your time and to help both students and parents get a clearer understanding of what they should be doing during these visits.

10/15/2007
This week’s blog is part one of a two-part blog regarding things not to do on an honors visit. This week’s aims to help parents understand their role in honors visits and similar situations (i.e. college visits).

1. Let your kids speak for themselves. I know it’s tough, you’ve been looking out for them and want to make sure they have all the information to make the best, most well-informed decision possible, but you don’t help them out by dominating the conversation. This also means it’s not a good idea to talk about your child like they aren’t in the room. Here’s an example of saying the wrong thing: “I think _____ (insert child’s name) is a really excellent candidate for your programs. ____ (insert he or she respective to child’s gender) is a member of _____, ____ (insert two activities every other student does but that somehow sets your kid apart by their clever coupling), and ____ (he or she again) has both a ____ (insert a number you think will impress) GPA and a _____ (insert another number you think will impress) SAT (or ACT) score. So, my question is, how can ___ (student’s name) make their application the strongest for your programs?” Essentially, you’re asking for an inside scoop on how to get your kids into the program. Unfortunately, someone who was trying to be confused could see through your question and I sure as heck don’t know how to do it (it being a full application with varying standards based on the applicant pool each and every year). So while you’re trying to wow and amaze me (doesn’t work, I’ve seen better when I look in a mirror) with your child, what you ultimately do is amuse me (for not stating outright what you want to know) and embarrass your kid. Honestly, no one enjoys being talked about like they aren’t in the room, especially when they’re sitting right next to you. A good general rule is if you as a parent are domineering the info session and speaking the majority of the time for your party, you’re talking too much. Since it’s the kid who goes to college, not you, this doesn’t really help answer their questions, and it generally makes them clam up so that when I ask if they have questions they just shake their heads and hope I’ll leave them alone. But, Dave, what if my child won’t say anything, you might ask. In that case, one of three things is happening: either you’re talking too much and/or embarrassing them, or they’re too timid to ask their questions, or they don’t want to be there and that’s their passive-aggressive way of showing it. In the first, see above advice; in the second, talk with them before the session and have them write out some questions they have, then they can read them aloud rather than being put on the spot; finally, if they’re doing the passive-aggressive thing, talk to them, again beforehand, about what they like or dislike about any given school. If they don’t like a school, why not? If they do, why? In teasing these things out, the students will be forced to articulate their likes and dislikes, and you can base questions from there. It never bugs me when people show up with a list of questions and we work through them throughout a session; in fact, it shows preparedness.
2. Gather information that isn’t volunteered. The best questions I get are the ones I haven’t heard before, a situation readily becoming extinct for me. While I don’t have a set goal for what I say on any given information session (since different groups know different amounts about the program and I tailor it to their wants and needs), I do have some stock information that I try to sneak in throughout the course of the information session. I am always pleasantly surprised when someone asks me a question that makes me pause and give serious thought, rather than just answering as I have before. No, I am not going to give you an example of such a question, but I will say that asking me what I dislike about Miami of the Honors Program is not unique, but it is a good question.
3. Which brings me to my next point: ask good questions if you’re going to not let your kids talk. This may means doing a little homework beforehand and thus knowing what information is readily available, what is difficult to understand, and what you really want in terms of information out of the session. If you have a clear view of the questions you have, we can jump right into them and work on making sure you and your child have a clear view of the programs here at Miami.
4. Don’t spend enormous amounts of time giving me advice. I realize that as a Classics and Latin double-major with a History minor I’ll have a difficult time getting a job. I know that working on my cover letters and resumes is an important task. I am aware of the fact that the world of adulthood differs from college life. In telling me these things, you spend the time you have set aside for your kid to learn about Miami telling someone about something he’ll have to learn a little on his own anyways.
5. Finally, and most importantly, do not use the person giving the information session, or the session itself, as a way of impressing your wants and desires on your kids. If you want your child to not go to school far away, don’t try to use me to tell them it’s a good idea to go to a school nearer to home. First of all, I figure I’m clever enough to see what you’re doing by asking me a leading question like “Well, Miami is really far from ___ (insert name of home that may or may not actually be very far away depending on how controlling the parent is), don’t you (that is, me, Dave Sheehan) have a hard time living so far from your own home?” Another, equally clever way of saying this is “Since you live so far away, don’t you have a hard time getting home?” In both cases, you’re passively asserting that you don’t want your child to go to a place you consider “far” and you’re trying to use me/the session to do it. I can say from personal experience that I don’t enjoy it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and as parents I have no place to say how you should treat your kids, but trying to employ me to do your dirty work, rather than talking with your child maturely about a subject that concerns you is pretty immature and yet shockingly prevalent in my experience. It’s worth keeping in mind two things: first, you want your child to succeed as an adult. That means you have to start allowing them to be an adult. It follows that making adult-like decisions (like, say, where one wants to place oneself) should be something that you allow your child to do. I’m not saying you shouldn’t advise them or even strongly urge what you think is best, but forcing your kid to stay close belies your dependence on them, limits them, and potentially caps their dreams or aspirations. In my experience, telling someone not to push a big red button just makes them want to do so all the more. If, instead, you calmly and maturely explain the ramifications of pressing the big red button, you’re more likely to see the person consider the option of pushing it and, regardless of the decision that person makes, they will have done so having heard what you had to contribute. As far as I know, no parent has kids solely so they can keep their kids from growing up into adults. The college decision part can be a big step in this process and limiting your child because of your own reservations or concerns can be really problematic. Secondly, it is worth noting that moving someone away isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Between cell phones and the internet, it’s getting ridiculously easy to keep in contact with someone, and while physical presence can never be conveyed through technology, having your kid move out doesn’t mean they are no longer “there” to support you and be a part of your life. In some cases, moving out can make you child appreciate you as a parent all the more.

10/08/2007
Giving information sessions to prospective students about the Honors program comprises one of my main duties at the Honors and Scholars Program office. I call these sessions “Honors Visits” (creative, I know), and the prospective students “prospies.” Recently, I had the single-most memorable honors visit.

Now, I’ve been giving these suckers off and on for a year and a half, and before that I worked as a university tour guide for another year and a half. Never in all my years of only-marginally-dutiful service to the university have I been so impressed as I was with this one information session.

Picture the scene with me: I bring a young man and his father, as well as another young lady and her mother (the two coming, literally, from different ends of the state of Ohio to visit the program), and I sit them down at the conference table here at the office. I take my own seat, with the two ladies to my left and the two gentlemen across from me, the son situated directly across the table from me.

Now, these sessions run roughly 30 minutes to an hour in length, depending on how much or little the prospies know about our program, or how interested or bored they seem with what I’m saying. Obviously, the more questions that arise, the longer these sessions tend to last (at my finest, I’ve had some run for over an hour and a half!). I can say with certainty that this session, which began at 12:30 pm, did not last for more than 45 minutes.

In that time, however, Sleepy McSleepster, aka the young man directly across from me, sat, first paying attention, then beginning to nod, then nod a little more, then slump forward until the weight of his head drooping woke him up abruptly. Looking around to see if anyone noticed – in a room filled with 5 people, mind you – that he had just reached for his chainsaw and logs, Sleepy decided he really didn’t need the information I was giving all that much (or he just didn’t care) and promptly repeated the nodding process over again.

By this time his dad was catching on, and he began to pat his son on the back, determined that Sleepy would stay awake through this visit with, for all he knew, the guy who would choose whether or not the university’s program for high-achieving students would accept his son or not. Sleepy wasn’t having any of it.

Before long, the guy had not only stopped nodding back to semi-consciousness, he had totally clocked out on the waking world. I spent the remaining 40 minutes talking to the young lady, her mother, and Sleepy McSleepster’s father about the merits and strengths of our program.

Surprisingly, this whole affair didn’t bother me all that much. When I finished, Sleepy’s dad shook him vigorously, he woke up, shook my hand and thanked me for my time, and walked out.

I honestly couldn’t be that upset with Sleepy – I myself am not a morning person and who knows if he had to wake up at some ungodly hour to drive down to Miami. I was just happy my voice was soothing enough to lull him into Mr. Sandman’s land.

10/01/2007
Ok, so a quick update on classes. Ok, because I’m still breathing so it can’t be that bad. A quick update because of time constraints. Classes, because I’ve left them alone for a week, so why not pick at the wound?

Classes:

1. War and Cinema: technically a history course, we watch European war films and discuss their historicity and merits. Part night class, part day-time class, this course is all fun. And, an added perk, there’s a whole 5 or 6 people who consistently talk. There’s even one guy who I think wants to box me since we always end up arguing about what the films say or mean.
2. Central Asian History: A 100% night class, this class is remarkable in two ways. First, it comes close to having the most reading I’ve ever had for a single course (we read at least a book a week). Second, I am almost always the only student who willingly participates. The professor is really excellent at forcefully pulling other students into the discussions, but on a regular basis, I am the only person who actually raises a hand to answer. For several weeks now, I suspect this is because I’m the only one reading. Did I miss a mention of where it’s optional? More to come.
3. Latin: We’re translating selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a 15 book epic that focuses on transformations of all sorts. Humans into animals? You bet. Animals into humans? It’s in there. People into things? Oh yeah, Ovid’s got it all. Unfortunately, as cool as the work is as a whole, we happen to be studying the rape scenes that occur (with alarming frequency) throughout the work. While it’s certainly an important topic, I can’t say my heart is too into analyzing how and why this or that god rapes this or that person. Is that such a bad thing?
4. Hockey: Eh, not too bad. There are three tiers: the 6-7 really excellent players, the 3-4 ok players (including me), and the 20+ people who have either just learned to skate or have never played or both. The last group can’t compete with the second group and the second group stands almost no chance against the first. So, I basically try to not play against the really good people and work instead on my stick and passing skills with everyone else.
5. Thesis: so far, so good. I’ve done two sections, only one of which required major changes, and I have two left to go. Looks like Holiday break is going to be eaten up working on this bad boy.
6. Social dance: still sucks. We are being taught three dances: waltz, mambo, and swing. Of these, I can tolerate the first two and deeply loathe the last. Not surprisingly, we do swing the most and I hear we are having a swing competition for the final exam. Oh, irony of life, how I’ve missed you!

09/24/2007
I recently bought a bike. In this blog, I’d like to cover the topic of biking on campus.

First, my reasons for buying a bike (not in order of importance):

• I don’t have a car and walking can get really boring
• I live off campus now and even though my apartment is stupidly close, I’m kind of lazy.
• It’s good for you to bike, since it’s exercise, and who can’t use a little more exercise?
• I have a friend who works at the bike shop and he helped explain to me what bike would best suit my needs and wants.
• It’s good for the environment.
• I harbor a deep-seated desire to wear spandex and a goofy-looking helmet in public.

Despite the last reason, most of my bike usage takes the form of riding to class and back, work and back, or on errands. For this last purpose, I made sure I got a rack on my bike and then got a bag that attaches to the rack. Think what you will, that bag is sweet and way better for carrying books, squirrel-repellant, and nothing than a book bag that makes my back all sweaty from riding.

But riding a bike has some disadvantages. Foremost among these are, surprisingly, non-biking pedestrians. You think you know how stupid people can act, try riding around on a bike on a busy campus day. People don’t look where they’re going (fine), can’t walk in a straight line (tolerable), and, even though they see you coming or hear you when you ring your bell to announce your presence, they almost never move out of the way (grr). Now I can speak from personal experience that it is a hell of a lot easier to walk in the grass than it is to go off a sidewalk, into the grass, and then quickly back onto the sidewalk with a bike. The angle just doesn’t work. Does this mean people are considerate and move aside? Nope.

Ideally, I’ll find the equivalent to what trains have on the front of them: a cow-catcher. With my bike-sized plow, I will move aside men, women, and children.

But Dave, surely people move out of the way when it comes to going onto or off of handicap ramps?!

Hah. The worst in people just so happens to come out when they are walking, I guess.

Allow me to explain: when crossing the street, a bike has a hard time going off of a sidewalk, and an even harder time going up over a sidewalk on the other side. Wheelchairs, strollers, and turtles share this quality with bikes. This is why the ramps that dip down to street-level exist. For the turtles and bikers.

People, who can very easily step down or up a 6-inch step (which is what a sidewalk is from the street), on the other hand, do not share this quality with bikes. Unlike bikes, people can very easily stay within the parameters of a crosswalk, while not having to use the crosswalk ramps.

Why, then, do I always (and I am not lying by saying always) have to sit there, balancing and waiting, while my supposedly bright fellow human beings walk on and off the ramps in front, even though they clearly see me waiting and probably suspect I can’t easily just step onto the sidewalk like, oh, say, they can.

Not to be a pessimist, I would like to point out that riding a bike can be really sweet, especially when you’re late and where you’re going is downhill. Since my apartment is downhill from campus, I do very little peddling each time I return (awesome), and the biggest obstacle facing my return home is, you guessed it, inconsiderate pedestrians.

09/17/2007
I’d like to use the recent changes in the Honors and Scholars Program office as an excuse for not having updated in so long, but that’d be dishonest and misleading.

It was totally the office rearranging that ate my homework.

Fact: there have been additions, subtractions, and movements within the Honors staff, resulting in serious shifting of my particular location.
Fact: I enjoy a certain degree of consistency.
Fact: They also put in new furniture in the office I previously had at my disposal, furniture that I rather liked.
Fact: The program then hired someone whose position actually requires the office I was in, causing me to get moved back to my old “office” (what some people call the copy room).

I can’t complain too much, since the back office (aka “the copy room”) has been rearranged. I share a desk and computer with two other students who focus on the recruitment aspect of the program. Across the room sits our nemeses, the Bishop Fellows. The Bishop Fellows are a group ostensibly designed to act as student advisors for their peers, answering general questions and helping at crucial times (like class scheduling and application deadline time). In reality, I suspect that my bosses created the Bishop Fellows to create a schism in the student staff and keep us quarrelling amongst ourselves, leaving their positions safe from our sights.

And while we Honors student staff walk around, clicking our fingers together and fighting in choreographed dance, the squirrels watch from the windows, biding their time and stock-piling their seeds.

09/10/2007
Despite some of their best efforts, students inevitably discuss their classes outside of the actual rooms in which they occur.

Most of the time, when I get roped into one of these conversations – and I say roped because they are never good conversations where we discuss the relative merits of a class’ content or professor’s method of instructing – they generally turn into bitch-fests, where one student just wants to complain about why they aren’t doing well in a class (ignoring, of course, that they don’t do any work for the class and try to speak as little as possible when in the class). When I do find myself in these talks, I often get asked why I take night classes.

To date, I have taken several: an introductory political science and two upper-level history classes.

Trying not to focus on the negative thought that I’ll probably have more than one of these conversations again before I leave Miami, I’d like to talk about the relative pluses and minuses to night classes.

What, Dave write about something useful? I know, I was shocked too, but I hate justifying myself more than once for the same thing, so now, having written this, when people ask why I take night classes I can refer them to my blog rather than wasting oxygen. Yes, I rule.

Pros to taking a night class:

• They almost always only occur once a week. By lumping what is traditionally split up over a week, a one-night class has several advantages over other types, these include:
• Greater chance for in-depth discussion of the readings or course content
• An opportunity to screen a film and still talk about it in the same class, rather than waiting several days, during which all memory of the film slips out of the students’ ears
• If the professor cancels, you get out of a week’s worth of classes. (+5 Awesome points)
• You get a break mid-class most of the time. How many 50 or 75 minute classes have done this? In my experience, only one and only one time. Whereas with night classes, which frequently acquire sleeper students who show up and take a nap, most of the time you get a stand-up-and-stretch-your-legs call each class
• Better readings. Because the professor doesn’t have to hold the students’ hands (distributing the reading across several classes each week), they typically just assign the readings for the week and leave it to the students to do on their own timeline
• They don’t interfere with scheduling for cool classes earlier in the day. For reasons unbeknownst to me, some of the coolest classes I’ve seen offered typically get offered at times during the middle of the day when virtually every other class (and especially the required ones) also exist. Torn between my love for filling requirements and my desire to take interesting courses, night classes alleviate taking one requirement during the day.

Cons to taking a night class:

• They almost always only occur once a week. This means that if the professor cancels, you’re missing out on what would usually be 3 hours in a week. If he or she does this twice, you’ve lost 6 classes. And, when each class costs something in the several-hundred dollar range, I start getting unhappy with class cancelling after the initial joy of having an unexpectedly free night after about one time. I know, I’m a weird guy for missing class, but I think that it’s sensible to expect to actually be taught for the money I pay for college
• If the class doesn’t talk (see previous blogs), and discussions don’t exist, 2 hours and 40 minutes can be a really long time. The professors rarely plan to speak the entire time and if the class decides on any given week (or semester, in some cases) that it wants to tune out, the seconds just slow down
• More reading. Because the professor sees each student having a week for each reading, they feel more comfortable assigning book-length readings each week, especially in upper-level classes. My experience has been that asking most Miami students to read 30 pages for every 50 minutes in class is bordering on too much. Asking for 300+ for 160 minutes seems like a joke to me. It is, of course, a sad joke, since I typically force myself to do the reading.
• There aren’t as many night classes. This means you have to really look around for them.

As you can see, night classes have perks and flaws. Personally, however, I prefer them. It allows me to take stuff like social dance in the day-time hours, which, as everyone knows, I have to enjoy because my editor is also my dance partner.

09/03/2007
It’s time for another Top Five. This week’s Top Five is a subject near and dear to every college student’s heart:
top five things to totally, totally, totally DO with a powerpoint presentation

• Use complementary colors that change between background and text for each slide. Your audience will really appreciate this, both because it’s so colorful (like rainbows!) and because having complementary colors as text and background make it so what you’re saying seems vibrant and alive (like a puppy!).

• Try not to practice your speech ahead of time. If you do, you’ll sound like you planned what you were going to say with your PowerPoint presentation ahead of time, and not like it’s an accident when image and what you say align. This loses all the spunk and pizzazz and freshness that comes with having no clue what you’re going to say and just threw text onto a page in an effort to make it look like you didn’t put your work off until the last minute.

• Includes lots of moving graphics and sounds, so you can’t so much as move your mouse without setting something off. This will amuse and delight your audience, because who doesn’t like to see little stick figures dancing when you’re talking about human anatomy, or stars shooting when you’re discussing gravity. Graphics, like complementary colors, make your presentation come alive (like a slinky!) and your audience will really appreciate all those clever noise effects you put in too!

• Fill up every blank space on the page with as much texts as possible. If possible, try to make your font small enough to be illegible, because making your audience work harder to read what you’ve written gives them a sense of satisfaction when they do. By filling the page, you make sure you don’t waste anyone’s time and it shows that you mean business. Plus, having that much on the page means you’re sure to get a good grade – look how much stuff you included!

• Most importantly: read every word on every page to your audience. The likelihood is that since you’re at college and they’re at college, they aren’t capable of reading what you’ve written by themselves; people really, really appreciate it when you don’t present your material so much as read what is right in front of them to them. This shows you care about their understanding and it also shows that you can read – a win-win situation!

I really hope this advice on PowerPoint presentations can help all of you out there. Remember, keep your audience happy and amused and what you actually say and how much work you actually did will become irrelevant!

08/27/2007
Guys, here’s some good advice:
Do.
Not.
Take.
Social.
Dance.

Girls, here’s some good advice:
Do.
Not.
Make.
Guys.
Take.
Social.
Dance.

Fact: Rather cunningly (she held out the threat of dancing with unknown guys whilst I was in England), Lindsay got me to agree to take the class (that’s right, it’s called a “class,” not a more appropriate name like “Dave’s personal hell” or at least a comparative, such as “worse than having someone pee on you for fifty minutes”) Social Dance.
Fact: I have no internal rhythm.
Fact: The first dance I tried was with Lindsay, so it was a safe and secure environment for me to screw up… right?
Fact: Wrong. Because then the extras girls got to “tag in” (which sounds fun but really isn’t, I assure you) and guess who got picked for dance numero two. That’s right, me.

Here’s Lindsay’s impression of Social Dance after day two: “I really like it, it’s a lot of fun.”

Here’s mine: insert an expression which mixes Mr. T, Chuck Norris, and Mike Tyson, all really super pissed… yeah, that’s about my response, mixed with a nice twist of shame and despair (I volunteered after all, I have no excuse).

The worst part is the natural difference between the genders. For every person out there who thinks all humans were created equal – clearly you’ve never tried to be a guy in dance class. Wholly schmolly, talk about awkward.

I mean, in eighth grade, I was peeing at a urinal this one time and this one kid – whom, admittedly, I had never seen use the public bathroom before – ran in, dropped his pants and underwear to his ankles (like I did when I was… hmm… four, shall we say?) and let loose like this was normal behavior – that was awkward in the way I feel at Social Dance. Honestly, I might as well have my pants at my ankles, for the exposed and completely silly way I feel.

The second worst part is girls’ response to this fact. Comments like, “You’re doing just fine” or “Don’t take it hard, you’re doing great!” or (my personal favorite) “It’s the first (also works for second apparently) day of class – you can’t expect to have it perfect!” just make me feel like a child learning to potty train.

Believe it or not, this is not a desirable feeling, especially when about seventy of your peers are floating around you like they grew up under Fred Astaire’s tutelage.

Social Dance sucks. Guys who read this, re-read the opening seven lines until you could repeat it in any order.

Gotta go, Lindsay is coming into the room.

08/20/2007
One of my favorite parts about the beginning of the school year is my peers (sarcasm). You see, O my audience, as the first year students come to a new place and try to immerse themselves in Miami’s campus and surrounding area, a common tradition for upper-class students who have living arrangements along major throughways is to verbally harass, at loud volumes, anyone who walks by that might be construed as first-years – that is, everyone.

It is especially bad if one travels in any sort of group. True, first years tend to travel with several companions – but when you’re in an unfamiliar place and have limited knowledge of your surroundings, have another, equally limited person’s knowledge could help, if they have a slightly different set of area knowledge. Moreover, these same first-years are going through the age-old process of being almost totally alone and having to reestablish a social network.

People trying to live and behaving completely normal – sounds like a great reason to mock them!

I just don’t understand the draw, I suppose. When I see people looking lost and confused my inclination is to say, “Looking for something?” or “Do you need help finding anything?” I guess that makes me stupid, because what I should do when I see people who were in the exact same stage and who behaved exactly the same as I did a short while prior to the present is to loudly make fun of them with such brilliant verbiage as “FRESHMEN!” and “I THINK I SMELL FRESH MEAT!”

Good work, you’re really making Einstein proud of his species, fellas.

My favorite encounter of this nature actually occurred just a few nights ago. Walking, during one of the final nights I had with Mr. Yates (who graduated in the spring and is in law school now, mind you), I was also accompanied by my editor/girlfriend, my roommate, and his girlfriend, as well as my younger brother and a friend of his. Passing a house where there were several knuckles-rubbing-on-the-ground guys standing or sitting, these mental giants decided to harass, of all people, Yates. “FRESHMEN?” They yelled. “GRADUATED SENIOR, SORRY!” Yates replied, to which I added, “But good guess, dumbass.” I thought Yates handled it rather all-too-well.

I know what you’re thinking: if you were aiming to insult someone, wouldn’t you at least say it authoritatively, and not in a questioning manner? Not these yahoos – they were way too cool for doing something stupid the right way!

Now, I am not writing about this particular facet of college life simply because I’ve gotten dubbed and branded a first year several times in the past few days. In truth, this characteristic doesn’t stem directly from college. The hazing of people who are in the same position you were a few years earlier was common for me in high school, too. Call me logical or no-fun, but I just don’t understand the draw of it. Why not just yell at yourself in the mirror for a while? I mean, really, everyone who’s alive is just a peon and a “freshman” to someone higher up and beyond them.

As part of my general campaigning to promote intelligence and intelligent behavior, the moral of this story is that it’s important to insult and demean idiocy. It is a social equalizing function which marginalizes undesirable behavior.

08/13/2007
The final week of this summer has been hectic. The little brother moved in. The girlfriend moved in. Yates moved out. All in all, a time of happiness and sadness – while I was being afforded a much more frequent opportunity to see brother and editor, I lost one of my best friends to law school and what some call “the real world” (I am scowling, for more on this see previous blogs). I will begin, then, by wishing Mr. Yates the very best of luck – I know he will be successful in anything he does, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be successful with my best wishes of good luck.

Move-in/-out day sucks. Let’s be frank. There is nothing fun about it. Especially with as hot as it’s been in Oxford as of late. Hauling stuff, entertaining the parents, and then hauling things some more was bad enough. To make matters worse, I volunteered (I know, it is surprising) to drive to Indiana to help Yates move in. That’s right, I willingly sought a destination in Indiana – it wasn’t just a sheer accident I ended up there.

Indiana gets a bad rap. But then, a little like Peyton Manning in the play-offs, it might be deserved. I leave it up to you. So that Indiana-ans don’t feel singled out, I’ll also mention that I don’t like the state of Pennsylvania either. Someone asked me why, stating that PA was rather similar to Ohio. My response was simple but brilliant I think:

“Yes, they are basically the same – but with one very important difference: Ohio produced me.”

Hold the applause.

So, in my effort to constantly be amused (the world’s dismal enough, why not put a smile on?), I have, of late, watched a lot of the Show with Ze Frank (you can find it at www.zefrank.com), and one in particular deserves a direct link:

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/11/112706.html

My treat to each of you. And, to answer your question, “perennial” means: “constantly recurring, or lasting for an indefinite time (according to Microsoft Word’s “look up” function).”

Anyhow, the paper is in the final stages of editing at this point. All that remains is final check and printing. It currently weighs in at a hefty ninety-seven pages and includes two appendices (one is a chart and the other has pictures – yeah, how cool is having pictures in a paper?). The conclusion took a bit of finagling, but the introduction was surprisingly easy to do (mainly through my dismissal of all real difficulties).

What will become of this behemoth which kills small trees in order to be produced? I’ll turn it in to my professor after it’s printed (sometime next week), he’ll give me a grade, and it’ll get tossed on some shelf. A fitting way to finish a summer. Kind of like not finishing a senten

08/06/2007
Two weeks to go. With two weeks left of summer, or in a regular semester, I often feel a little like what I imagine a marathon runner who parties the night before a race would feel at mile marker 23. It’s not quite the end, in fact there’s still considerable work to be done, but at the same time we both look back and think “I’ve come so far…” (read: damn, I just did a summer’s worth of reading and writing / I just ran a ton of miles.)

Fact: I am in the first week (of two) of revision and final reading and writing for my Undergraduate Summer Scholars research project.
Fact: That means I’m going back over the sixty or so pages I’ve already written already in an effort to fix them as well as writing a conclusion that ties it all up and an introduction which addresses all outstanding issues, sums up my argument, and introduces (go figure) the whole thing.
Fact: I leave writing the intro and conclusion until the end for two reasons: first, because my project’s conclusions developed with the research I was doing and resulted as only loosely similar to my original conception, and thus I had to wait to write it. Second, because these two sections suck to write.

Here’s Dave’s advice for writing extensive papers:

• don’t write a butt-load of pages that you’ll eventually have to go back and revise – it’s not fun
• it’s perfectly acceptable to write your introduction as the very last thing you write – if you do, you can address major issues that you have seen in later parts (my favorite tactic is to simply dismiss them)
• Microsoft Word has a table of contents function that is ridiculously easy to use. Ridiculously.
• even when a paper is long, it’s a good idea to still have a focused purpose – if necessary, relegate stuff you think is important but not directly relevant to appendices
• don’t write blogs when you should be focusing on your research

Motivation can be a huge part of writing at the college level. I have now written several long papers (10+ pages), and every time that I have been motivated (by a deadline of the next day, or interest) they have flown off my fingers. This is not to say that they do not take time, but motivation can make even a long paper move quickly, simply because you’re not fighting both factors: you’re not interested and it’s a lot of work. The former can quicken the latter.

This is why I try to work on important things (read: prioritize constantly) based on my motivation level at any given time. When I am “in the zone,” so to speak, I quickly reassess what I am doing and what needs doing the most (not necessarily the same thing at any given time).

This has had a huge impact on me as a college student, and is an important thing that any successful college graduate probably learned – using yourself at your best times to produce what is most needed.

Prioritization is key.

07/30/2007
“People should not be afraid of their governments.
Governments should be afraid of their people.”

… reads the top of the newest addition to my poster collection: the teaser poster for the film “V For Vendetta.” Sporting V with his back mostly turned and his two arms at his side, knives in hand, this poster is clutter-free, simple in its expression and style, and 100% awesome. I have been lusting after this poster since before I saw the film.

How did I acquire this masterpiece of my collection? My good friend Yates.

See, this poster was a teaser, which means that before the movie is finalized in it production, the company financing the film has some artists whip up a poster that identifies the film but doesn’t really give the viewer too much of what the film is about (in case the idea changes dramatically in the post-production stages). These posters are then sent to cinemas across the globe in an effort to get people to at least see something about the film, so they know it’s coming out. Because this can happen months or years before there is even a teaser trailer (a short film trailer that shows clips from the film in an effort to entice viewers of other films to come back to see the trailer’s film), teaser posters are often forgotten or overlooked (the film might flop or soar, but either way they come out long after the teaser poster has left the cinema) when the film makes it big.

In the case of the V poster, the only way to get it was through an online auction site, but it would, any way I shook it, end up costing my around 25 dollars or more to buy the thing – and even I have a limit on what I’m willing to spend on a single poster.

And so I waited, watched, and searched.

A little over a year ago, Yates announced to me that he’d just broken down and order it, and that it came with a second “V For Vendetta” poster for free, although it wasn’t the same one. Being the nice guy that he is, he just gave it for me, stating that he had no real purpose for it.

And so I lusted, waited, watched, and searched.

I literally covered oceans in my search, snooping around in poster shops in Germany, England, and, of course, the US – always to no avail.

Until the other day.

Yates came over to hang out – not an uncommon action, nor an unhappy one as Yates is a ton of fun to be around. Engrossed in whatever task I was undertaking, Jason let him into our apartment and it wasn’t until Yates said something to me that I realized that he was standing in my doorway, holding none other than my most-wanted poster of all time.

Cautious, as I didn’t want to get my hopes up prematurely, I asked Yates why he had it with him and he told me that, as he’d be heading to law school in just over two weeks, he couldn’t see the poster making its way with him and he thought I should have it.

Now there are certainly times where I feel like my big mouth and polarizing personality have made it so my list of friends is few, but when something as awe-inspiringly nice as this happened, I couldn’t help but feel like someone else could have the rest of the people. This is not to say that I hold a material gift to such a standard that it’s the pinnacle of importance to me – but in this case the old adage of “it’s the thought that counts” really meant a lot. Yates knew I really had a thing for this poster and for whatever reason he thought he’d bequeath it to me.

I alleviated the seriousness of the situation by telling him that I could now take off the hit I had called on him, to which he replied “and what makes you think that my will would have mentioned something as trivial as a poster?” I smiled and said, “Nothing, but I knew I’d have a little time before the authorities showed up to sneak into your place and get the poster out. Don’t worry, you’re safe now.”

The moral of this story is not about a poster. In reality, I’m just really bummed that such a good friend is moving to another stage in his life and that that stage happens to be 2.5 hours away. I’m happy for him and I know he’ll be successful in anything he does because Yates is a really remarkable guy in many, many ways, but I’m also sure I’ll miss my friend.

07/23/2007
Here are a couple basic skills for success in class. Normally, I wouldn’t bother writing these up as they seem stupidly straight-forward to me. However, I have been reflecting on my own experience with fellow students and can’t help but wonder if they somehow haven’t figured out these basic rules to succeeding in a college classroom.

1. Show up for every class. I don’t have perfect attendance in college, but I have a darn good record. Good attendance shows the professor you are motivated and energetic enough to stop wasting your life playing poker online in your room, and it frequently gives you a huge advantage over those who don’t show up on tests, where the material covered in class (but not necessarily in the reading) comes into play.
2. Do the reading for every class. Ideally, you’ll do it before class, so you can contribute to class discussions or have a clue on what the professor is lecturing. I can’t tell you the number of times one of my well-reasoned comments in class have been met with some just-this-side-of-a-squirrel-feeder-mentality type of response from one of my peers who clearly hasn’t done the reading suggested for the class. (My all-time favorite was when I was in a class discussion about Elie Wiesel’s book Night, which chronicles the authors own experience in a concentration camp. After I had questioned how accurate any of Wiesel specific stories were in terms of their dialogue as he took a vow of silence on the subject for ten years after he got out, a fellow classmate of my mine raised his hand, was called upon, and stated very matter-of-factly: “I have a question which I think answers your question: why is the book called Night?”) Generally speaking, professors don’t go out of their way to assign odious readings and from time-to-time you may stumble on something you really like that you’d never thought you’d enjoy.
3. When something is due, turn it in. Putting things off in the legitimate (contracting an “incomplete” grading and finishing the work at a later date) or the illegitimate (lying or just not turning it in on time) ways piss professors off. Again, they didn’t assign the date to screw you as a student – and they almost always give you the dates way ahead of time, so do the work and turn it in on time.
4. Contribute in class discussions and don’t be afraid to ask questions of a lecturing professor. I am hesitant to add this, because these aspects can be abused and the cost is both a professor and a class who hates you, whether you know that you’re “that kid who never shut up” or not. I selected “contribute” because this does not mean just piping up anytime you’ve got something to say that you think is smart or funny. I call those people hecklers or, more commonly, dumb-asses. Professors who see that you’re intrigued enough to add to the class will usually be inclined towards looking favorably upon you as a student. I can’t say this has any tangible benefits other than making good relationships with professors, but when it comes time for letters of recommendation I’ll be, as the saying goes “in the money.”
5. Be realistic with your course scheduling. This should probably go first, as it is advice that should be taken before you get to the first day of class, but I’m not going to change it, so deal. Know your capabilities and your strengths and weaknesses when you pick your classes. If you need to fill a requirement, try to take a class that meets it, but that also sounds interesting at the same time. If you’re interested in the class, it’ll make even a course outside your general area of focus a lot easier and more enjoyable.
6. Know yourself as a student. I, for example, am not very sharp in the morning. In fact, my attendance record for classes before 10:00 am is a little embarrassing. I know this, and I plan my schedule accordingly – taking classes that won’t challenge me early, or not taking any during that time at all and picking them up at night. Especially as larger schools with lots of class options, it’s often possible to custom tailor your schedule to fit your sleeping, eating, and sometimes even your social patterns (that’s right, I have no classes on Fridays – I rule).
7. If you find a professor you enjoy, follow them. I don’t mean this literally, but I do mean that if they teach a class you can use to fill a requirement, take it with them. College can be hard, but if you like the person you’re doing the work for and enjoy their class, the difficult stuff can sometimes seem a little more tolerable. The flip side to this is that you may miss taking some other professor who is truly spectacular… but that same chance could give you someone who is remarkably bad as well. I prefer to play it safe.
8. Finally, remember that you are a student first and foremost. I have fun and I certainly do my share of sports, clubs, jobs, and other time consuming activities – but at the end of the day, I’m at college to learn and get my degree, and none of those other things shake a stick at the importance of this to me. I pay a lot of money for college, and I value my education highly. The result of this is that I focus heavily on my academic studies, and I personally feel that this is an extremely good idea when it comes to college.

The results of my own taking the above advice has resulted in pretty decent results for me, but it’s no secret formula I have. Mostly, I just work hard and do what every college student should do on a regular basis. If you manage your time well, it’s more than possible to succeed at college and have a great time while you’re at it.

07/16/2007
This blog is all about why irony isn’t an ideal underlying aspect for a graduation gift.

Fact: Since high school, my older brother Zach has failed to regularly cut his hair.
Fact: The results have never varied – when it’s medium length he looks stupid; when it’s moderately long he looks stupid; and when it’s long or really long he looks (you guessed it) stupid or really stupid.
Fact: For as long as Zach has exerted his personal choice to do whatever he wants with his hair as an expression of himself, I have regularly made fun of and suggested that he cut his hair.
Fact: Zach is a truly gifted artist in some ways and I have always admired his artwork, often modeling my own after it.

Zach recently graduated (see previous blogs), and in my effort to come up with a Zach-specific, meaningful set of gifts to commemorate his achievement, the idea struck me that since I’ve given him such a hard time over the years and also because I have always liked his artwork in any medium he chooses, I would make one of Zach’s gifts be a mixture of these two aspects of our relationship as brothers. The irony of letting him use my head as his canvas and of allowing him to make my hair look any way he’d like would, I thought, be fitting, funny, and a good gift. It was certainly the first and the last.

Zach’s initial plan was to give me the monk cut, where he’d let me keep all my hair except on the very top, back part of my head – which he intended to shave bald. Feeling that this particular haircut wasn’t brazen enough, he instead went for something more grand, something more obvious, something more… he gave me a mohawk.

Responses to my mohawk, which lasted just until I saw Lindsay, who promptly shaved it down to one short length, varied from “What, were you getting a hair cut but didn’t have enough time to finish before you came to see us?” to “You know, just seeing the little bit stick out of the back of your baseball cap really made me think you had a rat-tail” to “Oh no! Now I have to be the girl who picks the kid with the mohawk to dance with in Social Dance class.” Few were positive, and when they were it was usually “You know, if I didn’t know you I guess I could think that you were sort of a bad-boy with that hair cut” or something like that. The sole exception was my lovely boss and blog-poster, Tiffany, who said she loved it.

The short wrap-up to this story is that while it’s a good idea to come up with a meaningful gift for someone who’s graduating, irony can have its limits and four days of sporting a mohawk have taught me to think a bit more before I toss my hair to the whim of another.

07/09/2007
As Jared prepares to make the dreadfully boring trip across Ohio, he has occasionally asked for advice on what he should get for his residence hall room, in order to be ready for college life. He has even shown me a couple of the pre-made lists that various companies (such as Bed, Bath & Beyond) have generated, and that my mother has likely brandished in his face with more than a few “don’t wait until it’s too late to get these” speeches (love you, Mom!).

In light of these events, I thought I’d add my thirteen-hundred billion cents worth of advice into this aspect of college living. Thus, I will highlight some key (and some not-so-key) items to have handy and preferably on your parent’s tab (if you’re so lucky).

The first is a hamper. I used to be of the opinion that hampers were superfluous. Why were gravity and friction and a floor invented, my reasoning went, if not to hold my dirty (and sometimes clean) laundry?

This sort of thinking is short-sighted and immature. I would still contend that it’s not lazy or stupid, because I was employing both the forces of nature and my own resources to their potential; but life is much easier with the use of a hamper. Ranging in sizes from “Why would anyone buy this – you can only fit two pairs of female underwear in it, and even then they’d have to be thongs” to “Big enough to hold a body, bad enough to be in Chuck Norris’ closet (if he ever needed a hamper – of course he doesn’t “need” anything; things need Chuck Norris).” As you can imagine, I tend towards the safer, Chuck Norris-endorsed route (the benefit of which is that I can go for many, many weeks without doing laundry).

Next is laundry detergent. Normally, you wouldn’t think of this – it’s common and prevalent enough that you could probably swipe someone else’s in a pinch. And let’s be honest, if it weren’t for the fact that my clothes are spilling out of my hamper, I wouldn’t be thinking about detergent either, but it is and I am.

Here’s something you don’t need: dishes or silverware. Most college campuses have dining halls and all of them had food eatery joints – don’t be lame-sauce and eat in your room all the time. Doing dishes sucks (trust me, I don’t have a dishwasher in my apartment), and most any food you could keep in your room probably isn’t worth eating regularly enough to need the necessary dishware – this includes Ramen noodles and Easy Mac, which are both evil and vile. An exception is gummy snacks, which is the one food that is applicable for any situation (seriously, hand some to your parents the next time they yell, or give it to your boyfriend right before you dump him) – but even gummy snacks are inherently awesome enough to not need any dishes.

Shower sandals, shower sandals, shower sandals. They’re cheap and easy to get rid of. Fungi, molds, lichens, and the potential used prophylactics you might encounter are not.

All the usual suspects on a desk: stapler, staples, paper clips, pushpins (if you have a corkboard), pens, pencils, markers, crayons (never used ‘em, but they’re there for a rainy day), erasers, a small tape measure, a calculator, tape, a three hole puncher, and scissors.

What you don’t need: “fluff stuff” such as a bed-attachable lamp (read at your desk), a mattress pad (waste of time and they constantly come of the corners anyways), a rug (walking on bare floors put hair on guys’ chests and they whiten smiles for girls), and pretty much anything that could be described as “cute”. If it’s furry, comes in pink, and isn’t useful for keeping some part of your body clean or working, and it can be potentially termed as “cute”, don’t buy it – the company suggesting it is just ripping you off and cramping your awesomeness level.

This isn’t a comprehensive list, but one final thing I’d suggest, but not say is mandatory, is a large trunk. You can easily get ones that are some sort of durable plastic and have wheels built into one side – this is ideal for carry heavy shit that you don’t want banged up; until recently I have used mine to carry my DVD collection, but it is now too large to be bound by one mere trunk. I rule.

07/02/2007
Fact: People waste their time playing some really boring games.

These include (but are not limited to): Scrabble, Mindsweeper, most cell phone games, most video game system games that doesn’t involve Star Wars or Lord of the Rings (and even then, some of these suck too), a lot of drinking games (you can achieve similar effects by just drinking a lot of booze in a short amount of time and the best part of that game is you can only lose once), and – my personal most-hated – poker.

Be it on-line or with your dumb friends, poker is a huge waste of time and in some cases, money. It really astounds me that professional poker players are coming into their own nowadays and that kids think it’s cool to follow in these sleaze-balls’ foot-steps. Allow me to set the record straight (I’ll even put it in bold so you know I’m serious):

Poker is lame-sauce. Like picking on the handicapped, it is an activity that should be reserved for those people whom society mocks and shuns from civilized settings. Kids, stop watching fat morons in cowboy hats and sunglasses who aren’t smart enough to get a real job on the television; teens, stop playing poker with your friends – if you want to get together and do something stupid, there are much better vehicles for this behavior and some of them aren’t even illegal; adults, really? You’re watching people who have, in most every other time in human history, been looked down upon (with good reason) for their poor work ethic and proclivity for taking what could be a terribly boring game and trying to make it a profession – wise up.

The good news is that there are many games that are not lame-sauce like poker or Scrabble. Happily enough, some are even moderately affordable, and most of these will actually force you to exert your brain, rather than let it turn into a huge pile of whale-based perfume (see previous blogs for details).

And before I give you my TOP-5 LIST of AWESOME GAMES TO PLAY THAT DON’T SUCK, don’t bother writing to me (dave.sheehan@hotmail.com) to tell me that Scrabble forces its players to exert their brains. Scrabble is a game founded around being able to generate words out of the letters you find in front of you. When kids do this sort of gibberish we think it’s cute; when the mentally challenged do it we smile with pity – neither of these give any evidence that it takes particular skill or brainpower to generate words, it’s just part of our advanced brains’ capabilities. If you walked out back and picked up sticks in the yard and laid them on the ground in the form of a human skeleton, we wouldn’t hail you for being an archeologist or even a particularly clever person – in short, Scrabble is boring.

TOP-5 LIST of AWESOME GAMES TO PLAY THAT DON’T SUCK (and I even limited myself to only one Lord of the Rings or Star Wars games, so no whining)

1. Munchkin
2. Mario Kart (for Nintendo 64)
3. Bang
4. Star Wars Bounty Hunter (for Play Station 2)
5. Stratego

Munchkin and Bang are particularly sweet. In the former, you get to loot dungeons, kill monsters, and mock RPG-playing nerds everywhere (even if you are one). In the latter, you get to be a Sheriff, an Outlaw, a Renegade, or a Deputy, and your goal in the game is either to enforce or kill the law. In both, the point of the game is to mess with the other players while you try to win.

So, when you have nothing better to do and you’re thinking of slipping into nefarious deeds (i.e. poker), consider playing a much sweeter, Dave-approved game.

06/25/2007
I have written in other blogs about the necessity (or rather, lack thereof) of having a vehicle in Oxford. I can now say, after having taken a bus back up north, that my advice holds true. Sure, it’s not the ideal way to travel. Sure, you are limited to travel between major cities. Sure, it can be cramped, uncomfortable, and tiresome. But the great part about riding a bus – and I am not the first person to note this public transit phenomenon – is all oddities one can encounter. There is the woman apparently sopping up coffee which she, for reasons unknown to me, put in the luggage shelf above her and which spilled and began dripping on her and her fellow traveler. There is the guy who never stops moving and looks around with eyes and expression comparable only to a frightened owl. There is the bus driver who is gruffer than an awakened grizzly-bear if you are foolish enough not to have your ticket ready, but remarkably gentle and helpful with the two children seated in the front row.

The entertainment derived from bus travel is almost worth the price of the ticket alone.

Fact: While I have traveled on many mass-transit systems across Europe, riding on a bus from Cincinnati to Cleveland, Ohio was definitely a very amusing experience.
Fact: I have hockey tonight and I am not sore from prior physical activities.
Fact: And this is for an unfortunate kid who happens to stumble across this blog and doesn’t have the good sense to go somewhere else – weddings do not get more pleasant with age.
Fact: The treachery runs deeper than I ever imagined: when checking my Miami-based e-mail account (dave.sheehan@hotmail.com being one of my others where readers can contact me with questions, comments, or concerns), I noticed that the actual system on which it runs is called “SquirrelMail.”

The summer before you head to college is really the beginning of a huge transitory period for college-bound graduates. There is the summer job, the high school friends, the graduation parties, the shopping for college stuff, and the parents trying to get in their final words of wisdom before you take that last step out of the family car (for a while) when you arrive at school and your parents have to leave. Among other things, there might be the clinging relationships, the personal expectations for your “last summer of high school,” and more than a little worry about what’s next.

In reality, all of this is part of a much larger trend of which the college-bound student is likely to be totally unaware. This “last” summer – and I put it in quote because personal experience has proven that there are MANY summers after the supposed “last” – is really a time of increasing social liminality. And it can be sensed: that sense of not really belonging – no longer a high school student nor yet a college student; the gut feeling of just sort of waiting and hoping college is what you’re waiting for; and the boredom with all things norm. Unknowingly, all of these feelings, which are completely normal and natural, are just a bit of the big leap that comes with changing one’s paradigm of existence – and that is what going away to college is.

This is why the switch to college can be so tough for many students. Not unlike the arbitrariness of setting a legal drinking age – the actual date of a birthday rarely makes anyone feel any older or more responsible – going to college is a major leap without any true preparation beforehand, and it is for this reason that the transition is so hard for many freshmen. The suddenness of being completely responsible for one’s own actions, the expectations to perform at a higher level with less external support and structure, and the rupture of social norms is truly a remarkably difficult process to go through.

My point in bringing all of this up is that the summer between high school and college need not be completely wasted. High school friends don’t die when you go away to college (usually); there will be other parties you can attend and you won’t be expected to rub elbows with community adults at them; and college isn’t anything different if you don’t make it so. That is, if you treat it like high school – and trust my, plenty of students do – it will be like a responsibility-laden high school (it has also been my experience that this view leads to a very difficult time as college and high school are fundamentally different in their goals and perspectives as institutions), and nothing more.

So how is a summer before college better spent? Should you abandon all plans with friends? Ignore all graduation parties? Quit your summer job? Break off relationships?

Of course not, is the simple answer. But you could temper what you’re doing with a good mixture of preparation and perspective. For example, one necessary skill at most colleges is ability to read, sometimes large amounts of material in a short time period. So, over the summer, make sure to keep reading. It doesn’t have to be Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (it’s a boring book anyways), but reading, like hitting a ball or jumping, is a skill that can not only be honed to a higher level, it can be gradually lost if left unused. Similarly, try to keep writing. As another staple requirement for college, writing is truly remarkable as an ability in that you can always get better at it.

At the same time as you prepare, keep perspective of what you’re doing. Yes, this is the final summer before a big lifestyle change, but it’s still your life, your existence, and very, very real. Nothing is so frustrating as when people refer to any moment in their life as something other than the real world. Descriptions of college or high school as a bubble, or less than real-life-like, is not only shortsighted – it’s remarkably stupid. I have yet to be in any high school or on any college campus where the population wasn’t breathing, eating, sleeping, and at least considering reproducing – this leads me to believe that there is life around me, thus making these places the real world where people live.

So go ahead and do all the pre-college things like parties, hanging out with friends, and working crap-tastic jobs. But don’t lose sight of what you’re doing: living. This doesn’t change when you go to college. It doesn’t change when you leave college either. Continually looking ahead to some better, future time can be a very dangerous way to live, as it perpetuates want, rather than focusing on appreciation of what you have – the moment. And when looked at ultimately, the line of life is comprised on a series of moments which exist at once both infinitely and completely finite… and missing those moments by looking ahead constantly is, in my opinion, a very sad way to live. And going to college won’t change that, as you’ll come to view it only as another step towards some unnamed, unknown better time in the future.

In short, whether you are in a solid place and setting in life, or in one of many liminal periods, such as the summer before college, it’s worth stopping occasionally to look at the moment in which you are living. The looked-back-upon best moment will never be as good as it was at the time it occurred, being tempered by all that is not best and has happened since. So enjoy each moment.

06/22/2007
I’ve discovered yet another reason why living in Oxford over the summer is great: Alumni Reunion Weekend.

Normally a time for past classes to reconvene on the grasses of Miami University and reminisce about old times, there is one aspect of the whole process that is not completely boring and uninteresting to yours truly – and that is that there is free ice time for a pick-up game of broomball and some ice skating.

As I hadn’t been on the ice in over six months, more than my mouth was watering at the prospect of getting to not only ice skate before my first week of hockey, but also at getting a crack at running around, beating a softball-sized, blue plastic ball across the ice.

And what sweetens the deal even more? It’s against Alumni, which means two things: 1) I have a distinct age advantage on them, and 2) they haven’t played broomball on the full ice at the new Goggin, as it has been a fixture only in my tenure at Miami. You can bet I was rubbing my hands together like a chubby kid at a Twinkie factory.

Fact: I am not in shape, having not exercised hard in the past six months.
Fact: A ten year age difference does not compensate for the fact above.
Fact: The day after I played, I walked around like a cripple. In fact, if any of my readers have read Frank Herbert’s Dune, they can rest assured that my walking pattern the day after broomball was so erratic that I wouldn’t have even drawn a sandworm. Impressive, I know.
Fact: The other people, besides my friend (let’s call him Yates) and myself, who played that day, were comprised primarily of the Class of 1992’s Student Band Alumni. You can bet I was rubbing my hands together a lot when I learned this whilst we were all warming up.

In all honesty, there are some serious perks to life in Oxford over the summer. First, Oxford, as I have mentioned in previous blogs, is small enough that a car really isn’t necessary. Second, the university has a great many job openings for the only-slightly-industrious student seeking to make ends meet. Couple these together and you get the great combination of not needing to drive to work if you stay in Oxford.

Another cool thing about staying in southern Ohio over the summer is that the weather is pretty stellar (especially if you are accustomed to lake-effect central (a.k.a. northeast Ohio)). Beyond that, there are a ton of things to do. For instance, just about every week, the city of Oxford shuts down High Street (the main drag uptown) and turns the whole place into a quasi-summerfest party, with live music and sometimes inflatable games. The whole community gathers and there is usually much rejoicing and good times to be had.

For the socialites, the relatively small population during the summer also results in, if you try at all to meet people, most everyone knowing (or sort of knowing) everyone else who’s around. It’s the whole no-one-else-is-around-so-I-guess-we’re-friends thing, which isn’t too bad either.

To close, and just so no one thinks I’m a pessimist who just complains about Miami, I would like to add that Alumni Reunion Weekend is actually not bad – for the adults who come. Really, the university doesn’t treat it much differently from the Summer Orientation sessions I discussed previously – mainly because they aren’t that different. In both cases, Miami is doing its best to entertain the kids while getting the parents to committing (or reaffirm their commitment to) donations.

Ah, I love the smell of philanthropy in the summer.

06/15/2007
For all my complaining about British weather my final two weeks there, southern Ohio has treated me well since I’ve arrived down here. It has been sunny, warm, and breezy. All of which are absolutely great things, as far as the weather is concerned.

Ah, summer time. For me, it brings research and evenings filled with video games and movies. For my editor, work and an internship. And for my younger brother and several thousand other upcoming-freshmen, orientation.

Orientation is a time for incoming students to see Miami, to schedule their courses for the fall, and to get their first taste of life at Miami. Ironically, orientation, as I recall it, was just about as far from what life and Miami actually is like as possible. There are awkward ice-breaking activities, over-zealous orientation student-staff members (called S.O.U.L.S, which I just find creepy), and even a social activity (which, as long as I’ve been here has been music and chips and pop on one of the quads).

Clearly, no one has ever consulted an actual Miami student (such as myself) when planning this whole orientation thing. In true fact, the real orientation for freshmen students comes the first few days they are here at Miami in the late summer. Arriving Friday or Saturday before classes (which start on Tuesday), the students are suddenly torn from their parents’ protections and guardianship, they are suggested to do assorted activities reminiscent of their orientation experience (which they – with good reason – usually ignore), and they, in droves, meander uptown where various local businesses try to sucked them into signing up for stuff by offering free t-shirts and frisbees (My editor, Lindsay, would like me to add free pizza to this list).

Now, for the astute and money-conscious upper-classman who happens to be around at this time, this is like summer Christmas. Free t-shirts? I’ll have three! A frisbee and a pen for free? All I need to do if give my e-mail address and name? No problem: Bob Bobertson, bobbobertson@hotmail.com.

Back to point, that first weekend is the true orientation. Students have all the time in the world and no one telling them what to do with it. That’s the real orientation experience, not the over-planned, incredibly awkward summer orientation. Honestly, if they just sent a semi-detailed e-mail to the incoming freshmen with instructions on how to register for courses and what the basic requirements are for their intended major or department, the whole business could be skipped.

Of course, if Miamihas to have orientation, I would highly suggest that they start making some changes.

For example, they could stop calling the student workers “Souls” and start calling them what they are: under-paid, university administrator’s lapdogs. Also, they should do away with most of the “Souls” responsibilities. They don’t know the requirements for every major, and they just make it more awkward by forcing students to do ice-breaker, bullshit activities. Why not give them the only job they really need to do? Namely, sheepdogs that herd groups from one place on campus to another. Better yet, why not just have every building marked with its name (done), and then give each and every student a map (also done) and let them figure out how to schedule their time and get around on their own, a necessary skill for life at Miami.

Next, the university could rope off all the parents from their children and not let them have any contact with the students until after everything was done. Then you wouldn’t have parents taking notes on what classes to take and later suggesting to their kids, “That sounded really good (read “profitable”), why do you want to be a _____ major?” Also, you would force the students to grow up and schedule themselves a bit, a process that eventually they’ll have to figure out in order to survive at Miami anyways. I have a couple ideas on how to entertain the parents: buy the complete Dick Van Dyke DVD Collection and play it on repeat in a locked room with chairs a-plenty. Provide two port-o-potties and crackers and coffee three times a day and you won’t hear a peep out of most of them. Or even better, make the parents do the awkward ice-breaker activities while the students are accomplishing easy tasks like scheduling their courses.

Also, I think the university should seriously consider adding some sort of a glorified reality-show themed wrestling match to the whole orientation ordeal. I say this for several reasons. First, everyone but me seems to think reality shows are a good idea, so it would please most people. Second, while I normally abhor wrestling and try to never think about it (much less promote the behavior), it would be quite a spectacle and give the incoming students a good view of what the internet network at Miami goes through when open registration occurs in July. Finally, for those of us who aren’t freshmen, it would be just plain fun to see two people rolling around in the middle of the summer for the pure entertainment of the newest paycheck-givers to the university.

By the by, if any administrators actually read this blog and want some more ideas on how to make orientation less horrendous and Ghostrider-esque, feel free to e-mail me at dave.sheehan@hotmail.com.

06/08/2007
So great is my dedication to you, O my audience, that I have gone back to check on some clerical information about my past blogs and I have discovered that one blog I have written has not made its way onto my page. I’m not entirely sure how this happened; either I didn’t send it to my boss to post, or she got it but never posted it, or it was abducted by aliens. Regardless, it is not posted, so I felt it my duty to send it again, in order that this time, the Lost Blog (number 17, supposed to have been posted on the 28 th of November, 2006) may see the light of day. (Posters note: Dave’s boss does not recall ever receiving it. It must have been the aliens!) It reads as follows:

Thanksgiving Break. I’d like to say that the reason this blog comes to you, O my audience, so late is because I have been drifting sweetly in and out of sleep after having gorged myself on food and drink last week. Sadly, this is not the case. I have just been really busy. I know this is no excuse, but hey, no one has e-mailed me (dave.sheehan@hotmail.com) yet to complain about my truancy, so I’m not all that worried about it.

Fact: My intramural hockey season is at an end. After a valiant effort, my team lost in the first round of the playoffs last night 5-2. Looking back on the season, I can pretty safely say that my skills have improved immensely. I am almost sad I will be in Europe next semester and unable to play… but then I think about the fact that I will be in Europe (sweet), and I get over it.

Fact: It’s still in the 60s here. No, I don’t mean there are protestors and politicians who have secret liaisons hanging out here; the weather is just really, really nice.

Fact: When you get to college (or, if you are in college), probably one of the most useful lessons you’ll learn is to take advantage of breaks for the sleep time that they afford. There is no class forcing you to wake up far too early. There is no friend cajoling you to stay out far too late. Sometimes, there isn’t even a high-speed internet access allowing you to mindlessly search the web and thus killing time. In short, breaks are your time to relax and get your sleep caught up. Don’t disregard work or homework you may have, but make sure you budget a hefty amount of sleep into your daily schedule.

Fact: Learn the difference between (and availability of) credit/no credit courses and letter grade courses. You will often be taking courses in your first years that do not directly correlate to your major/minor/etc. and in the case where the course doesn’t interest you and may negatively affect your GPA, credit/no credit can be a really nice option. Take my hard-learned personal advice: do not wait until after the deadline for declaring credit/no credit to figure out whether a course will challenge you or not.

Something I never encountered much before college was the concept of a course syllabus (apparently, my editor, Amanda, had a high school full to the brim with syllabus-toting teachers… fortunately this blog is about me so I will continue without her permission). Now, it may have just been the teachers in my high school, but I can only remember getting one or two of them “back in the day” (+2 clever points for making it seem like this was all that long ago – it wasn’t).

At college, syllabi (which is the plural form of the Latin word syllabus) are extremely important. Every class will have one, from Ice Skating to Philosophy to Chemistry. And really, they’re quite useful. Not only do they outline the expectations and guidelines for grading by the professor, they also give a fairly in-depth view of exactly what you will be doing throughout the semester. They are broken down by class, week, or section, and they give the readings and assignment dates.

The flip-side to this handy-dandy pack o’ papers (+2 clever points for saying “o’” like I’m a leprechaun) is that you are responsible for knowing their content. That means that professors might not tell you “read pages ___ to ___ for next class,” they just expect you to do it because, after all, it is in your syllabus.

I’ve had cases where I didn’t even know an assignment was coming up until almost too late because I wasn’t carefully watching my syllabus. It’s not that professors are trying to be sneaky (they are generally quite happy to remind you of your readings and assignments), it’s just that they are mostly of the mindset that they have already told you when stuff is due on the syllabus.

As a general rule, I keep a three-ring binder for all the assorted papers and notebooks I collect or use for each class. If you end up doing something similar, I strongly encourage you to keep the syllabus either at the front where you can find it, or easily marked for quick access.

Nuts, this has been an entire blog without (Barry) any silliness. Oh wait, nix that.

06/01/2007
I have another Top-5 for you.

While I was traveling Greece and Turkey, one of the people I was speaking with on a regular basis asked me to give them a list of my top five movies. This question came because I had spent the better part of the trip talking about movies, arguing about the quality of classic films, and generally bashing recently popular movies (such as 300). It is the ultimate problem of being highly critical of anything: eventually, someone will say “you hate everything, what do you like?”

I thought it was pretty unfair to be put on the spot for my top five movies of all times, and I had a really hard time limiting myself to just five, and, sadly for you, you aren’t going to see the list I came up with. But I did realize at the time that if I had to make a Top-5 list of movies, it should be done categorically – because honestly how easy is it to compare Enough and Date Movie.

And no, neither of those movies come anywhere near any Top-5 list of mine. In fact, they both suck so horribly that they could arguably be used as evidence that there is no intelligent life in the universe (including the planet Earth).

So here is one Top-5 movies lists I have generated. This category will come as no shock to anyone who knows me personally, and very little shock to any long-time reader of mine.

TOP-5 SUPERHERO MOVIES (IN ORDER FROM BEST – that is, you should see this one before any other one – TO BETTER – that is, these are still much better than most other crap movies out there, and still worth your time)*

1. V For Vendetta
2. Batman Begins
3. Sin City
4. Superman Returns
5. The Spider-Man Trilogy (despite my deep hatred for Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, and Topher Grace, this one made it because they screwed up The X-Men Trilogy so damn badly I couldn’t in good conscience include it and because – aside from Venom – the casting for Spidey’s archenemies was phenomenal in all three films)

There are, as usual, some notable runner-ups. Here they are in no particular order:

The X-Men Trilogy
The Blade Trilogy
Fantastic 4
Constantine
Daredevil

There is then the category of superhero films that should really only be viewed if you’re really, really bored (two reallys, note) and can’t get any of the above films. This category is most accurately described as “Tolerable Superhero Films” (some people put barely in front of tolerable). Here they are in order from best to worst:

The Riddick Trilogy
Hellboy
The Punisher
Ultraviolet
The Hulk

Finally, there is the list of Superhero films that, honestly, I have done a service to humanity for watching and passing along the information to you to not watch them. This list includes Catwoman (horribly horrible) and Ghostrider (rivaling Enough as the worst movie I’ve ever seen).

*Please note, this list contains only superhero movie based on comic books or graphic novels. Thus, clearly superhero-esque movies such as The Matrix Trilogy, Equilibrium, and Unbreakable are outside the narrow scope of this TOP-5 list, and fit more generally in a HERO TOP-5 list.

05/25/2007
Coming back to America was a busy business. Sadly, there was no heartfelt reunion between myself, the wayward traveler, and any sandy beaches, but I did make all of my flights and made it back in one piece (plus assorted luggage).

The next day, I left for New York with my family. My older brother, Zach, graduated (cum laude) from Ithaca College and there was much rejoicing. The ceremony was pleasant enough, but I could help but be uncomfortable – metal benches and someone-you-don’t-know’s knees in your back is never fun for over an hour.

As I haven’t quite made graduation myself, I can’t speak on it with any authority, but I will say this (having experienced several graduation ceremonies in my day): the guest speaker (who’s name, unfortunately, I have forgotten) was really excellent. Not only did he give a very interesting speech, but within it – and in front of thousands of people – he did quote someone else’s verbal slip-up. Now, we all enjoy laughing at other people saying something stupid – but this quote is truly remarkable, and worth being put down as best I can remember it (that is, not verbatim, but rather ver-dave-um).The speaker quoted some prominent politician who said on public radio: “The Republican octopus is spreading its testicles everywhere.”

Read it again.

For those who missed the slip-up, later in the ceremony the Ithaca College’s senior president (whose name I’ve also forgotten) got up to give his speech and started, as per usual, by thanking his class, his professors, his administrators, and the guest speaker. Again, what he said is worth quoting (ver-dave-um): “And I would also like to thank ______, our guest speaker, for having the balls to say ‘testicles’ in front of this many people.”

The point here is twofold: first, that almost no one will remember what any given speech they hear is about, but they will remember if you swear or say a risque word; second, that even in the face of discomfort, graduation ceremonies aren’t always boring.

In all honesty, I followed both of the aforementioned speaker’s speeches quite closely, and while it isn’t nearly as funny, I did find it interesting that the guest speaker’s speech had not the normal up-lifting, positive, and hopeful tone that most sending-off speeches (and that’s what a graduation ceremony is all about) have. Instead, it was moderately dark and gave an all-too-realistic view of the world as a place of terrible crimes, dreadful situations, and overwhelmingly bad outlook for the future. For those who paid attention beyond the speaker’s jokes and colorful verbiage, he did construct an excellent offer for how the graduating class could find and cultivate hope for making the world a better place. Really, it was probably one of the best speeches I have ever heard.

But Zach’s graduation was not the only uncomfortable ceremony I would get to enjoy during my brief stay back home (before heading down to Oxford to resume my studies). My younger brother, Jared, also graduated – this time from high school.

I say with a great deal of pride that he was valedictorian and, as a result, got to give a speech. I say with even more pride that he came to me several days before the ceremony to ask if I would read his speech and give him advice.

Now, I’m no great speaker, but I do know the basic essential characteristics of what makes a good speech/writing (you’ll note that I try to avoid following any of this advice when I write my blogs). You need a simple, follow-able idea (often a quote that embodies this works best), and you need to move from one point to another (often moving from what’s wrong with something to how to fix it is a good trajectory), while sticking to your idea.

Jared’s initial speech had neither of these.

Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It did thank several people, contained several jokes, and mentioned several moments in his schooling that his fellow classmates could all look back on fondly. It also contained a strong push towards environmental awareness.

As I normally do when editing something, I read it all over once, then start at the top to begin correcting but quickly stopped and called Jared into my room. I told him that his speech was ok, but need lots of work and that I didn’t think it would do him much good if I edited it in its current state because he wasn’t saying what he wanted to. He asked what I meant and I told him that it was his speech, the perk of his hard work the past 13 years, and that he should say exactly what he wanted to say, not what he thought he should say. I told him that I knew he wanted to mention a few people, say thanks to some, but that I felt that the thing he really wanted to talk about was environmental awareness. He agreed, and I said that if that’s what he wanted to talk about, he should.

I am terribly proud of both of my brothers. Zach probably won’t ever read this, and it doesn’t matter if he does or not, but I would like to say that I know all-too-well how trying the grind of college work can be, and I am the type who will do obviously useless work if told to in order to accomplish a goal. Zach is much more the type who will say something is obviously useless and then not do it (which doesn’t bode well for most structured institutions such as college). I think very highly of him for this, though I am not sure he knows it or not. Sure, it makes me aware of my own incapability to not follow the pre-set channels, but it also makes me respect those who can go it in a different way. So, in the face of how Zach is as a person, it is really amazing that he was willing to step up to the challenge college offered him and not only finish, but to do so with good grades. I realize grades don’t mean everything, and that Zach will look back on all the other things he learned about outside of the classroom as the true education he received, but I will argue here and with anyone that his grades also show a tenacity and fortitude in him that are worth admiration.

I am terribly proud of both of my brothers. When Jared stood up in front of his class, his teachers, his administrators, and his community at graduation, he quickly thanked everyone who’d helped him get to where he was, and then he proceeded to speak for just over six minutes about how each person in the crowd could help make the world better in their own small way by doing little things to make the bigger problems of the world a little bit less. He suggested walking or riding a bike for short distance trips, turning lights off in rooms that are unoccupied, and recycling. While he did not reference any particular body parts, or make any jokes in an effort to loosen the crowd up, Jared did stand up in front of his peers and his elders and asked each of them to carefully look at their place in the world and how they could make it a better one.

I can say with complete honesty that I would sit through uncountable knees in my back and on untold numbers of uncomfortable benches if it meant that I could always feel as happy for and proud of my brothers as I did at their respective graduations. For Zach, it was his ability to work through his own inclination to discard busy work in order to establish an accepted accomplishment. For Jared, it was his capacity for good – he could have said anything he wanted and he chose to use his little time to ask others to make the world a more positive place.

I have learned things from reading, from watching movies, from talking with people, and from my own mind’s thoughts, yet I carry the lessons of both of my brothers – of being bigger than your natural inclination and of being better than accepting the world as it is – close, and I can’t help but know it makes me a much better person.

Where is the college knowledge in this blog? The Miami perspective? I could say it is in the experience of speeches, but that would be lying. I really wrote this blog to congratulate both of my brothers and let them know that I love them both very much and that I am so much more proud than I could ever possibly express in words.

05/18/2007
I’m not entirely sure whether or not I made reference to the weather here in England in previous blogs, and frankly I can’t be bothered to look. I would like, however, to say that ye olde Motherland is doing her best to send me off disgruntled.

See, I leave in just four days. That’s right, just four more days of “chips” as fries, chips as “crisps,” and hearing little kids that you pass by on the street with more manners in the speech than the eldest, most respectable local councilman back in the States.

And how has the weather treated me for the past week or so? Rain. That’s right, while the folks back home are rejoicing in 80+ degree weather and bright, sunny days, I am stuck on a rainy rock of an island.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not holding the geographical position and the related weather conditions against England. I’m just not a fan of rain (see previous blogs), and this seems like England’s farewell to me is two solid weeks of rainy days.

The worst part is that each day — even though they’re rainy, over-cast, and unpleasant as a whole — the sun will make a cameo appearance for approximately five minutes and forty-seven seconds. Really, just long enough to get your hopes up that you could go outside and do whatever you’ve been meaning to do for the past rained-in week. Maybe even long enough to trick you into trying. But, inevitably, whether you are foolish enough to go out or not, the rain comes back. Like a mosquito, an irritating small child, or a commercial, the rain is just plain bothersome and unrelenting, but, unlike the other three, you can’t do much about the rain. You can’t squish the rain, you can’t smack it, nor can you just watch a movie to get away from the damn stuff.

In that way, it reminds me a little of my mother’s insistence on taking family pictures; both foil my best intentions of avoiding them.

All right, onto some college advice. Let’s talk about making bets with your friends. Hell, come to think of it, this is just good life advice… but I guess it is most pertinent for the college-age type as that seems to be period in people’s lives where they make some truly irrational and impractical decisions and life-choices.

Bets. They are usually not a good idea. Basically, no one can win every time. As a result, eventually you have to lose, and the longer it takes you to get there, the more likely it is that you’ll pay for it dearly.

Take, for example, the rather silly bet that Jason and I agreed to in our first year…

For the better part of the year, Jason and I had traveled to the Rec center to swim, relax in the hot tub, and generally avoid doing anything productive. On occasion, we would be accompanied by two of our friends from our residence hall; let’s call them Devon and Dustin. Now, Devon, Dustin, Jason, and I enjoyed playing water basketball whenever the “court” was open and we could find the basketball – which was pretty frequently. Over the course of the year, the Jason-Dave team had summarily trounced the Devon-Dustin team in water basketball. And I don’t use “trounced” lightly. We had a heck of a record, with something like ten straight victories.

This record of victories, in retrospect, should have been alarming to Jason and me. We were both shorter and scrawnier than Devon and Dustin. Plus, Devon was something of a powerhouse: once he got the ball, he would just wade through water, Jason and me, and occasionally Dustin to the net. More or less, the Jason-Dave win record was based on a series of very lucky late-in-the-game-and-long-distance shots, splashing water in Devon’s eyes when he’d shoot, and Dustin’s relative lack of any semblance of athletic abilities or attention to the game.

Bearing all this in mind, Jason and I should have wondered more at how we’d won ten straight games and never lost. We should have realized that it was based entirely on Dustin not having a care or a clue for the score and Devon being a very nice guy. Sadly, we didn’t.

So we come to the bet. It was agreed before game eleven that this would be the final water basketball game. The game to end all games. We’d play to ten, as per our customary scoring. But the losing team would have to undergo more than the usual ridicule and shame. This game, we decided that if Devon and Dustin lost, Dustin would have to grow his hair out (he kept it shaved because he can’t stand having hair on his head) and Devon would shave all the hair on his chest (considerable, but not quite reminiscent of a woolly bear caterpillar). Thinking that we’d have no real problem beating them, Jason and I agreed that if we lost, we’d shave our heads.

Like I said, bets are generally a bad idea.

I have to admit, with a great deal of shame, that I escaped keeping up my end because I needed my hair for an upcoming social event that I was to attend with my girlfriend at the time. Jason was… not so lucky.

The game was epic, truly. Jason was particularly spectacular with his outside shots, making some that I really thought he didn’t even have a chance of hitting the pool, much less the rim, on. What Jason and I hadn’t counted on was how badly our winning record had made Devon and Dustin hungry to beat us. Without pointing fingers, because the stakes were high for both sides and we both resorted to rather barbaric levels of violence in our battle royal, there was considerable hair-pulling, flesh-biting, eye-splashing, and man-handling. So much so that at one point in the game the director of the facility came in and told us to tone it down or we’d get thrown out for good.

Bets are, in general, a bad idea.

In the end, I missed a couple of gimme shots and Jason and I lost. There was much rejoicing on the Devon-Dustin end, and we all made our way back to the residence hall where a hairless head waited for Jason.

But don’t worry, the story has a happy ending. See, after Jason shaved his head, he put on a white t-shirt and I took a picture of him with his arms crossed. He then took it and doctored it up with a Mr. Clean logo and a light blue background, printed it out on poster-sized paper, and he got a sweet reminder that bets are generally a bad idea.

And that was pretty much the end of our competitive water-basketball games.

05/11/2007
Fact: My younger brother – who shall remain unnamed (we’ll call him Jared for this blog’s purposes) – has decided to attend Miami, starting this fall.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: that my writing is so convincing that not even my own kin could keep himself away from the joys and wonders I describe of life at Miami; that Miami would increase my pay for writing these blogs based on observable evidence of its efficacy in attracting students to Miami; and maybe even that Jared isn’t reading my blogs.

Allow me to dispel some rumors, then. First, no one really thinks my writing is that good, especially not Jared, and I include myself in that “no one”. Second, no, no, no, Miami did not increase my pay, nor grant me special scholarships or any additional privileges based on my blogs effective results. In fact, Miami is probably rolling on the floor laughing at the proposition, while simultaneously delighting in the fact that they will get even more money from a bank account with the surname “Sheehan” on it. Thirdly, no, I don’t have any notion that Jared actually reads my blogs. And finally, I don’t really spit on anyone who visits Miami, at least not intentionally.

But exciting news: other people do read my writings. I was having a casual conversation – or at least I thought it was casual, you really never can tell the demeanor or tone of a conversation when it is typed… hmm… suffice to say that the words appeared casual in a way only Times New Roman, 10 pt. font can provide – with my single best friend from high school (let’s call him Gregg), one of the few people from my old town I remain really close with (other notables are my cat, dog, family, and, of course, Barry).

Anyhow, Gregg and I were talking and discussing what mischief we could get ourselves into (wizarding school, vampire hunts, and having our anatomies fundamentally altered by an accident encounter with a radioactive substance that thereby granted us with superhuman powers while still allowing us to maintain regular lives) when I returned to the States (just over a week away now)… and Gregg made mention of something that I had discussed in one of my blogs. I think he mentioned the pub quiz (see previous blogs).

Having the incredibly-sharp, ultra-honed mind that I do, I completely missed the fact that Gregg and I had never actually spoken about my pub quiz experiences personally. About three minutes later, it dawned on me that there was no conceivable way he could have known about the pub quizzes, short of talking to my parents (who do read my blog but who only occasionally see and speak with Gregg). So I asked him, “Gregg, how the hell do you know about the pub quiz?”

“Hah, from your blogs, dude,” was his response – like it was completely normal that he would read my blogs. (By the way, this conversation is not verbatim, but as close as I can remember it.)

Now this I found pretty incredible – I mean hell, if she weren’t my editor, my own girlfriend wouldn’t read these (Editor’s Note: Not true. I read them. Sometimes.), and I’m pretty sure that outside of my parents (who like to support me for some unknown reason) and Barry (who checks occasionally to see if he’s mentioned), no one actually reads these bad boys.

So I said, “Gregg, you actually read my blogs? Seriously? Or do you just skim them or do a ctrl+f (a simple “Find” search which allows you to find words or character patterns on a page of texts) for your name?”

To which he responded, “Yeah, I read them all to keep up with where you are and what you’re doing. I’m not perfect about it, but when I miss a week, I go back and make it up. I really like the funny ones – the pub quiz especially – best.”

I was frankly stunned. I mean, Gregg is in college. He’s not looking for advice on what school is best for him. He doesn’t want perspective on life at Miami. And he has surely had more than enough of my “wit” over the course of his knowing me.

The worst part is that he really tossed the whole my-writing-blogs-thing into a new light for me. See, I thought that no one but maybe my parents and the unlucky, overly-zealous clicker ever accidentally read my stuff. But now I know I have to actually write for people who read this. So I guess I’ll choose my next words very, very carefully… good luck, Jared.

05/04/2007
One of the reasons I write these blogs is to give prospective students perspective on life at Miami (or in England if you happen to be studying abroad). Sure I dally in discussions of squirrels, my own wit, and a variety of other off-topic ideas; but really, one of my greater goals is to truly help high school students considering college (both at Miami and elsewhere) get a clue about this major leap they are about to take. Because that’s what going to college is for many people – a leap.

Some will discover that they’re metaphorically birds and that this leap will force them to use the wings they’ve been knowingly (or not) cultivating in their formative years. Others will discover at varying speeds and heights (or not) that they are in fact birds of another sort – penguins, kiwis, and ostriches. Regardless, the reason I write is, partially, to take what can be a very daunting task – finding the college that’s “right for you” – and use my own experiences in an effort to help others avoid my own mistakes or benefit from my own good luck.

For instance, Miami, where I eventually ended up, was not my first choice in colleges. After not getting accepted to my first choice, I was left with the rather difficult and pressing decision of where I should attend. I ended up choosing Miami based entirely on my visit experience at each of the universities I had seen – that is, when I was at Miami as a high school student, I was extremely impressed with how genuinely nice and friendly everyone was to me, even though they didn’t know me.

Since I have come to be a Miami student, I have made sure to spit on every obviously non-Miamian I have met in an effort to keep incoming student population low and others from having such a pleasant experience as I had. Just kidding: I only spit on the people who take pictures of the hordes of squirrels scampering about campus.

Back to point – I write so those who go through the college selection process after me can maybe learn from my choices. Because I chose to attend a university I had never really intended on going to, I was pretty ambiguous in my feelings at the start of my first year.

Of course, I showed up at Miami and the birds were chirping, the grass was greening, and the buildings were red-bricking – all was well and right and at peace with me… right?

Wrong. My first Miami semester was rather unpleasant due to various lifestyle choices I made (girlfriend back home, a roommate I didn’t altogether enjoy, working out a lot without providing my body with necessary nutrients resulting in a loss of about ten pounds in weight).

Fortunately, by my second semester I had turned things around (new girlfriend – same as now actually – at school, new roommate – Kyle – I did enjoy, and eating more healthily) and started to really enjoy myself and my time at Miami. Since then, I have been increasingly flexing and testing the limits of my wings.

So what’s my point? I realize that not everyone goes to choice number 2 or 3 or 4 or even 5. I also realize that plenty of people show up at their university and are happy from the get-go. But, at the same time, there are also plenty of people who have a really difficult time transitioning between the requirements – social, academic, and in terms of responsibilities – of high school and of college. Admittedly, most of my issues were of my own making – but I am not entirely convinced that that is pretty much how most issues within our adult lives are produced. That is, I think that, in large part, we create difficulties for ourselves without even knowing it; in fact, sometimes we are specifically trying to make things easier for ourselves while we dig ourselves deeper.

Here are, from my experience then, some general advice points:

• The relationship back home or at another school is usually a bad idea to maintain, especially during your first year. The reasons why are numerous:
• It’s good to meet new people and gain perspective
• People physiologically, mentally, socially, and physically change a great deal between the ages of 18-25 (prime college ages), and what was good for you at one point is not necessarily what is best for you later
• Long-distance relationships can be really tough and a real drain on you when your focus should be elsewhere
• That elsewhere is studying and adapting to life at a university (remember, the other person also needs to do the same thing at their own time and pace)
• The old saying about letting love go is totally applicable – give yourself and the person you care about a chance to decide whether or not you want to come back
• Unless you are dead-set on a specific program and have determined your university based on that school’s high caliber program in your selected field (and even, to a certain extent the following advice applies because there are few fields where only ONE school has a good program in it), the importance of feeling comfortable at the university you choose cannot be overstated. In other words, it’s really, really, really, really important that you can stand on your campus and say “I could see myself spending 4 years here.” Because few things suck worse than feeling like “I didn’t really want to come here, I don’t like it here, and now I’m stuck here for 4 years.” Trust me, I was there that first semester. The bright side is that you really can, if you visit enough places, get a feel for the type of university you might like. For example, of all the places I trekked to, when I was at Miami, I really felt at a (dare I say) “deep” level that I was not in a completely foreign, alien, and inhospitable land.
• Don’t worry so much about the choice. Yes, colleges are expensive and making a mistake can be costly in terms of dollars wasted. But remember that you can change if you don’t like where you end up. And the price of being content and enjoying yourself while you move from adolescent to adult (even for those of us who like to favor the former) is incalculable when compared with the price of where you end up.

Now that $-sensitive parents are gnashing their teeth at me, I would just like to qualify myself by saying that the grass is not always greener on the other side. In fact, sometimes the grass is buried under snow, irritating roommates, and a nutrient-lacking/energy-sapping diet – sometimes you (the student) need to give yourself a chance to get used to the change in locale and the place of choice a chance to prove itself (or not).

I can’t stress enough how important it is to enjoy where you eventually choose. College can be taxing enough on your life without needing to also worry about being miserable with where you are.

04/27/2007
In part because of time constraints, and in part because I already spent time thinking up this idea and first list, this will be a moderately brief blog.

I have decided to include a new addition to my blogs. Now, instead of just my general musings and crude attempts at humor or wit, peppered with an occasional Fact, you may find yourself reading my general musings and crude attempts at humor or wit, peppered with an occasional Fact, and a TOP-5 LIST.

Now a TOP-5LIST is a big deal. Unlike other bits of my blogs, which might give you specific useful insight into college life or my views on life, my TOP-5 LISTs are potentially life- and/or mind-changing critters. I don’t lightly suggest what others should read, watch, listen to, or seek out; my TOP-5 LISTs, accordingly, should merit more than your normal casual glance, O my audience (don’t think I don’t know you’ve been skimming, doing a ctrl+f search for “squirrel” and, finding none, leaving without giving me your full attention).

TOP-5 BOOKS I’VE READ (GENERAL AND NOT IN ANY ORDER):

1. Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought by Jonathan Rauch
2. The Bourne Identity (really, the Bourne Trilogy) by Robert Ludlum
3. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache by Keith H. Basso
4. The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell (with Bill Moyers)
5. This is a tie between I, Robot and The End of Eternity, both by Isaac Asimov. If truly pressed, I’d go with the former, but only by a hair and only because I’ve read it more times and know it so well.

There are some books that only barely missed the list and are worth mentioning:

-The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
-Portraits of 'the Whiteman': Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western Apache by Keith H. Basso
-Elantris by Brian Sanderson
-The Language of Images in Roman Art by Tonio Hölscher
-The Frontiersman: A Narrative by Allan Eckert
-The Dark Elf Trilogy by R. A. Salvatore

04/20/2007
I keep something of a journal and something of a sketchpad on my person when I travel. Sometimes I use it for aught else than to keep track of where I’ve been, what I’ve ate or drank and liked (or disliked), how much money I’ve spent, and what I’ve seen. Other times, I draw whatever comes to mind, and occasionally, I write something I am thinking about. Regardless of how I use it, I generally try to make sure I’ve got something to write with and something to write on when I’m out and about.

When I go on long trips, as I have in the past few weeks, I find myself often reaching for my pad and pen, and it was only recently, as I was writing in it, that I realized two obvious, but hitherto unthought-of, things. First, that you spend a hell of a lot of time sitting around waiting when you travel, and it really doesn’t matter what mode you choose. Whether it is waiting in an airport, on a plane, in a train station, on a train, in a bus station, or on a bus, it’s still waiting and it’s still pretty boring.

The second thing I realized is that I deeply loathe the feel of stations, especially airports. Everything about them bothers me. Universally, they promise long waits in their lines, uncomfortable seats in their waiting areas, expensive and crappy victuals in their food places, expensive and crappy crap in their stores, and more hassle than rearing a baby.

Which brings me to another point I’ve been meaning to make for some time – babies are pretty irritating little critters. I am sure I can count myself in this category at one time, but fortunately for all of us, I grew out of it. Score one for me. Anyhow, back to how babies are bothersome: they really do all look like little potatoes or creepy, tiny, old men. Plus, they don’t do anything. Seriously, watching a new mother is one of the most troublesome things I can think of doing – they’re all happy and proud like it’s an accomplishment no one else has ever done, and they show it off and talk about a standard canon of subjects that are, to put it simply, a sad waste of using good, breathable oxygen. The baby does not look like either the father or the mother. In fact, it usually bears a striking resemblance either to a common garden vegetable or the local milkman.

Ok, so the milkman joke is dated. Let’s change it to the local package delivery person or the wireless internet connection guy. Whatever. What’s important is that babies aren’t cute or interesting. I repeat: they don’t do anything. They just lie there, squawking or eating or sleeping or some combination of those three. Oh, and they puke a lot and don’t clean up after themselves. So rude. Babies only become semi-cool when they start moving of their own volition, and then only because they give those same silly mothers something to endlessly fret over rather than wasting perfectly fine air.

Back to why I loathe airports and stations. There are, of course, the obvious aspects that everyone hates, such as airport security (a tired subject for even the novice jokester) and customs control (in general, the second least pleasant people you’ll ever encounter – second only to new mothers who have read the rest of this blog and then only if you are me).

But the part that truly bugs me most about airports and stations is that they are like Sylvester Stallone movies: they are all pretty much the same and they pretty much all suck. Every airport has the exact same feel – that weird, half-day, air- and sound-muted aura of crappiness that pervades Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay productions and every film (except “Planes, Trains & Automobiles”) that includes Kevin Bacon. I’m not a huge Kevin Bacon fan either. I feel like his most authentic and believable (that is, living up to his true character and inner desires) performance was in the film “Sleepers.”

Just so I don’t leave this blog with everyone on a down note, contemplating how boringly monotonous airports, most Hollywood films, and babies are, I have decided to close with a list of random things that I enjoy and that make me happy (and should make you happy too):

• Kent Hovind is in prison.
• They are still making superhero films (even if they are horrible)
• Gelato (and Italian ice cream of sorts)
• Sylvester Stallone, Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay, and Kevin Bacon are all mortal
• Two dollar bills
• Most of Isaac Asimov’s writings
• Getting paid to write about things I like and don’t like without ever convincingly relating them to a perspective on college life and living
• Good music
• Soap
• Doodling

04/13/2007
Some wonderful experiences I have had in the past two weeks:

• Eating pizza in Naples where it was invented
• Eating pizza in Rome where it is sold on nearly every street
• Eating pizza in Berlin in a restaurant with a menu in no less than four languages and no discernable pattern as to why
• Eating pizza, made by Dominos, an American corporation, in England

Some less-than-wonderful experiences I have had in the past two weeks:

• Eating pizza at least once every three days, usually more often

Pizza is a tricky food. For starters, you never stop to think “Hmm, didn’t I just have pizza yesterday?” or, in my case, “Hmm, didn’t I just have pizza something like four hours ago?” You simply realize that you are hungry and begin casting about with ravenous eyes. Almost invariably (if you are traveling where I have been), you will quickly run across a place that sells pizza.

That’s the second sneaky aspect of pizza: restaurants where you would not suspect pizza have it available for those picky eaters (I suspect, more specifically, for America travelers who cannot read food names in other languages) who can’t figure out what pollo is (Spanish for chicken).

I suppose if I had to choose one food to eat regularly for two weeks solid, pizza would be one of the few. This, in large part, is due to pizza’s third interesting facet, which is that it comes in all sorts of shapes, colors, and accoutrement. So, unless one tires of bread and cheese (two tasty and energy-promising treats), pizza is inherently very difficult to get bored with.

I could go on with my discussion of pizza. As my loyal audience will tell the new readers, I am very capable of expanding upon a subject without any real purpose, goal, or direction. I will, for the sake of time, however, cut my tribute to pizza with one final feature to which I would like to draw your attention: its cost. Because pizza is cheap (as much as because it’s easy to forgot you ate it recently, its prevalence, and its variety), it is an excellent food for the young, cost-sensitive traveler.

Fact: I ate a lot of pizza in the past couple weeks of travel.
Fact: The pizza I had in Naples was easily the best.

Talking about pizza is really pretty pertinent to discussing college life. You see, the very things that make pizza an easy choice for the student traveler – availability, cost, et cetera - also lend themselves well to college life’s needs.

The traveler is crunched for time because he or she wish to see stuff, get somewhere to see stuff, or sleep in after seeing stuff late the previous day. The student is similarly short of time: he or she also wishes to sleep in.

The traveler is willing to put most of his or her funds into life-enhancing costs such as sites, museums, and alcohol in various countries. Likewise, the student is apt to spend his or her funds on life-enhancing costs such as music, books, and alcohol in various quantities.

In both cases, comparable interests produce the same result: a place for pizza to alleviate time and funding worries. Cheap and quick, pizza suits both alike.

Parents may read this particular musing of mine with a rolling of the eye or a smirk, yet I caution them to seriously consider whether I would have anything to gain from writing this in jest or fiction – there is no pizza company in the world that could pay me enough at this point to write of pizza’s virtues right now; I’ve simply had too much of it.

Students: my advice is two-fold. First, pizza is a staple of a collegiate diet. Accepting this makes you feel a little less guilty when you realize how much of it you will have consumed by the time you graduate. Second, I am relatively good at looking at what I am and have been doing at any given time. As a result, I am, and have been, well aware of how much pizza I ate over my travels. At the same time, this did not really get in the way of my sampling the local delights of the places I have visited.

In other words, embrace pizza for the cheesy goodness it is, but make sure you sample the exotic flavors around you as well. Just because it isn’t what you customarily eat, doesn’t make it necessarily bad. Try things that push your limit of comfort. If you feel, when you travel, not at home, then you are doing things correctly.

04/03/2007
I have covered F1, F2, and F4 (see previous blogs), now I turn to F10. F10 is Pam Engel. Pam is the secretary for the Director of the Honors and Scholars Program and was hired just last fall. Due to the relatively little time I have had to interact with Pam, she is perhaps one of the most difficult staff members for me to comment about. From my experience, Pam has no “off” switch: she is always very, very happy. And not just happy, but happy. She is always chipper, sharp, and quick to solve any problem I have seen her encounter. It is worth noting that I, who am not like this at all on a good day much less in the morning, have only really been around Pam before my peak time (1:12 pm), so, generally, her happiness just makes my sleep-deprived morning-self a bit irked. This, however, does not reflect on Pam so much as my own sleep patterns and their failings.

For all these reasons, Pam is F10. It’s close to F12 (the last key, the final stop, the… Director) – like Pam’s office – and it increases the brightness of the keys on my laptop when the room around me is dark. So I guess I make the F10 connection because Pam, even when it’s dark (morning), is very vivid to those around her.

It occurred to me that as I am discussing each of these staff members, I continuously have to mention that they are recent additions to the office. Brandon and Pam, as well as John and Kari (who are coming up) – all new members of the staff – comprise approximately four-sevenths of the department. To the onlooker, I imagine this percentage probably results in the question “What happened to their four predecessors?” followed closely by the next question: “Why did the Honors and Scholars Program have a major turnover in the past 9 months?”

Allow me to dispel rumors: no, the program was not purged of its higher-ups in a Stalin-esque fashion. It just happened that a series of wonderful opportunities provided themselves to the former staff members, and each had been working with the program for some time and opted for another path. For one, it was to finish his doctorate; for another two, a similar position at another university in a different state; and for the last, another position within Miami.

Anyway, back to my staff descriptions. (Side note: I’m regretting greatly that I committed myself to sticking with one topic – the staff – for so long. I like the people, but this is a more concerted effort at a blog than I have given since talking about squirrels.)

Dr. John Forren is up next. As the Associate Director for Curriculum and Co-Curriculum, John is probably a pretty important cat. I don’t know because I have no idea what his job entails, but he always seems suitably busy and stressed, so he’s either important or really good at looking like it. That said, John is easily one of the most fun people to talk with that I have encountered at Miami. Now, I may be biased: John is one of the first faculty members against whom I bounced ideas about studying superhero films for my senior thesis, and he is also one of the few who hasn’t given me the “you’re kidding me, right?” look.

Anyhow, John has two modes: door open and door closed. That is to say that John is either available (and happy) to see visitors (with his door open), be they scheduled or not; or he (with his door closed) is not (and the frequency of this is what gives me the impression that he is fairly busy with weighty matters). Because of this, John is F6 – the number lock key. There is no middle ground – it’s either business or not. Of course, even when it’s business time, John is still a really good guy.

So that Brandon is not the only person who gets a complaint from me, I will say that John has slightly let me down a time or two as well. When he first arrived for his new position (he was a professor in the political science department), I took it upon myself to inform him that in his new office, the other student staff members and I had a standing appointment every Friday afternoon at 3 pm to play darts (which brought up the side discussion that he would need to get a dart board and get it set up for the next Friday). I also made him aware that I had a shelf in his office that should be reserved completely for my own uses, even if I chose not to put anything on it.

Needless to say, John saw through my ideas and we neither play darts, nor is there an empty shelf in his office. In fact (and out of spite maybe?), shortly thereafter, he requested having another bookshelf moved into his office and guess who go stuck moving that sucker in? You guessed it – the other student workers and myself.

Up next is Kari Taylor, F7 and Assistant Director for Academic & Co-Curricular Support. Kari is truly frightening because she is always, always, always, always really pleasant. Rain or shine, morning or evening, Kari always brings a smile and positive attitude to every situation. As I’m sure you can imagine, this bugs me, especially when I’ve been rained on in the morning.

Anyways, Kari is super nice, exceptionally helpful, and skilled in taking good ideas and not seeing them through (I proposed, upon her arrival last summer, that she paint a mural dedicated to Star Wars on one of her walls, Indiana Jones on another, and Lord of the Rings on the third; she said I would have to write up a proposal detailing the educational value of such art. And when I next suggested that the set up a motion-sensor operated entryway chime that played the Indian Jones theme song to get people entering excited, she pointed out that then she’d have to listen to it every time someone entered).

So Kari is the F7 key. Hitting it allows me to toggle through the windows that are open on my computer and, like Kari does with so many things as part of her job, quickly sort through and complete tasks in an orderly fashion. Complaints with Kari: she’s pretty much a machine in that she never screws up. One day I will see her trip (she’ll catch herself rather than kissing the dirt like I would/do) on the steps at the door and it will be glorious. I will say “Oh how the mighty fall” and she’ll probably smile at me and say something pleasant that ends up making me feel bad because I’m a terrible person who laughs at other people tripping on steps.

And now, we come to the last. The head-boss. The final stop. The Director of the Honors and Scholars Program. Dr. Carolyn Haynes. If the program office were an elementary school, I would be a first grader and Carolyn would be the principal. Actually, this isn’t a fair description. Carolyn would, I think, make a terrible principal because she’s simply too nice. I don’t really think she has it in her to be genuinely terrifying to little kids (something necessary for any elementary principal). Of course, that’s what makes Carolyn so very impressive. She can turn the fiercest Doberman into a tail-between-its-legs (insert sissy dog name here – I don’t know any because I only deal with awesome, non-sissy dogs because I, myself, am awesome and non-sissy), with just hinting that she is disappointed in it. Seriously, I would seriously consider jumping off a cliff into a pit of daggers with 0 chance of survival (see previous blogs for more on this) rather than evoke Carolyn’s disappointment. She has that natural-leader demeanor which brings out the best effort from those around her without having to apply the pressure of being their boss. Impressive? You bet.

Carolyn is the F12 of the program office. She’s the last line of defense before you get to the hyphen key, and the person you go to when you mean business or just advice: Carolyn, despite being super-busy all the time, is incredible about advising, even when you’re a slightly ludicrous student with a big mouth and not enough foresight to think before speaking (not that I know anyone who fits that description… everyone get it that’s going to? Great, moving on…). Plus, F12 sounds like a jet name, and jets are terrifying inventions. Think about it: they fly over, pretty much out of range for everything except other jets, and drop death, destruction, and mayhem from above. No defense, no screwing around with pop shots. Just straight power and authority.

Ok, so maybe that doesn’t describe Carolyn all that well. She’d likely abhor the use of jets to drop destruction, death, or mayhem on anyone, but she’s still cool and so are jets (we’ll go with the ones that do cool stunts and trace patterns in the sky with colored smoke).

So there’s the staff as of right now. Whew, that took a lot more than I expected/wanted it to.

03/30/2007
College is a time for gaining perspective, for acquiring knowledge, and for collecting wisdom for the rest of your life. To illustrate my point, allow me to share a gem that came to me from a friend whose identity will remain unrevealed (I doubt his girlfriend reads this blog, but if she does and sees what he wrote, he’ll likely find himself in deep):

“If I ever have a son, and he asks me about relationships, I will tell him that: if you have a choice between a long term relationship and jumping off a cliff into a pit of daggers with 0 chance of survival, go for the pit...because really they are not that different...The free fall is amazing, but soon you will slam back into reality...and at least with the daggers, the end comes quick...”

Whether or not this advice applies to me, I cannot really say for two reasons. First, because I know my girlfriend does read this blog and I’m likely already in trouble solely by not denying the above counsel. Second, because my former editor – due to availability issues – has resigned from her unpaid position, I have given the post to the next most (and this is a damn close second) grammar-psycho person I know: my girlfriend. (I can feel the eye daggers she’ll send at “grammar-psycho” even now as I write these words – call me a seer, prophet, or whatever you like … it’s true.) I realize that this fact necessitates my first reason were it not true on its own merit but, regardless, I simply can’t speak to the validity of my friend’s warning.

Fact: In my blogs – much to her displeasure and my delight – I have only ever referenced my girlfriend sparingly (as the person who missed a goal in a broomball tournament game; as a person whose parents can sometimes cause trouble; and now as my newest “grammar-psycho” editor). I have done this because while my relationship with her is certainly a part of my life and could be considered a substantial topic in regards to college life in general, I have yet to figure out exactly how to broach the subject or what to say.

Fact: I am now officially done with classes over here in England. I have one essay and a final exam to finish before I am officially a senior.
Fact: I rule.

For this week’s and next week’s blogs, I have decided to do something I rarely do: I’m going to talk a little about the Honors and Scholars Program. More specifically, I’d like to discuss the staff in the Honors and Scholars office. To acquaint you with each of them, I give a brief sketch as well as the “function” key on the computer keyboard with which I most associate them.

First up is one Tiffany Grubb. Tiffany is usually the first person in line when I go a-searching (I don’t just ask, I go “a-searching”) for information, help, or someone to bother. She is exceptionally adept at figuring out Miami’s bureaucracy, capable of jostling more things than most people can handle, recently a mother of a daughter (whose middle name is Rae – and mine is Raymond, so I’m pretty sure she named her after me, based on a suggestion I may have made before the little munchkin was born), and she generally smiles at, but ignores, my antics. She is also the one who posts my blogs on the Honors and Scholars webpage, so the world is indebted greatly to her for that.

I associate the F1 key with Tiffany. On the spectrum of function keys, it is where you start and on my laptop’s keyboard it has a primary duty of controlling screen brightness. Tiffany is, herself, very bright in both demeanor and intelligence, so I find this key fits her closest.

Next up is Kristy Burton, the Associate Director For Enrollment Management. While I’m not sure what that means exactly, I do know that Kristy is a mover and a shaker. She’s constantly busy (although much worse at ignoring my antics than Tiffany) and the person responsible for first offering me the position of writing for the Honors and Scholars Program’s website (so she’s also owed quite a debt by the world). She is also Tiffany’s sister (which I suspected for a long time, but wasn’t sure because by the time I knew them each well enough to feel comfortable asking, Tiffany had already gotten married and changed her name – completely throwing me off her trail), and, like Tiffany, seems to have an incredible knack (one which I lack) for navigating the complex system that is Miami’s bureaucracy.

Kristy is the F2 key of the Honors and Scholars Program office. I’m pretty sure she, of the whole staff, is the least irritated by my sometimes wild suggestions (read further for more on this), and she is very close with her sister. For these reasons, she gets F2. It’s close to F1, and I don’t have to look around much for the damn key before I find it. On my laptop, the F2 key also controls brightness and so the connection I made with Tiffany fits for Kristy as well.

Skip two keys to F4, and we come to one of the newest additions to the office, Brandon Biller. Brandon is a recent graduate of Ashland, a fan of the Spanish language, and a genuinely pleasant guy. He’s one of the frustratingly sociable people who, if he were suddenly teleported into just about any situation, would, with a few words, set everyone at ease – despite the fact that he somehow teleported when humans haven’t yet developed the technology. I take no small pride in having been on the committee that hired Brandon and, while I am technically way below him on the work hierarchy, he is nice enough to not hold this against me.

I have two beefs with Brandon, however. First, his office has some strange décor, including a hear-no/speak-no/see-no set of monkeys, a couple plants, and a few of those really irritating, inspirational words. You know, the stand-up letters that say things like “ACHIEVE” or “BELIEVE” or “LEAD” or “SUCCEED” or “WELCOME” in big, capitalized letters. Why are these irritating? Because they don’t inspire me to do any of the suggested actions. I neither feel compelled to achieve, believe, lead, succeed, or feel welcome when I see those signs. Instead, I get the sudden urge to either cut and paste them so that they read “DAVE IS AWESOME” or to smash them into pieces and, as I dispose of them, to say “I believe I succeeded in leading stuff I don’t believe into it’s new home: the trash can. Welcome home, inspiration.” I really can’t stand inanimate objects telling me what to do and I like my subliminal messages to be subtle, insidious, and preferably coming from a superhero movie.

The second problem I have with Brandon – and I know you see this coming if you read this, Brandon – is his love for that most abominable of screeching sounds: the Dave Matthews Band. Because of his delight in playing them for me whenever I come to bother him, Brandon gets the F4 key, which is the “Volume: Down” key on my laptop. In fact, if you hit F4 enough, it turns the sound off, which is a not-so-subtle hint for what Brandon should do with DMB’s “music” (and I only use that term in the loosest sense of the term).

Besides these two problems – one random and the other malign, evil, intended, and harmful – Brandon is a top-notch guy.

All right, that’s a start. Next week, I’ll finish up the staff run-through.

Also, I am going to be doing some traveling for the next month, so don’t expect too much from me. Italy 3-10 April; Berlin/Prague 11-18 April; and Greece/Turkey 19-27 April. Sweet.

03/23/2007
The front page of the Honors and Scholars Program website welcomes visitors with this message:

“Welcome to the Honors & Scholars Program at Miami University. We are a community comprised of bright, highly-motivated students looking to push themselves as intellectuals and individuals; outstanding alumni who are making a difference around the world; exemplary faculty who have a passion for teaching, mentoring and advising; and a dedicated staff whose mission is YOUR success. We encourage our students to pursue their passions and support them in achieving their goals. At a university where excellence is the standard, Honors & Scholars students stand out for their accomplishments.”

On the other hand, my page greets you, O my audience, with talk of whale urine, discuss squirrel conspiracy theories, and keep a tally of how clever I am (see previous blogs). How’s that for “bright” and “highly-motivated”?

What I have above relates to this blog in no way. I just want to give my dedicated readers motivation to continue reading, and my new readers reason for scrolling all the way to the bottom to start at the beginning.

New readers: go to the bottom and start at the beginning.

Ok, so you may wonder what’s with the new picture of and information about me. Basically, no one ever e-mails me (dave.sheehan@hotmail.com) to give me praise or to ask to hear about something specific. I haven’t, to date, even received any death threats. I must be failing miserably at writing if I can’t even move anyone enough to threaten to take my life if I don’t change my ways.

That’s why I added a third major and a picture of me punching your screen in four different colors: to show you that I am not screwing around anymore. I mean business.

Fact: There are still some newbie readers who haven’t scrolled to the bottom yet to read from the beginning.

Way to follow orders (punch to your screen, newbies!); you just cost yourself and my normal readers the rest of this blog.

03/16/2007
The measure of greatness in the capability of global communication, offered by the Internet and the home computer, is equaled only by the measure of human ability to turn useful into useless. Facebook is a case in point. The idea is a networking website which allows one to keep tabs on friends, make new acquaintances, and get to know your fellow humankind. In reality, it is a site where countless people waste even more countless hours looking at stupid shit like pictures or uploaded YouTube videos. Sadly, I cannot say I am not one of these countless people.

One facet of Facebook, useless in practice though the site may be, is the concept of groups. You can make, join, and invite others to join groups based on any number of characteristics – likes, dislikes, favorite movie/music/etc. – , whatever you want. I have a group for my broomball team, the Electric Twinkies, as well a one for Classics Club, an organization at Miami in which I am heavily active.

One other group I am a member of is called “Overheard At Miami,” and it is a group where anyone can join and anyone can post a message for everyone else to see. The point of this group is to write down what members overhear other people at Miami saying to one another, with the most obvious purpose of relating funny things people hear on a daily basis.

Ever walk around a corner and pass some people in the middle of a conversation and you only catch a few phrases and, out of context, they sound really strange and sometimes funny? Those phrases are what Overheard At Miami (OAM from here on) is all about.

Allow me to give a few examples (bear in mind, I wrote/said none of these and I have copied them verbatim, which should make you appreciate all the more that I write as your Miami liaison and not these people):

“Girl 1: hey

Girl 2: don't even talk to me now....today has been like THE worst day of my entire life.........

Girl 1: really why?

Girl 2: I like dropped my phone in a puddle and now its like not working... ”

“Girl: Help me find a quote that says why George Bush isn't running for reelection...

Me: *blank stare*”

“After hearing a presentation in MBI 111 about salmonella outbreak in peanut butter...

Girl raises hand: Do you think salmonella goes all the way to the bottom of the peanut butter jar...because my dad already ate half of the peanut butter and he doesn't want to buy a new jar.”

“last night at puttin on the hits the students of the deaf school go onstage to practice and a girl says really loudly:

‘Which sorority is that?!’

me: thats the deaf school

girl: oh no! that was really mean of me! i hope they didnt hear me!”

“Guy 1: ‘I need to feel more secure with my sexuality.’

Guy 2: ‘Dude, I totally understand. Let's go watch the world's strongest man competition!’”

“Proff: In Rome, theater was performed in Latin.

Dude in my class: (raises hand) Is that where pig latin came from too?

Proff: (looks at the guy like he's an idiot...which he is) Umm...I'm failry sure Pig Latin is a language created by children for entertainment...moving on...”

This gives you a brief overview of the types of things that get posted on OAM. Usually they make the person speaking sound dumb and sometimes they are funny to the casual reader. Professors and students, women and men: no one is safe from the OAM post.

The reason I bring OAM up is not to get people to join Facebook or to visit YouTube (you should never give any second of your time to either of these sites, instead go to this site: http://games.apropo.ro/penguin-modified.html), but rather to put in context a rather funny moment I had somewhat recently.

One of my friends over here is an admitted Facebook-addict. She is Spanish, but is going to college here in England, and she literally spends hours every day on Facebook (read “wasting her life”), and considers it a good day when she can only be proven to have done 10 or less actions (to put it in context, I haven’t done 10 actions in any given week of my life I think) like posting on someone’s profile or commenting on a photograph.

Anyhow, she, completely out of the blue, sent me a message one day saying:

“btw...whats Shriver?”

… followed closely by:

“or THE shriver?”

Now the Shriver Center is Miami University’s student union and one of the most well-known buildings on Miami’s campus. It’s named after a former Miami President, Phillip P. (I think but can’t be bothered to look up if it’s true) Shriver, and it is a building which EVERY Miami student knows and can use as a frame of reference. The important part is that it’s a deep-seated building in the back of Miami students’ minds and not something most people who’ve visited Miami would have a hard time recalling.

So when my Spanish friend in Britain asks me, a Miami student thousands of miles from Oxford, Ohio, what Shriver is… well, it just took me completely by surprise. It was like someone asking any American what Ohio is or what the White House is. It’s just knowledge we take for granted and don’t even think of as taken for granted until someone completely and totally seriously asks what it is.

Fact: About the squirrels (since I’ve put you off several weeks now): outside my building’s back side there is a forest area with tons of the little vermin running around, cavorting and planning their revenge on my calling out their plot back in Oxford.

I’m not sure how they found me, or really even how they got here (can a swallow carry a squirrel if it’s migratory and gripped it by the tail?), but they have brought their shock troops with them and they mean business now. That’s right, they’ve brought…

… rabbits.

03/09/2007
Due, in part, to my rather hectic schedule this week, I am happy to inform you that this week I will be featuring another guest writer (for the last one, see previous blogs). This week, I bring to you the words of my roommate, Jason. Below he will recount a death-defying experience that is all too common for college students (the encounter, if not the exact conversation). If nothing else, his account will assure those prospective students still in high school that they can still expect to be treated without respect by the officers of law.

To put Jason’s story in context: I was still in Oxford, hanging out at my girlfriend’s apartment, when I received a call from Jason. I was a little irked at him already – he had a pair of athletic socks that were ‘lucky’ all semester in broomball and refused to wash them (yuck) and then, when he left, decided to leave one hanging from my lamp with a note that said “I left this one where you could find it… guess where the other is hidden? Have a good break!” I then spent the next 25 minutes searching for a disgusting smelling sock by rooting through every one of my already-packed boxes (remember, I had to move out at the end of last semester in order to come over here to England; -25 clever points), only to find out later that he’d actually thrown the other sock away out in the hallway wastebasket already… the clever little shit. Anyhow, I was miffed at him when he called.

So, I received a call from Jason, who was barely containing his excitement over telling me about yet another drive-home story (he’s notorious for having drive-home problems: once he got lost on his way back to Chicago and end up driving up a one-way ramp trying to get on the highway… all well and fine until he realized he was going the wrong way!). What you read below is a typed up, but pretty close to original version of Jason’s story (he wrote about it in his livejournal), along with my commentary on it.

Oh man. I only with you, O my audience, knew Jason. It isn’t necessary to find joy in his misfortune, but it does make the story so much better to envision him telling it.

Fact: The woodland creatures bit will be explained next week.

… if I feel like it.

03/02/2007
Fact: I have postponed my discussion of the woodland creatures of England for a week in to order to follow a tangent about which I feel strongly. Enjoy and remember to take what I say with a saltlick-sized grain of salt.

Scarier than accepting responsibility for human impact on our planet’s environment, patriotic zealotry substantially influencing political legislation, and the allowance of the “theory” of intelligent design (ID, in case “intelligent design” is too weighty a phrase for people discussing whether or not to instruct our youth - in their formative years, mind you - that the world may have come about from the same physical rules and logic on which the world around them continues to operate or that it may have been conveniently created by some deity who strikingly resembles the one that stands at the foundation of the predominant religion in the country) to be taught alongside demonstrable evidence and the resultant logical conjecture (the theory of evolution) in science classrooms – stands the idea of grade inflation.

That’s right, we wouldn’t want to make our youth feel confidence in their ability to learn by actually achieving a mark of excellence – it’s much better to demean, berate, and insult their capacity to think by handing them continual proof that they’re average or worse.

I may be average, but I sure as hell don’t want to hear it. Maybe my argument precludes a degree of dissociation of contact with reality, but frankly, how great is a reality where we’re all mediocre anyhow?

This raises the interesting question of who exactly qualifies as excellent or merely average? Take, for example, famous scholar Stephen Hawking and popular singer/actress Jessica Simpson. In pretty much any academic field (even the ones he’s never given a thought to), Hawking would win out over Simpson in a battle royale. Clearly, he is excellent in comparison with the most recent Daisy Duke.

Change the conditions a bit – say, to the realm of continual, non-degenerative bodily functioning – and the results come in much differently. Hawking, even with a brilliant mind, can’t shake a stick at the stuff-strutting, camera-savvy Simpson. In this light, S.H. is the average, or maybe worse, one and J.S. rakes in the accolades.

Now, the comparison, some might argue, is unfair: the body’s ability to function doesn’t come into play in the current grading system of colleges across the country.

To this argument, I have one word in response: attendance. That’s right, pretty much every class has some sort of attendance policy inherent within the final mark, and if not explicitly stated, it is wrapped up with the inevitable “participation” grade – you can’t participate if you don’t show up.

So, from our Hawking-Simpson discussion, the system’s relativity in terms of the idea of “average” is questionable and the results it supposedly displays are dubious at best.

And how arbitrary was this oft-touted “olden-days grade-scale” where only the precious few were able to get grades high enough to temper their life view with a heavy degree of hatred for everyone younger than them as stupid and having an easy time? Einstein didn’t sit at the top of this grading scale - wasn’t he somewhat worthy of good marks? He did, after all, significantly contribute to the education of nearly every person since his time.

For that matter, what’s the point of expecting the average grade of students to be average? Doesn’t this create some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy? We expect mediocrity, so we set up our education system to reflect mediocrity and thereby make it easier to do just enough to attain this mediocre level than to try to excel.

If I were designing a system of education, I’d want to make it inherently synergistic between ambition and difficulty; the harder you work in relation to the difficulty, the farther the system would push you to continue your intellectual growth. As it stands, the system says “do just enough to not suck and we won’t expect you to do much more than memorize lists of stuff that you can later repeat to sound intelligent about a topic you really don’t have a clue about because you can’t think about what you know, you can only spout off other people’s ideas you’ve memorized because that’s what the system required of you.”

Honestly, why are there so many complaints about grade inflation? It seems like the problem with the system – that is, more and more people working hard enough or lying/cheating well enough to get a decent (translate: above C) grade and thereby raising the average of some colleges above *gasp* average – isn’t people’s grades going up relative to past generations, but rather educators not sticking it to them hard enough nowadays. Want grades to go down? Spend the time after you’ve hustled students out of your few available office hours actually coming up with difficult intellectual challenges rather than lists of phrases you later ask them to recount from rote memory.

People can memorize lists of things without actually learning all that much. Think they can’t? Ask just about any American to name 5 or even 10 items from a major fast-food franchise’s menu. Does this mean that these same Americans have a deep understanding of the concepts or logic behind such a menu (such as the way to construct them in order to maximize accessibility and understandability)? Not a chance. It just means people have memorized enough of something they’ve seen several times in order to get by in the world around them.

It should be no surprise, then, that courses whose assessment is based on regurgitating repeated (verbally and by Microsoft’s stupidity-enhancer PowerPoint) information are getting increasingly better results. Kids have your system down. So quit complaining (administrators, educators, and anyone else who decide to pick a fight with youth because of their own inability to introspect and spend time fixing their own problems) and work to fix the system instead of complaining about its flaws. If you had a broken leg, would you just sit there with it hanging out at an awkward angle? Or would you call up the doctor or think through how to set your leg and allow it to start healing.

One possible route, then, is to expect others to fix the system for you (the doctors). Another is to redesign the system (something I wouldn’t recommend trying with a broken let: let evolution do redesign of skeletal structures). A question that comes quickly to mind is whether grades, which are the source of the problem of grade inflation, are necessary at all? Is there another way to assess people’s ability to learn, think, or become educated? Can we, in an alternative route, differentiate between those who are clever or ambitious enough to expand their ability to reason, imagine, and interact with ideas and those who spend their time figuring out how to do the bare minimum?

The funny thing is that most everyone knows how to differentiate. Grades, time and again, aren’t what form the opinion of educators about their students; class participation, demonstrable evidence of conceptualizing relevant topics and issues, and quality of written work are all ways that professors get a real perspective on who are doing their work, who may be only a step above moron, and who aren’t.

Enough of my quasi-rant. I just grow tired of over-repeated phrases such as:

“it was much harder in my day”

“grade inflation is a serious problem”

“kids just expect to get good grades these days and complain when they don’t”

and decided that I would toss my own introspective-less opinion into the fray.

Take that, grade-inflation debate (also known by some, such as myself, as a monument of futile argument).

02/23/2007
I’ve been truant in writing because I traveled to Valencia, Spain last week. I am not making excuses – the trip was awesome – but I am letting you, O my audience, know why I haven’t written in a while.

Fact: Halfway through the term, the school I’m attending here in England gives what’s called a “Reading Week.”

Fact: In this “Reading Week” students are expected to catch up on reading, work on upcoming essays, continue previous studies, and, under no exceptions, remain on campus for the duration of the week.

Fact: I laughed out loud at the above rule when I first read it and promptly ordered my tickets to Spain.

Fact: José Benlliure y Gil’s painting entitled “La visión del Coliseo” is truly astounding. A trip to Valencia just to see it is almost justifiable on its own.

[Because I am supposed to be giving good advice about college life to prospective students, I won’t mention that the reason I’m writing this blog is to avoid doing the work I have put off due to a recent trip to Spain.]

Some people will suggest that you see as much as you can, visit as many sites as possible, and eat as many different types of food as you can afford when traveling. For the most part, this is sound advice. It is a good thing to sample the varieties of life and do your best to absorb as much foreign culture as possible.

Yet at the same time, there is an alternative approach to travel which goes something like this: enjoy yourself (sleep in, eat too much, don’t worry if you don’t see everything); make friends with someone local (this can sometimes be managed by frequenting a particular shop, restaurant, or bar – once the workers realize that you’re just a relaxed tourist and not an irritating one, they generally warm up to you); and try to get a deep, if not broad, understanding of another lifestyle in a different society.

When I went to Spain with Kyle and Ari (two fellow Miamians who are studying abroad in England with me), we opted for the latter approach. I am not passing judgment in regards to either, because both have their merits and drawbacks, but I must say that I enjoyed my time in Spain as much as any travel I have ever experienced.

We woke up at the crack of noon, we ate like royalty (in portion size, if not cost and quality), and we averaged seeing about two major monuments, museums, or sites each day before returning to our hostel to do a bit of work (in my case) or nap (in Kyle’s case) or read (in Ari’s case) before heading out each night around 10 to pursue dinner at our chosen local bar/café, appropriately named “The Lounge.”

My mother, who tends to favor the former approach to travel, would have had a heart attack just thinking about how much time we spent relaxing (in her terminology “not doing anything”), but we all found a great deal of pleasure in sleeping in, enjoying large meals, and moseying around Valencia.

The Lounge deserves more notice, as we spent a large portion of our time sitting in it, eating, drinking, talking, and getting to know the workers and familiar faces.

It is called the Lounge because, as we found out, it is actually owned by an Irish woman (named Fiona) who got tired of Ireland’s weather and wanted to learn another language. Two complementary aspects were that the menus were in Spanish and English (most everything else was only in Spanish and/or Valencian, which is the dialect of… you guessed it… Valencia), and the bar tended to attract a fairly diverse (that is, not entirely Spanish) crowd.

The two primary workers of the Lounge were José and Zambra. José is Argentinian and Zambra is French, and they are actually a couple (Kyle, who speaks pretty decent Spanish broached this subject carefully by asking is they were “just friends”). We found this out by the third night we went there, but it really didn’t surprise me much as I, despite my inability to understand a word they were speaking to each other, quickly picked up on the way they interacted (the eye daggers of irritation, the sweet smiles of “sorry, I may have made a mistake,” and the general huff puff which suggested “you should be able to read that I’m serious from my body language”) with one another.

By night three, both greeted us with big smiles (I suspect at first because we tipped better than most patrons, but found out later that they enjoyed conversing with us) and by night four José was making special, Valencia-specific drinks for us (sometimes at no charge). I can’t begin to tell you what they were called or what was in them, but by night four José and Zambra had invited us to drink with them at the bar after the Lounge had closed.

Another common fixture of the Lounge was John, a British man in his forties. A one-time programmer, John always wanted to travel and when his job was terminated, he decided to take his money and go traveling “until it runs out.” He took a boat with his motorcycle and a few possessions to Spain and has been traveling around ever since, stopping at places he likes for months on end ( Valencia is one such place).

The laid-back atmosphere of Valencia is radically different from the time-conscious world I live in back in the States and, to a certain extent, here in England. The streets are clean, the people almost universally quite friendly (a women in a bakery being the best example of this by showing us some amazing pastries once she figured out that we didn’t want meat or cheese of any kind with our carbohydrates; a customs official who told me in Spanish to wait, but didn’t look at me so I continued asking him my question until he yelled at me – again in Spanish – being the sole exception to this rule of joviality). Unlike some other countries I’ve visited, the Valencians I interacted with were just happy I knew enough Spanish to tell them I didn’t know Spanish, and then patiently waited for Kyle to acts as an intermediary between our language divide (something he did a great deal and which I gave him too hard a time for, so if you read this Kyle, I’m sorry… you were awesome).

I’ll close by making one final recap and one promise for the next blog. First, Spain was an amazing trip and well worth all the time it took me to find tickets and a place to stay for the three of us. While I may never see José or Zambra or Fiona or John again, the Lounge will certainly reside in my mind as one of the fondest memories of my travels to date.

Second, as the weather shifts from cold to rain here in England, I have noticed a curious phenomenon outside the window which overlooks the wooded area behind my residence building: among the trees and bush I have seen an uncanny number of rabbits and… (dramatic pause)… squirrels!

2/09/2007
It is not entirely uncommon that the degree you earn in college does not actually relate to the field of work in which you end up. For example, my mother’s degree is in accounting and she doesn’t work in accounting. Not even a little. Similarly, Barry works in retail as a highly-sought-after manager and sometimes as a party consultant, but his degree is in the field of medicine.

Does this mean that you should just get a degree for the heck of it and then hope that carries you into the success and fame it has for Barry? Probably not. If, for instance, you want to become a doctor, a pre-med degree is probably a good idea.

However, there is some weight to the argument that the most important things you learn in your undergraduate years are the abilities to read voraciously, write abundantly, and manage your time … umm … awesomely? Beyond that, a lot of things you learn can help to round you out as a person but do not really apply to real life.

Fact: One of my degrees is in Latin.
Fact: I know almost nothing about Canada.
Fact: An opened package of uncooked meat can go bad even if it’s in the fridge.
Fact: I am booked for a trip to Valencia, Spain later this month. How cool. It’s weighing in as one of the warmest places in Europe in February at a whopping 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

On Sundays, at one of the local pubs, the British students with whom I live gather to face off against other loosely affiliated groups of people in what is called, straight-forwardly enough, a “pub quiz.” What does a pub quiz consist of? Well, first everyone who wants to take part in it coughs up a pound to play. And by “a pound” I mean the monetary coin, not an actual pound of something you can cough up. For your pound, you and your loose association of people (generally a group of friends) get a sheet of paper with 40 questions on it. These questions cover just about any topic, with no discernable thought-progression in their origin. The goal of the quiz, which is only timed in a very loose manner (that is, the bar manager comes and gets the papers after an hour or so), is to answer as many of the questions correctly as possible.

Now, here’s a big difference between America and the U.K.: like our elections, in the U.S. it’s a winner-takes-all set-up. In the U.K., however, their pub quiz mirrors their governmental elections in that you win a percentage of the prize (seats in government or, in the case of a pub quiz, a percentage of 40 pints of beer), based on what you get correct.

Here’s the catch: in order to win, you have to correctly answer a question that no other team answered correctly.

So, out of 40 questions, four of them were answered by only one team and no one else. Yes, I am happy to say, I was on one of those four teams (which each had several people on them) that split the winnings. At the end of the night we walked away with a voucher for nine pints of beer (redeemable for up to one week). This averages to about one pint for each member of our team. Since pints are normally at least two pounds, and we each paid one pound to play, it means that we save one pound apiece on our next pint of beer at this bar. Huzzah for simple math.

What, you might be asking yourself, does this pub quiz have to does this have to do with college, or even a discussion of degrees?

The answer to that question lies in the winnings we earned.

But first, I would like to point out that there were, of 40 questions, three that only our team and one other team answered correctly, meaning that we kept them (or they kept us if you prefer) from winning three more shares of the total 40 pints. It just so happened that one of those three Kyle (my fellow classicist, study abroad traveler, and best friend) and I single-handedly answered. The question (which, admittedly did not win us anything) was:

If you suffered from “tinea pedis” what ailment would you have?

Now, with our knowledge of Latin (and, apparently, foot fungi), we were able to correctly translate this Latin phrase: tinea, which comes from the Latin verb “tinguo, -ere” or “to color/tinge” and pedis, which actually comes from ancient Greek, but, in Latin, is from “pes pedis” or “of the foot.” Thus, we figured out that “tinea pedis” meant roughly “a tinge of the foot” which corresponds, sadly for those who’ve experienced it, to the symptoms of the common ailment known to us as “Athlete’s Foot.”

So, we didn’t win anything for that, but we flexed our Latin skills and, for what seemed like the 437 th time in my life I wished I was carrying my Latin dictionary with me at the time (it took me some time to remember exactly what tinea meant… I at first thought it meant “silent” but “silent foot” sounds more like the second part of the newest Harry Potter book – Harry Potter and the Silent Foot – than it does an ailment).

The question that did win our team our ¼ share of the 40 pints was as follows:

Which Roman satirist wrote the “16 Satires?”

See, for Kyle and me, this was an easy question. We quickly answered “Juvenal,” followed closely by our British friend-slash-trivia-master Xander (who knows, I’m pretty sure, more about American history and culture than I do), who agreed with us.

Apparently, this question threw the other eight teams. We were the only team to get that question, and thus procured ¼ of the pints from the total pot.

Moral of the story: sometimes your degree program can produce vouchers for later enjoyment. How’s that for incentive to study harder?

2/02/2007
The gamut of conscious ages generally agrees on one general rule about 18 year olds: they think they know “everything” and are thus “invincible.” One supreme irony I find in this agreement is that I can think of relatively few times in the physiological process of aging where one feels less confident. In short, the age where most people think humans are the most stupidly, or ignorantly, confident is the very age at which we generally feel the least confident. As I grow older – and to be fair, I stand a mere three years from both knowing everything and being invincible – I find myself growing increasingly more confident, and more comfortable, with myself. And nowhere, frankly, does this become clearer to me than when I am watching my peers in social situations. Being something of a people watcher, I often find myself viewing people who fall into my general age bracket with curiosity, amazement, and amusement.

Fact: In the U.S. it’s customary to go to college from ages (roughly) 19-22—that is, for four years.
Fact: In the U.K., when one graduates (at age 18 roughly), one has the option of taking a “gap year,” where one works or travels and post-pones going to college for a year. Either way (gap year or no), students then attend college for just three years – so, ages 19-21 or 20-22.
Fact: Being a typical-aged junior in the American college system, I am currently 21 years old.
Fact: The culmination of information in the above three facts, even for one not paying the closest attention, is that I am older than most of the other students I encounter here.

I assume that my fellow Americans make the same presumption that I did: Brits spend quite a lot of time at bars/pubs. Perhaps I presume too much, but that’s really the perception I had coming over here, and I really wasn’t let down much. While I have yet to encounter anywhere near the same amount of way-beyond-drunk people that I found in colleges around the U.S. (I’ve been to quite a few, for more on this, see previous blogs), the students here certainly do a fair amount of drinking. I don’t have the opportunity to go to one of the many University-sponsored bars (a concept I’ve been trying to reconcile in my American mind) every night, it is pretty frequent.

So, to bring you up to speed, I was at one such bar last night, having an Irish cider (which has alcohol here and doesn’t taste anything like cider back home) and doing my best to not lose at pool (the balls are lighter and smaller here and the walls around the pockets aren’t angled to be forgiving in the slightest), and watching people around me.

I am truly amazed at some of the silly lengths people go to try to look cool, attract others, or even just appear not-out-of-place. I have a hard time putting down just how funny my observations were. From the awkward leaning-against-the-wall-in-an-attempt-to-look-nonchalant, to the even more awkward we’re-such-good-friends-we-have-to-take-pictures-with-each-other-to-prove-it-eight-million-times, there just aren’t enough words that are synonymous with silly to possibly describe each of the poses, stances, and attitudes that those around me adopted in their meager attempts at persuading everyone else that they were completely at ease and not trying to impress anyone.

Of course, as I write this I cannot help but think that there are those around me who most likely watch me do equally ludicrous things and laugh to themselves, but I do like to think that I’m a bit better than what I see around me. If for no other reason than that I am aware that each time I do something awkward it is made even more apparent because I’m gangly and so pale that bright lights reflect off of any of my skin that happens to be visible (and as I write I can only imagine what Amanda’s comment will be here).

… Editor’s Note: I’m reading this line at your funeral.

… Author’s Response: Well, I’ll be doing the most awkward – to the living – thing of all and so I suppose such a reading will be well justified. Give my ashes a wave for me.

What does this have to do with college life, or with Miami, or even with study abroad? To that question, I have to shrug. I suppose this blog has turned out as more of a musing that I bothered to type out than a cohesive piece of advise or a recollection I have about life in college. That said, there is some merit in voicing it; at the least, perhaps one or two people who read may stop sometime when they’re in a social setting and say to themselves, “I really do look silly trying to prop myself up on this bar like I’m not barely legal.” And when that happens, the strange-pool-playing, different-kind-of-cider-entirely-drinking people-watcher will smile with content, knowing that he has changed the world in his own small way (potential clever points +2).

1/26/2007
Exciting news this week! I just (and by “just” I mean, I received it last week, but I’m writing about it now) got an e-mail from my boss, Kristy, at the Honors and Scholars Program Office and in it, among other things, she said the following:

“Dave… coincidentally enough, University Communications just contacted me to get permission to link your blog [to] the main Miami homepage. I'll let you know if it actually happens.”

Now despite the fact that she finished with the less-than-promising “I’ll let you know if it actually happens” which certainly seems like she does not really think it will, I must say that this proposition definitely excited me. So much so that I immediately (a week ago) wrote back to her, saying (again, among other things):

Kristy,
The main university wants to put a link to my blog on their webpage? Really? That's pretty cool. However, as my publicist, manager, employer, and friend, you should keep a few things in mind:
1) Never give something away for free just because it is wanted by your “superiors.” This is simply verbal arm-flexing -- you should milk my writing and the rights to it for all it's worth, like I did! [I was referring here to my refusal to write the blog without pay, for more on this, see previous blogs.]
2) I have an express agreement with you that I will be the only "voice of Miami." If the university wants to get their grubby little hands on my writing, and you approve, they had better not go and get another blog writer -- especially if said other writer is funnier than I am! [I was pretty happy with this sentence then, and I am pretty happy with it now as well. I cannot say that I’ve ever seen said “grubby little hands” but we can all imagine them, can we not? What is important here is that I covered my bases: never allow for competition.]
3) If they [the University] want a link to my page, you should definitely work in somehow that they pay for my page to have its own hit-counter. My former boss (the infamous Barry) mentioned that someone he doesn't know was talking about my blog way up in Aurora, Ohio (which is about a half-hour from my house and about five hours from Miami). That means someone, somewhere, is actually reading my blogs... but I have no idea how many (or how few).[True story. I have no idea if Barry was just saying this to be nice or not, but it made me feel a little better.]
4) (Have you noticed how each gets longer as I get warmed up?) You really may want to consider upping my pay for these bad boys, since they're wanted and all. Also, see #1 for my reasoning. Just kidding... sort of. [I copied and pasted this. That’s right, that is exactly how I wrote it to Kristy. I didn’t screw around, I went right for the raise. Needless to say, she hasn’t replied. Sigh.]

Fact: I am still pretty excited that the main University webpage may soon link to my blog. It would be nice to also have a hit counter; I was being honest on that point
Fact: Kristy is just cool enough to actually follow through with the most ludicrous demands I could come up with (outlined above) on short notice. Then again, she is also bureaucrat-savvy enough to know how to play her cards and to keep in mind that the linking of my blog page with the main page would really help my audience base (and, I admit, the Honors and Scholars Program by proxy).
Fact: I never actually made the agreement that I would be the “only” voice of Miami. In fact, “voice of Miami” is not a phrase I have ever used in verbal conversation with Kristy in my life. I am, therefore, sincerely hoping that a) she doesn’t remember this and takes my word for it and b) that she doesn’t read this part of my blog and then follows “a)” above.
Fact: I really do think I’m safe on “b)” because I am pretty sure that Kristy doesn’t read past the opening paragraph of each of my blogs, foolishly entrusting me (tempered only by Amanda, my editor) to be responsible and to show moral fiber in my writing. <Insert sinister laugh here.>
Fact: The fact directly above is the very reason why the opening of each of my blogs is usually informative, mildly entertaining, and almost completely dissimilar to the rest of what I write about.

As Monty Python would say, “And now for something completely different.”

I wouldn’t want you, O my audience, to get the wrong impression of England. Not everything is different. In fact, an alarming number of things are all-too-hauntingly-familiar. Here is a list, which is by no means exhaustive, of some similarities I’ve noticed since my arrival.

• The Atlantic Ocean wasn’t wide enough to keep away the seemingly incurable affliction of cell-phone-glued-to-the-ear. Sadly, my fellow students here are equally susceptible to sudden spells (mainly every moment when they’re not in class) of having their cell phone plastered to the sides of their head. I, apparently, am the only one whose arm gets tired after … hmmm … I suppose that time length depends on who I am talking to.
• Another universal phenomenon is the inconvenient congregation. That’s right, while they may drive and walk on the opposite side that we do in the U.S., that doesn’t stop my peers over here from being as equally-freaking-moronic about where they choose to stop, form a group, and chat. Common inconvenient congregation sites include (but are not limited to!) the top and bottom of stairwells, just inside or outside of doors, and smack-dab in the middle of the sidewalk! Apparently clueless, and therefore only rude by ignorance, people exist everywhere.
• Perhaps… no wait, most definitely even stupider, yet evidently universal is the practice of smoking. I can’t say that it’s because they want to look cool, as I am pretty sure that everyone knows that there’s nothing cool about smoking. I mean, how much direct, documented evidence do people need to see before they believe that smoking is deadly? It isn’t enough that it’s been irrefutably, scientifically, proven to be directly related to four of the top five killers of adults in the U.S. (admittedly, I’m not sure of the effect of Mad Cow Disease these statistics over here)? As I cough through the daily secondhand smoke which my colleagues have so graciously never asked if I’d like to swallow each time I enter or exit a building (this is, remarkably, the only place that they are capable of committing heinous acts against their own {and others’} bodies), I can’t help but think, sadly, that as a lefty, I’m statistically more likely to die, on average, seven years earlier than my right handed counterpart. Now maybe if said counterpart is a smoker the odds are evened a bit, I am not sure…
• People don’t read for classes. This never ceases to amaze me. While I don’t have a completely flawless record of always reading ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING for each class, I would say, confidently, that I have read about 90% of what has been expected of me in the nearly 3 years I have been in college. Sadly, it has been my experience that all too few students (both here and at home) follow suit, and even less are they who read more than me. My justification is that I pay way too much money to go to school and not do the bare minimum (show up and do the work), thus getting the most basic “monies’ worth” out of my hard-earned cash. I guess that’s just me being old-fashioned though, as it appears that in both the U.S. and the U.K. my fellow students have other things on their minds besides the acquisition of knowledge and of truths, which results in their general lack of participation in reading-based discussions and frustration on both my and the instructors’ parts.

1/17/2007
Deadlines may be the quintessential difference between editors and writers. Inevitably, it is deadlines that separate one from the other — often engendering antipathy between them.

Fact: Above is my way of saying (in as scholarly a fashion as possible) that Amanda, my editor, has been harassing me yet again to actually get around to writing my next blog. (Her comment: “Someone had to.”
Fact: Luckily for me, I have 5 hours on her in which to finish this sucker, as I have put writing this off until the very eve of its deadline.
Fact: Unluckily for me, this means that I am writing this after midnight, thus necessitating that I am going to lose sleep by writing.
Fact: I am in London now. I arrived last Thursday at about 10:30 am and have been fairly busy since then (this is, in a way, a decent justification for facts 1-3, I think).

I’m not sure whether I ever mentioned this in any previous blog, but the study abroad experience is most definitely one which every student should strive for. Yes, it’s expensive; yes, plane rides that throw your sleep schedule off suck; and yes, you may encounter people who drive on a different side of the road. This does not, however, mean that it is not all (here comes my grand attempt at articulate wording:) totally worth it.

Here are some differences I have already discovered (bearing in mind that the language and culture I speak and live in came directly from the same language and culture which I am encountering, here, everyday):

• Pronunciation of words. Yes, I expected the British accent, but I had no idea how terribly difficult it is sometimes to decipher what the often-considered-cute accent is trying to produce in terms of communication. Garage becomes Gehr-ege (with the final –ge coming out as something like a whirring “zsch” sound). The seemingly innocuous “book” becomes “birk” (not kidding). The “a” in “-ary” endings of words is almost entirely clipped out here. “Library” becomes “Librery” with the “e” as tiny of a sound as you can possibly make it while still differentiating between the two “r” sounds.
• Terminology in general. I went to my Latin class today and the professor, before sending me on my way to find the necessary books for the course, told me that the class (which runs all year long – so yes, I’m jumping in halfway through) was having their “literary assessment.” Having no clue what this meant, but assuming it was something along the lines of testing their literature, I asked what exactly such an assessment entails. After considerable questioning I finally discerned that “literary assessment” actually equates to our “translation test.” Oh, the irony is sweet.
• THEY DRIVE ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE ROAD. This has certain health implications. Take into consideration, for example, that most international flights are overnight. This means that the unsuspecting American traveler winds up in England, sleep-deprived and perhaps not thinking entirely clearly. Now add fast-moving cars, city-driving at its worse, and traffic congestion (it is an airport we’re talking about; and airports are universally poorly planned). The poor sap who walks out of the airport, happy to be abroad, casually steps up to the side of the street, looks left to see if there is traffic coming from that direction (which, of course, it can’t) and then takes a step… only to be nearly blind-sided by a fast-moving, horn-blaring, tea-drinking, bad-teeth-sporting, prim, proper, and probably-extremely-polite-in-other-conditions, Englishman. Can you spell disaster waiting to happen? This above scenario is not mere fiction, O my audience. This is a true tale of my own first moments in the chill airs of London (two years ago). This time around, however, I was prepared for the traffic.
• Like the driven traffic, walking traffic also flows in the opposite manner of the US. Walking carelessly along the sidewalk (on the right, which is normal for me), I often look up just in time to see someone swerve away from walking into me, glaring at me for being—foolishly—on the wrong side of the pavement.
• They have class, on average, a lot less then back in the States. For example, I only have seven hours of actual in-class time each week. Now, this is partially because I am only taking three courses, but realistically it is because often they only meet once or twice for each class and you can’t take more than 4 classes. This is coupled with the fact that they don’t double-major and rarely have minors. Pretty much, they come into the university knowing what they want to study and starting with that subject in year one. They only attend for 3 years (4 for exceptional degree programs), and they don’t use semesters or quarters; they choose the word “term” instead, and there are three of them. Fall, which is 11 weeks in the fall; Spring, which is 11 weeks in the spring; and Summer, which is really just an examination period for the Fall and Spring terms (remember, their courses often run all year long).
• As a student here, one never gets assigned to write “papers.” Your assessment is generally based entirely on “essays” (which, I have been informed, are focused, short pieces of writing which specifically answer one precise question) and on examinations (which, as I said, occur mostly in the Summer term). The distinction is important here, I guess.
• Unlike American universities, where buying books each semester saps a little bit of one’s soul twice a year in a way not unlike Christmas shopping, in Britain students rarely (if ever) purchase their texts. Readings are either handed out or (more often) are just a piece of paper with a title, author, and page number at which to start and end. From there, students are expected to go to the library, find the book they need, and get to work. There is no buying textbooks for 160 dollars because last year’s addition can’t work this year. There is no trying to sell back said 160 dollar book only to be told that the book is now worth nothing because there will be another, newer edition used the next year. So, in that light, this is a semi-better system. On the other hand… the library (at home and abroad, it seems) frowns upon writing, highlighting, and other forms of marking in its books – something which I frequently need to do in order to quickly find important passages later. And, sometimes one has to buy a book or two. For instance, my Greek art in Context course uses one book (Understanding Greek Sculpture, by a guy named Snively – a funny name no matter how you try to pronounce it) so much that the professor heavily suggested that we buy the book, rather than trying to fight over the few editions in the library when essay time rolled around.

I am quite sure that there are other differences that I could (and probably will) comment on. This blog, however, has now kept me up much later than I desired and (I think) will appease the editor enough that she will stop sending me messages asking me when I’ll write it. Thus, I leave you, O my audience, and make my way towards the Land of Nod.

1/04/2007
I try not to bore you with obvious information such as the fact that since I last wrote, finals, a car accident, packing up all my stuff, holiday break, Christmas, New Year’s, and Gerald Ford’s death have all elapsed. Damn.

Fact: I haven’t written for some time because I was (in no particular order): busy, not busy, disgruntled at the lack of responses to my new e-mail address for this blog (dave.sheehan@hotmail.com), cleaning, studying, fending off squirrels, dodging (miserably) an angered frat guy’s car (for the reason why, see previous blogs), writing, reading, and avoiding all semblance of a daily routine.
Fact: That all ends now. Well, all except the avoidance of a daily routine – I still plan on waking up at the crack of noon each day.
Fact: I am a mere week away from flying to the U.K… I can almost feel my –or’s changing into –our’s.
Fact: Finals treated me (disregarding the car accident) quite nicely, and I maintained my GPA, forcing me to consider 2006 a success academically.

Life at home, once one has gone away to college for some time, can often be an experience all on its own. You come back and see old friends (Barry) who sometimes remind you of your poor correspondence (or mentioning in your blog); you get to wrestle with your girlfriend’s controlling parents; you get (if you’re as lucky as myself) to pretty much sit around all day and figure out how to entertain yourself with none of your school friends around (the girlfriend is an obvious exception as she lives just 45 minutes from my house). Heck, sometimes you end up ignoring the blog you wrote about dating at Miami and you get back together with that special someone.

No, I didn’t write that blog, I just commented on it.

What I am getting at here, wise and poor decisions and issues aside, is that things change drastically once you’ve been out on your own for a bit. In my experience, the longer you’re gone the more acute that change appears.

It’s not that my parents have kept me on a short leash (they haven’t), or that I’ve not been able to do what I wanted (I have), it’s just that my interests, tastes, and normal routes towards wasted time (not wasted as in alcohol, wasted as in how I pass my days) aren’t in their accustomed places when I come back home.

For example, Jason isn’t around, telling funny stories and fueling my blog (I would like to point out that he had a pretty funny incursion with some law enforcement officers on his drive home for break – if you’re lucky I’ll one day type up the transcript of his story and post it). Similarly, I have none of my usual recreation activities around – broomball, soccer, hockey, and walking to class are all out of the question back home.

In place of the typical pursuits I follow, I find myself cooped up in a small town with only a few limited distractions not of my own making. To put it in perspective, I have gone to the mall three times (even though I was done shopping for Christmas), I have read seven books, and I have even done a little research just for kicks!

Admittedly, my hometown’s size diminishes, quite spectacularly, the possibilities for keeping me busy.

But I don’t wish to sound nagging or as though I am whining. Break hasn’t been all bad; I’ve spent time with my friends and family, I’ve hung out with my cat and dog, I’ve read some books I kept telling myself I’d eventually get around to, and I’ve almost entirely avoided doing anything terribly taxing.

In fact, it is only because I know that I will be five times zones and several hundred dollars’ worth of a flight away from my parents by the time they get around to reading this blog that I can safely point out (without reprisal or a change in my current condition of lethargy) how damn worthless I have been. And you know what, O my audience? It’s been fantastic. I have caught up on sleep, I have seen and read stuff I have been putting off, and I have done it all without being caught by my parents’ internal “Is Dave Doing Anything? No? Let’s Put Him To Work” radar.

I will close with two final bits. The first is a direct quote I’ve been saving from Jason for a special occasion. It is something he asked me when considering how to respond to his brother (who is stationed in Iraq with the U.S. military). The second is what I keep telling myself each time I stealthily evade my parents’ radar. With that said, hope 2007 is rocking… the next time I’ll write it’ll be worth pounds.

Jason: “Is it wrong to send an e-mail to my brother that says ‘Happy birthday… Hope there are no fireworks’?”

- and -

Thank goodness for those time zones.

11/27/2006
Let’s talk about working on campus.

I’ve had five different jobs here at Miami, as well as a couple side jobs (over breaks and I work occasionally for a promotional company out of Cincinnati). I have been a GOA for both the classics and honors departments, I have been a tour guide, I have been a catering server (briefly), and I have been the visit coordinator for the honors program.

Now, besides healthy bits of initiative and charm, how, you may ask, do I manage to acquire so many employment opportunities?

Actually, it’s pretty easy. First, you figure out the places that either a) you will be around a lot (in may case, I was loitering about outside the classics office most of my time anyways, so I decided I might as well get paid to loiter inside the office) or b) pay the best. No, I won’t tell you where that is, because then I’d have competition.

Becoming a tour guide was a longer process, as they go. I had to apply. Then I had to go through an interview. Ok, so it wasn’t that long of a process, but I did have to wait each time to find out if I made the cut.

Being a tour guide is really a pretty sweet deal. You get paid to walk around and talk to people about your school. Since the managers of the Office of Admissions have almost no way to police every guide, you can more or less tell the students you guide whatever you find most informative. For me, I tried to give them the most in-depth view of what it was like to be a student here at Miami as I could. It was sort of like a much longer, less cohesive blog that I said out loud each time I took a group out.

It was only as an interim position that I worked as a caterer for the University, but it really wasn’t that rough of work. Besides having to stand up for many hours on end (which sucked, I’ll admit it), I got a free meal for every shift I worked (awesome perk), and I met some really neat people. To apply, I had to fill out and application and go through an interview, but they were really so hard up for bodies that I don’t think I could have given a wrong answer on either application or at the interview.

Basically, you have to just be a little ambitious. If you find a position you think you’re cut out for or that interests you, try asking someone about how you could go about acquiring such a position. In the case of at least two of my jobs (classics and visit coordinator), those who were in charge were actively looking for someone to fill the spots, and I just happened upon them completely by accident. So, my advice: be outgoing (but no pushy).

Fact: Campus pretty much clocks out the two days before Thanksgiving break. Sure classes may be in, but the listless stares are devoid of thought or comprehension and many professors don’t really seem to have the heart to force attention. Amen to them

Fact: I’ve clocked out too, as evidenced by my only half-heartedly including two facts.

11/14/2006
So, apparently, I was responsible for promising to talk about SEX, DRUGS, and VIOLENCE last week. However, since I am in charge of this blog, and since I have listened to more Kenny Rogers than I ever deserved, I skipped the punishment aspect of my investigation. Case closed. I also noticed that while I didn’t talk about SEX, DRUGS, or VIOLENCE, I did mention all three in order to get the casual reader’s attention and force her or him to read more closely… which was, as I recall now, my ultimate goal behind that sentence (+23 points). Rest assured that when I first sent that sentence for editing, my editor’s comment was something like: “completely inappropriate unless you were planning on seriously addressing each of these subjects.”

Unfortunately for her, I a) only sometimes take her advice (which explains rthe persisting grammatical errors int my blogs) and b) try to never address subjects seriously.

Until now.
Fact: It is now the end of intramural hockey season. I still can’t stop every time I want, but I have increased my percentage of successful stops from a paltry (and accidental) 3% to a whopping 82%. Go me.
Fact: It may be November, but it is an absolutely gorgeous day here in Oxford, Ohio. The sun made an appearance, it was warm enough for me to consider wearing shorts (I then shined a bright light on my bare skin, effectively blinding myself for an hour and decided, while I waited for my vision to return, that perhaps pants would be a better idea), and I shed my typical fall apparel of hoodies and sweaters.
Fact: I have figured out the lure of X for the X: his X makes them feel X. And frankly, the X to which he is X isn’t all that X (cute, yes; beautiful, sometimes; but not yet X enough with themselves to be termed “X” in my book).
Fact: I was almost certain that my editor wouldn’t allow Fact 3 to fly, so I had to write several more as back up. And I was right: she didn’t allow it. She suggested I use an X for Fact 3, but I decided to leave it up to your imagination, o my audience.
Fact: Phone books are pragmatic.
Fact: Here at Miami, one is not allowed to hang pictures/posters/etc. directly upon the wall. There is a trim put around every residence hall room from which one can hang framed things using an s-hook. Before I came to Miami, I was unaware of the existence of s-hooks. Somehow, I don’t think that s-hooks will be something I remember vividly when I leave.

This week I’d like to do a survey of just what comes in a 2-person residence hall room at Miami. Since this is standard issue (with only a few exceptions), this creates a manageable topic for me.

Here’s the quick list: 2 chairs, 2 desks, 2 desk lamps, 2 (it drives my editor nuts when I don’t write out small numbers, which is partially why I chose to make this list) beds, 1 window (that 1 will really hurt her), 2 closest spaces, 2 sets of dresser drawers, 1 mirror. They also come with 2 ethernet ports, 2 phone jacks, 1 telephone, 1 trash can, and 1 recycling bin. Optional: refrigerator.

Chairs: Since they haven’t upped my wages for the University to what I expect (something near $40/hr), I don’t hesitate to point out that the desk chairs Miami provides are easily the most uncomfortable pieces of furniture I’ve ever encountered. Spanish Inquisition torture chambers were cozier than these bad boys. My suggestion: purchase a desk chair and use the freebie to seat guests. The true test of friendship is whether or not you’re willing to sit in someone else’s desk chair.

Desks: Actually quite nice. I’ve had a couple issues with drawers sticking or coming off their tracks, but, upon placing a service request, they were promptly fixed. Depending on which building you end up living in, some have desks with built-in book shelves on them. If you don’t luck out with these, you can make your own or purchase one at an outrageous rate somewhere around Oxford.

Desk Lamps: Ehhh, I am indifferent about these. The low-wattage light bulbs make them less bright than I desire, but that is easily remedied. I usually bring my own and put it near my bed (they also make bed-attachable lamps which are nice) for true reading purposes.

Beds: Somewhere in the middle of good and bad. They’re firm, but not too stiff. They can be bunked or set directly on the ground. They sit fairly low though, so there is not too much storage space under them. Two under-the-bed bins can fit, but only with a bit of maneuvering.

Window: It opens and closes. But you didn’t need me to tell you that.

Closet space: Sometimes there are individual closets, other times there is one big thing attached to the wall with built-in dresser drawers and a mirror. There is a comparable amount of closet space in both types. Because I am in a corner room this year, one of our closets has a small window in it, so I leave my hockey and broomball equipment to air out in there, which is handy.

Drawers: Can either be free-standing dressers (freaking sweet) or part of the big wall thing I described above (not so sweet). More drawer space in the former, more room space in the latter.

Mirror: Sometimes there’s this goofy looking guy in mine, but only when I stand in front of it. My roommate, Jason, says he never sees the weirdo when he looks in the mirror. (Sometimes you get two mirrors in your room.)

Ethernet: All residence halls are wireless as well.

Phone Jack/Telephone: Most everyone here has cell phones, so these are nearing uselessness, but they’re still a little handy for making local calls.

Trash Can/Recycling Bin: You have to replace your own trash bags in these, but taking the trash out consists of tying the bag up and putting it in the bigger trash can (1, at least, per floor).

Refrigerator: These cost a bit to rent, but you can’t bring your own (can anyone spell monopoly?), so I guess they’re a good deal. Realistically, they’re pretty cheap when split between two roommates over two semesters and, frankly, I enjoy a cold Gatorade after broomball/hockey/soccer/etc.

I think that that list is pretty comprehensive. If you need clarifications or want to know more, I still have the new e-mail account (which almost no one is using): dave.sheehan@hotmail.com

11/8/2006
Contrary to what you may have heard, this week I will not be talking about Sex, Drugs, or Violence. I'm not really sure who is responsible for spreading that particular rumor, but rest assured that the culprit will be caught, whipped, and forced to listen to Kenny's Roger's Greatest Hits repeatedly for 13 hours straight (which is only half of the torture I once endured during a “vacation” trip to Myrtle Beach with my grandparents) as just punishment.

Fact: The Sunday-night combination of a broomball game, two hockey games, and a night of only 5.5 hours of sleep is a sure-fire way to make Monday morning miserable.
Fact: If music is important to you, especially a particular genre of music, it’s definitely something worth keeping in mind when looking at various colleges you may attend. My hometown is only an hour away from several major cities (which, if you’re reading this with a glass-is-half-empty-outlook, means I grew up in the middle of nowhere), one of which was Cleveland. As a result, a large part of my youth involved a pretty decent music scene. Oxford, which is strikingly similar to my hometown in some ways (both are about a mile-square; both are surrounded by cornfields), has a very different sort of music scene. Something to keep in mind.
Fact: You thought I’d mention a certain genre of music again, didn’t you? Hah, no way, I’m still way in the negative for clever points.
Fact: Despite the fact that I’m a fairly competent person, I cannot for the life of me figure out the heater in my room. It seems to have three settings (off, hissing, louder hissing), and two outputs (nothing or raging inferno). With the weather changing daily, this makes for a lot of open-windows/inferno settings being switched to closed-windows/hissing settings.

Laundry. Let’s talk about it.

Nothing frustrates me more than seeing these guys down the hall disappear to go home every 3 or 4 weeks because they have to do their laundry. Come. On. The machines are damn-near idiot-proof. You put your clothes in, you put your detergent in, you close the door, and you pay for it with your ID card. There are even directions with big pictures on the machines showing you how to do this.

But no. These dudes would rather take them home to have Mom do them. I just shake my head. I’ll be the first to try and stretch my clothes to last to the next break, but that’s because I don’t want to spend the money on my card on laundry (I’d rather chalk it up on my parent’s water bill… heh heh), not because I can’t do my own laundry.

This is my advice for you prospective students: do your own laundry and go home to see your family because you care about them, not because they’re cheap labor.

To switch topics, I have some advice which you prospective students might find quite useful, given the time of year. As you are filling out your college application essays, remember these few key points in order to better your writing:

• Start with something flashy. No, not a picture of a sports car. No, not an image from Girls Gone Wild. But some story or quote that relates directly to your essay and that is eye-catching and attention-grabbing.
• Try, if at all possible, to go somewhere with your essay, but also to bring closure to it. This is difficult, to make a trip and yet find yourself back at the beginning, but it will leave the readers with a good feeling inside and they can sit back and say, “Huh, that was a good, closed essay.” My advice to do this, tie the opening story or quote back in at the end.
• Make sure you check your grammar and spelling. This is an easy one, yet so commonly ignored.
• Try to keep your voice active. If you don’t know what that means, allow me teach you. In the active voice, the subject does the action of the verb, as in “Jason kicks Dave.” In the passive voice, the subject is acted upon by the verb, as in “Jason is kicked by Dave.” See how in the former he does the kicking, whereas in the latter he is the one receiving the kicking? Try to keep this in mind when you write. Passive sentences can usually be switched to active sentences fairly easily. Here, for example, is a sentence I wrote for a paper a couple weeks ago, which I changed (during editing) to active:
  • Passive: The foundations of the “primary growth” of the empire, in particular the establishment of strong churches and foundations of schools, are laid by these initial efforts.
  • Active: These initial efforts laid the foundation for the “primary growth” of an empire, in particular the establishment of strong churches and the foundations of schools.

A final suggestion for college applications: get them done early… they only get harder to do the longer you wait. (Editor’s comment: so true, so true.)

10/30/2006
Back from my pseudo-vacation last week, I come, writing to you O my audience, swaggering as only a Disney pirate can. This week, I have something very exciting to talk about, but first…

Fact: I am into week 3 (or 4, I haven’t kept count) of Basic Ice Skating… stopping is progressing slowly. The good news is that the days of me crashing are now a dying breed, like home cooked meals and honest politicians.
Fact: I swear that was as close as I will get to nostalgia or a sense of the “good ol’ days.”
Fact: It’s a good idea to frequently save important documents that you type. We had a power outage last Thursday. It came conveniently just as I was about to finish a paper. A paper I hadn’t happened to have saved. Ever. Yes, the “conveniently” was sarcastic. No, I didn’t lose all of my work; there is a handy little auto-save built in to Microsoft word which kept about 2/3 of the work I had completed.

Now, at this point, you may be thinking to yourself, “Hmm, Dave’s writing is fine, but I really would like to give him topics that I want to hear about!” or maybe you’re thinking, “Dave and his blog are less accountable than the Senate” (for an interesting read on the Senate, I suggest reading Richard N. Rosenfeld’s essay “What Democracy? The Case for Abolishing the United States Senate” -- http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-116340244.html.

And it’s true. I haven’t heard from you, O my audience. In fact, I haven’t the faintest idea if anyone reads my blog.

So, for the sake of you and me (I would like to know what you like or don’t like, what you want to hear more about, and anything else you feel compelled to share with me), I have created a special e-mail account (think of it like a modern Bat-phone) just so you can contact me.

But I won’t give the account to you until next week. (Hah, this forces new readers to come back and irks old readers because they have to be patient. +19 points)

Just kidding. Here’s the address (I was feeling creative when I came up with the name):

dave.sheehan@hotmail.com

This week’s blog is short, I know. But I a) am incredibly busy right now and b) put more time than I wanted into creating that e-mail account (it used to be easy back in my day – shoot, there’s another “good ol’ days” reference), so this blog is a quick one.

If you want more, stay tuned for next week when I discuss SEX, DRUGS, and VIOLENCE!

10/23/2006
I have noticed a trend in my e-mails. They always begin well, with a capitalized name for the person I’m addressing, for example: “Barry-” From there (and this is exacerbated by how long the e-mail becomes), my typing skills rapidly degenerate until I no longer bother to capitalize the first words in sentences, I sometimes leave words out, or don’t worry about sillyt rtypos.

In short, I get increasingly lazy the longer I work on typing something. It should be no surprise to you, O my audience, that this week’s blog exemplifies my motivation and commitment to my work. That’s right, i have brought in a guest writer… none other than my editort (se previous blogs), Amanda. She has volunteered – in part because it’s my birthday this weekend and she wanted to save me time, in part because she felt you might need a female perspective once in a while, and in part because she felt that she, someone currently in the “dating scene” here at Miami (unlike me), would be best suited to write on this particular week’s subject – and I have decided to use what she wrote up for me. BUT, not without my commentary (remember, I have over 500 negative clever points to make up). So, here we go with what Amanda has to say about dating at college:

10/16/06
You know what the worst feeling in the world is? It’s not that deep-seated loss and hurt you feel when love has left you abandoned and alone at college, 4.5 hours away, the week before Thanksgiving break. It’s not the utter shock and amazement you perceive when you watch your broomball team lose two play-off games in triple over-time by missing their shots on an empty goal from half-ice. It’s not even the complete despise you have for your body when you’re sick and have expelled every possible fluid in your body, but your intestines keep lurching, trying desperately to bring your toenails up through the rest of your body and out of your mouth.

No, the worst feeling in the world is the pseudo-sneeze. That’s right, that sort of “Oh shit, I know I’m going to sneeze and look rather foolish in the process… maybe I can fight it” which results in something that vaguely resembles a mix between a silent bark, a Moby music video, and a convulsive spasm. You still end up sneezing, but it’s like your body enjoys teasing you with these lame precursors just to show you that you still have no control. Very irritating.

Fact: My roommate -- I think we’re calling him Jason, but he usually goes by “Sirr” -- did the exact same thing as I did. No, he didn’t bring up whale urine in a university-endorsed publication, but he did tear off a huge chunk of skin from the front of his big toe. Couple of acrobats in our room, huh?
Fact: I wasn’t kidding, he really does go by “Sirr,” with two r’s.
Fact: I want to sincerely thank the person who checks each and every blog to make sure that it’s correct, makes sense, and isn’t way over the edge (she has had to rein me in a few times)… so thank you Amanda (I know you’ll ask this to be cut in the final draft but I’m making the executive decision right now that it’s staying… so there).
Fact: Getting involved on campus early is a good idea. There isn’t really anything “cool” about doing nothing for a semester and sometimes you can get into some really neat activities. Personal advice: get to know your professors, they will often know about unique opportunities of which you would not otherwise be able to be a part.
Fact: I am writing this blog from home. Every so often I travel home to remind my parents why I’m worth the price of tuition… and I’m doing that right now by being on the computer in a different room from them.

At my roommate’s advice, this week’s blog is about resident hall etiquette. For example I will cover such topics as: various bathroom rules, alarm clocks, how to tell which students won’t last more than a semester, and the rules of noise.

I’ll start, then, with alarm clocks. They can be very useful. For instance, when you want to wake up at an appropriate time. They can also be very irritating. For instance, when you don’t want to wake up at an appropriate time but have forgotten to turn it off. Something one rarely thinks about, however, is dealing with the alarm clock over which one has no control.

Take, for example, my first semester, freshman year. My roommate at the time had a very hard time waking up. So his alarm clock was incredibly (nay, I dare say impossibly) loud. If noise could be gaudy, this alarm clock was Liza Minelli’s digital equivalent.

Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway because I care about you, O my audience, that much), this alarm clock and I did not get along. This is, by the way, one of the best examples of why Jason, my current roommate, is great to live with. The dude is like a hunting panther in the morning, I never see or hear him and he can do his business in the utter dark.

Oh, and his alarm clock is pretty quiet. I mentioned this to him at one point and he said, “I don’t need an alarm clock… I just drink a lot of water before bed.”

There are also some very basic bathroom rules one needs to be aware of when one is sharing a bathroom with other people. Here’s the biggest one (and it really grosses me out when I see people not following this): wear sandals to the shower. Seems like a pretty easy to grasp concept, but you wouldn’t believe how many people (of both sexes) who ignore this. Eww…

Which brings me to my next point. You can always tell which students won’t be around for more than a semester or so. They generally have a significant other back home, back home is generally many hours away, this relationship isn’t in a good condition and the person is constantly in the hallway yelling/crying/both at the phone, and the person only stops fighting to sleep. This combination of unhealthy emotional life, when mixed with ignoring schoolwork and building solid interpersonal relationships with the real, live people around you, creates a very difficult obstacle when trying to pursue a collegiate experience. So, if you end up doing this, wise up… if you end up seeing this, at least you’ll know whose room will be empty the next year.

Oh, and the rules of noise: he (or she, but girls are generally much more considerate than this rule allows guys to be) who has the biggest speakers hears what he wants… and so does everyone else in the corridor.

To recap: use shower sandals, get big speakers, don’t fight with your sig. other in the hallway (people do hear you), and be considerate to your roommate when it comes to alarm clocks… or, if you can’t, drink a lot of water before bed.

10/11/2006
At the risk of great personal embarrassment and lots of reading for you, O my audience, I have a very special blog for you this week. I plan to analyze a piece of research I did in the spring semester of 2006. Now, this may not interest many of you terribly – after all, not everyone can be a Classicist – but I still think that this exercise will be useful in two ways. First, it will allow me to give you an idea of what kind of research and writing you may expect at Miami. Second, it will also allow me to describe a valuable aspect of the Honors program: the Course Extension.

In fact, let’s do that right now. Ok, for those of you unfamiliar with our Honors program (which is one of three programs the Honors & Scholars program coordinates – for more info on this please visit www.honors.muohio.edu), as an Honor student, you have to complete 10 Honors “experiences.” Now, this phrase does include Honors courses (which count as one “experience”), but it can also encompass other things as well. One of these things is the Course Extension. Now, this isn’t a tough concept and the name pretty much says it all. A Course Extension is basically a contract that a student sets up with the professor of a class he or she is taking which designates a certain amount of additional work the student will be required to do in order to receive credit in the form of an Honors experience for completion of the project (and the regular coursework). For example, I took Latin 202, in which we read worked on translating by Cicero (a Roman orator and the equivalent of a lawyer) which defended a young man by the name of Caelius by attacking Caelius’ attackers (Roman courts weren’t too keen on the weight of proof and more on good oratory skills). In addition, I translated a few poems by a contemporary (to Cicero, not to me) poet name Catullus, who supposedly addressed a historical person (Clodia Metelli – a woman whom Cicero contends to be an attacker of Caelius… see the connection?) in his poems. At the end of the semester I had to write a paper on what my research had found. Below is the beginning portion of my paper (I cut off roughly the last 65% for your sake and because this blog is plenty long already), complete with notes, by me, on writing good research (although I won’t argue that this is great stuff, it’ll suffice) and on my own cleverness.

All right, so I stopped there for two reasons. First, because from there I started comparing Catullan poetry with a modern musical artist and many of you might not be any more familiar with the music than with Catullan poetry. Second, because this blog’s pretty long already and my remarks are starting to degenerate into a collection of words that were displayed action in the old Batman TV show. I think you’ve (and I’ve) had enough.

So there’s some minor scholarship for you and a glimpse of one of the great things about being part of the Honors program. And I’m being serious; I think the Course Extension is a pretty sweet concept and I’m very glad that I took advantage of it.

I am not, however, glad that my cleverness total is hanging out at a -581. Damn me for being such a harsh critic.

10/04/2006
My roommate described broomball thus:
“Imagine a bunch of people falling all over the place. Now, toss in a ball and some sticks and imagine them paying to do this. On ice. Watching broomball players stumble around is kind of like being at the drinking Olympics, but without all the barf.”

He has a finesse you just don’t find much these days.

Fact: Broomball is played on ice, in shoes, and the goal is to hit a ball into a net with a stick. You get a helmet and any pads you feel necessary to protect you.
Fact: I play a great deal of broomball. I have invested in several pads for various joints on my body.
Fact: Broomball is a ton of fun, even when you lose. In fact, I have lost two play-off games on open-goal, sudden-death shots (during triple-overtime), and I still consider the game fun.
Fact: Yes, you read that correctly, two different people on my team missed a shot at an open goal from the middle of the ice. There was no one in the goal and they miffed.
Sub-fact: No, neither of those shots were made by me, I only miss when there’s someone in the goal so I can blame it on someone else.

Perhaps, O my audience, you do not realize the pressure and trials I am put through when I write these weekly blogs. The strain of homework I’m neglecting coupled with pushing my luck on the number of inappropriate phrases I can work in here is set against a background of what seem to be hundreds of voices crying out to be included in my writings. I have had friends (Barry), former bosses (Barry), and vacation buddies (Barry) all point out that they were and are significant people in my life (and the world) and yet they have hardly been mentioned (Barry). I just don’t know how to fix this problem (Barry) and make right the awful injustice (Barry) I have done them (Barry).

Another thing that prospective students (myself included at one time) may never think about as they are planning on getting away to college are the ties they had to home. I realize I’ve already discussed leaving behind pets and siblings (see previous blogs), but there are many, many other parts of your life in high school that suddenly are getting either stretched, compromised, or discarded when you go away to college.

Now, some of you may think “Good riddance!” or “I can’t wait!” or even “Who’s Barry?” but the reality is that while you may want, desperately, to throw off the shackles and chains of parental control, petty high school drama, and a day that is scheduled out to the second, in all actuality, these things don’t go away. Parental control is replaced by the dreaded responsibility, high school drama becomes college drama (sometimes called “life”), and you still have days planned out in a crazy manner, it’s just that you are doing the planning instead of someone else.

But you will, I assure you, miss some things. The friends whose presence you took for granted and figured “we’ll always be best friends,” the people you knew you could always count on if you needed something, even your boss who made work fun and threw parties that were the talk of your town. It’s not that you stop being friends (I’m still really good friends with my best friend from high school, Gregg), but college changes things.

Don’t be sad or think that I’m feeling nostalgic, because I’m not. College is way sweeter than high school (particularly because I almost never have to wake up before the crack of 10), and it’s not difficult to keep connections with people back home. But there is the effort. There is the strain. And there is the remembrance of the good times you had. Whether it was being a human magnet for the mosquito population of Canada while on vacation for the sake of the rest of the party or running around darkened buildings at night, shooting one another with hard plastic BBs (yeah, I grew up in a small town, entertainment was self-made or non-existent), or driving to the nearest city (Cleveland in my case) to see a rock show that you and your friends have been dying to see for months, these good times become memories.

And that’s ok, because memories can overlook the 18 hour drive to Canada with a grumpy old man whining the whole way, playing airsoft in the winter when it was -10 degrees and your gun was freezing up, and having your car’s battery die at a shady gas station and having to call and wake up your father at 1am to have him come get you just outside of the city.

In short, don’t think everything will stay the same, but also don’t think that everything new will necessarily be worse. You’ll make new friends, as long as you don’t bite every person you meet; you’ll remember the good times; and you’ll keep in touch with those who matter.

And if you don’t they’ll kindly remind you that your blog is conspicuously without mention of them (Barry).

9/25/2006
Back when I was still in high school, doing my tour of the U.S. (what some people call a college search – my mother dragged me from coast to coast for the better part of my formative years), I had some pretty set ideas on what I wanted in the school I was to attend after graduation. They can, more or less, be summed up as two qualifications; the school had to:

• Not be in Ohio (I am from northeast Ohio, so I was unluckily born into what I think of as the second-rainiest place after Seattle – and I think we give them a shot… I hate getting arbitrarily wet, gray skies, mugginess, just about everything that relates to rain; so I was trying to avoid this aspect by my geographical location);
• Give me the most money (I had good grades and decent test scores in high school. In fact, I had set myself up fairly well, so I thought “why shouldn’t the school pay me handsomely for the chance to educate me?”)

Fact: Of the six schools to which I applied, I decided on a school that was in Ohio and that gave me the least amount of money in terms of my financial aid package.
Fact: It’s raining outside right now. Yes, this affected what I chose to write about. No, this rain isn’t a fair indication of weather here in Oxford, Ohio. Generally speaking the weather here is quite nice. It stays warm about three weeks longer in the fall than it does back home and gets warm about three weeks earlier in the spring. And, the winters aren’t *normally* as rough as back up north. So basically, I was wrong about needing to get out of Ohio for weather concerns.
Fact: I am dreadfully out of shape. Never has this been more apparent to me than of late. See, I play on two intramural broomball teams and two intramural hockey teams. Recently, I added intramural soccer. Now, I played varsity soccer back in high school, but that was over two years ago and, as the saying goes, they (the two years) haven’t been kind to me.
Fact: You can’t bring your own refrigerator to Miami if you live on campus (which you have to for your first year unless you live fairly close – but you should live on campus even if you do, for more on living, see previous blogs). They instated this rule the year I came to Miami and yes, I am bitter about this fact. They aren’t terribly expensive to rent, but it’s extremely frustrating to pay off the cost of a small fridge over a few years and have nothing to show for it. It’s like leasing a car: I’m sure there are good reasons for it, but I can’t really see any of them.

I probably could have added this as a fact, but it’s somewhat based on my opinion, so I figured I would keep the uproar about fallacies to a dull droning and instead make my observation here, where I am not bound by the strictures of my own rules on facts:

I think that, by and large, juniors and seniors in high school (and their parents) have absolutely no idea what they are doing when they are looking at colleges. Now, some people will stop reading at this point, thinking themselves terribly insulted by that statement. For that, I am sorry, I didn’t mean to insult. Really, I can say this because I, myself, was, at one point in time, just as un- (or perhaps it’s better to use mis-) informed about college choices as some of you, O my audience, happen to be.

Having worked with prospective students every day over the summer, I became extremely aware of some of the things “prospies” typically ask and/or wonder about colleges. For example, issues of air conditioning, room size, number and location of dining halls, proximity to airports/major cities (for those of you who don’t know, Oxford is quite literally in the middle of cornfields… don’t be disheartened, Cincinnati is close; for more on this, see previous blogs), cars on campus as first years, ways to get financial aid, class size, size and power of the Greek system (a concept very confusing for the Classicist in me) and—for the daring—party-life all came up on a fairly frequent basis.

…All right, I just have to say that it’s way cool to be able to say “see previous blogs”. It relieves me of having to try to come up with clever ways of rephrasing stuff I already talked about. Enough of my aside, back to business…

Now, certainly all of these issues are semi-important and worth noting when visiting colleges. However, these factors (some of which I would bet a Euro or two that more than a few of you winced at when you read them) should not be deciding factors when choosing your college. Here’s why:

• Air-conditioning isn’t essential. Open your window, stick a fan in it, open your door. This has a dual purpose: first, it creates an air-flow, second, makes your room inviting and it’s a good thing to meet new people.
• Room size, as I have mentioned before, is mostly unimportant. See previous blogs (shwing, that’s 3 times).
• While eating locale and population is important, it’s secondary to the much more pertinent question of how good the food is.
• Usually, airport and major cities are all relatively close to colleges. Plus, chances are that you’re not the only person who’ll be thinking along these lines (not every one of your future peers will have read my blog and thus be as informed as you), so you can hitch a ride with one of them, or steal their idea for how to get to these types of places.
• Cars on campus… No. Period. Not at Miami (even if you can – which is based on whether you live more than 200 miles away as the crow flies or not). Maybe at other schools, but it still seems like more responsibility than it’s worth to me.
• Financial aid varies depending on college. For me (note that Miami gave me the least in comparison to the other schools to which I applied), I make up for what I don’t get in financial aid by using massive amounts of toilet paper, paper towel, leaving the faucets running, and leaving lights on. Ok, not really. I did apply for other financial awards after I got here, which are based on my grades, involvement and activities.
• Class size is also only a little important. A good professor will make a classroom with 50 or more people in it fun. Conversely, a bad prof will make a class of any size miserable.
• Greek life has to be really something special to you for this to matter on where you go. I mean, you really have to want to pay for friends (Zing!) for this to be important enough for you to make such an important decision over.
• Party-life was discussed earlier. See previous blogs (4).

In short, you’re looking at the wrong things. You’re asking the wrong questions. You’re worried over trivial matters. And Greek systemites are now really pissed off at me. If it’s any consolation, I gave some thought to joining and my joke was only slightly intended to insult this time.

Now, I could just tell you straight-up exactly what to look for, what to ask about, and how to go about conducting a successful foray into an unknown campus. But where’s the fun in that? Heck, when have I ever given you that sort of useful information in such easy terms? So, instead, I’ve decided to give you several things you should consider when looking at colleges. Some of these are true and genuinely functional pieces of wisdom. Others are not. It’ll be like a game. You can try to guess which are good things and which aren’t. This has a dual purpose (like fans in an open-windowed, open-doored room): first, you’ll probably get one or two right on accident, thus edifying yourself; second, it’ll be more fun for me to write.

Potential Advice #1: You should find out whether or not I go to the university. The thought behind this is that if it’s good enough for me, it’ll be sweet for you.

Potential Advice #2: You should approach random students (the kind who have no vested interest in persuading you to come to the school) and ask them about the things they like and dislike about their university AND what they’ve done to help make the changes they seek.

Potential Advice #3: You should go to a school with broomball. Hell, I won’t even make you guess on this one, this should most definitely be something you find out about. Broomball is amazing, fun, and a form of exercise… win-win all the way.

Potential Advice #4: You should try to get students’ perspectives on professors. Specifically, do they have good relationships with them or do they have a hard time communicating and/or interacting with them.

Potential Advice #5: You should try to interact with current students. Sneak into a class and listen to what the professor says, see how students are responding, and talk with them both on and off campus. The thought here is that different schools generate drastically different demeanors in their students as a whole. You can get a good idea of the “feel” of a school this way than you can by listening to what the admissions people have to say about the school. In fact, I can sum up what they’ll say right here: “_____ (insert school name) is great! We’re excited about your interest and here ____, ____, ____, and ____ are the reasons why we’re better than everyone else. Actually, every other school is like the smelly kid in middle school who doesn’t know it yet. So don’t stink, come here, where everything smells like roses and whale urine!” (Note that several colognes and perfumes come from whale urine which is why they’re both too expensive to be taken seriously and why that wasn’t pure vulgarity on my part.)

Think about how much time I just saved you. You are most welcome.

Potential Advice #6: Keep an eye out for the squirrels at various colleges. They’ve been getting bolder with each passing week. For more on this, see previous blogs. V!

9/18/2006
Some of you may have seen the movie “A Beautiful Mind”. Now, I don’t like to refer to too many outside sources of entertainment because I am tremendously jealous of anything else having even the slightest bit of your attention, O my audience. However, this movie will, for right now, be useful in order to explain a few things. In it, the main character is a brilliant man who has an incredible—some would say gifted—ability to figure out complex patterns from seemingly unconnected and unrelated data. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “wow, what an arrogant…” because you think I’m comparing myself to this brilliant man. Well, I am. In a way. See, the character (sorry for the spoiler here) is also a bit crazy, a state into which I haven’t yet passed. Subtract from the movie’s character the extent of his brilliance that renders him gifted, get rid of the psychological problems, drop about 150 lbs, remove criminal charges for attacking someone with a telephone and you’ve got me… a scrawny, typical young man who has a moderate ability to see patterns.

Fact: I am out of shape. There is nothing quite like a game of broomball followed by a Club Broomball practice followed by a hockey scrimmage (all in one day) to remind me of just how much truth there is in my statement above. I am, to put it mildly for the sake of the children, in a great deal of pain.
Fact: Save for various personal memoirs largely written much after the fact, the “Founding Fathers” at the Philadelphia Convention (where they wrote the Constitution) did not keep any detailed record, that we know of, of what was said by the many people on the variety of topics discussed. For a government fanatic about recording every official speech, sentence, and phrase, this is pretty unusual behavior in my opinion. Here’s my speculation (which is why it’s not a Fact): they did keep a transcription and its only copy has been guarded by knights for centuries. Hidden, found, re-hidden, protected, and ultimately buried in some incredibly obvious spot with a multitude of clues directing an unlikely and unsuspecting scholar of symbols directly to it, all while he is being chased and shot at by a faction of over-zealous people who oppose the true words of the FFs being brought to the light of day. Yeah, sounds like a D.B. novel in the making if you ask me. Just remember, you read it here first and I don’t want Tom Hanks playing me.
Fact: Textbook buying for college is probably the single, most evident proof that there is some sort of inherently evil force in the realm of existence I call reality. You buy them for way too much and they sell back for next to nothing. Insert final exams (sell time). Repeat (buy-finals-sell). Here’s my sage-like advice: buy as many on-line as possible. Sure, you still can’t sell them back for much, but at least you don’t spend quite so much in the first place.
Fact: Parent visits take time. From everything. If your parents come down to visit, do your homework and don’t go out partying beforehand. Yes, it may not be as fun to do homework on your Friday night, but believe me, it’s even less fun to make it all up in a frantic rush late Sunday night or Monday evening. Not that this just happened to me or anything.

Like the squirrels, whose strategic plans are becoming more desperate and thus more obvious (they have resorted, like any good military commanders, to sending in their “cannon-fodder” in order to break down my primary defenses. Translated: they’ve been urging their smaller brethren, the chipmunks of Oxford, out ahead to distract me), there are behavioral patterns around me that I’m beginning to pick up on. It is about these patterns that I intend to write for this blog.

First, the squirrels. You may be sick of hearing about them. You may actually take my pseudo-paranoid musings about them at face value and think I’m a nut. You may even want to file charges against me for writing these scathing attacks on small, seemingly defenseless, woodland creatures. But what you don’t know is that this is my only possible course of action. You see, the squirrels have benevolent protection from the one, all-powerful book – the Miami Student Handbook – which outlines all the things that are illegal (and most likely fun) to do on campus. For example, as a student you can’t climb on trees on campus. As a student on campus, you also cannot lob water balloons out your window at casual passer-bys. And, as a student, you cannot harass, physically or verbally, the squirrels. A friend of mine found this out the hard way when he and some guys from his corridor sought to catch a squirrel with their lacrosse sticks to keep as a corridor mascot/pet. Yes, the squirrels have their paws in deep with the law-makers here at Miami.

And so, my words are my sword against these clever little rodents.

By the by, I have never actually looked up that exact ruling, so I could be way off base. I chalk this up to the “oh well, it makes for an interesting story” part of me.

I have also found that there is a direct correlation between about the third and fourth weeks of class and the number of people a) doing laundry and b) wearing ridiculous looking clothing. This one dawned on me when one day, having woken up at the crack of noon, I asked my roommate if he would like to fully clothe himself and get food with me. Agreeing, he walked over to his dresser and, to my utter horror, he pulled out a hideous, baggy, wrinkled, cram-it-in-the-back-and-only-keep-it-because-your-grandmother-bought-it-and-you-felt-too-bad-to-tell-her-you-don’t-like-it-but-she-always-expects-to-see-you-in-it, sleeveless shirt. Pulling it over his head, he saw my expression and sheepishly said “What? I’m on my last shirts. I guess it’s laundry time, huh?”

Needless to say, I let him borrow one of my shirts and we never mentioned the incident again.

The thing is that you have a limited quantity of (and space for) clothing. So, sooner or later (and right around weeks three and four for most people, I’ve noticed), you’ll run out of something. For me, looking back, it was underwear. I only had enough for about 3.5 weeks before I began considering just how gross turning a used pair inside out would be. (No, I didn’t do it.) Fixing this situation by purchasing more underwear, I am now limited by the number of my undershirts and I have been stuck this way for about 2.25 years.

Another thing that seems to deteriorate around this time is the forced bond of newbie-roommates doing things together. See, at the beginning of the semester, with every first-year freaking out about all the newness and freedoms of college, everyone strives pretty hard to be best friends with his or her roommate, if nothing else because they have high ideals of getting along with everyone and crap like that.

The simple fact is that people don’t always get along. This happened to me during my first semester of my first year. I ended up moving in (second semester) with another guy I met in a couple classes and we’re now best of friends (he’ll even be studying abroad in London with me in the spring).

Miami is set up so that you get randomly selected a roommate and if you don’t like it and have good reason for switching (for example, you’ve tried numerous times to tell them that leaving country music blaring in the room when they’re not there and they still keep doing it despite Resident Assistant intervention), you can change rooms. It strikes me (my roommate, who has lived with me for over a year now I might add, first pointed this trend out) that it is right around now that this mock-relationship begins to be truly tested. Suddenly people start having dinner alone or telling their roommate that they’re really just “too busy” to go do something, all the while frantically yet furtively IMing their friends to call and pretend to desperately need them for something. It’s pretty funny to watch when you’ve got a good friend who’s not only living with you, but happily (I think) plans on living with you for the next year as well.

I will close by saying that I did not intend for talking about laundry or roommates issues to scare you into doing something drastic like ceasing to wear underwear (eck) or immediately ditching your roommate (give him/her a chance). I know of a lot of people who got to be best friends with their roommate and most of the time things work out just fine. In fact, my best advice to all of you prospective students, and this isn’t Miami advice in particular, is to endeavor greatly to NOT live with someone you know when you go to college. I’ve seen too many BFFs (parents and cool people, this translates into “Best Friends Forever” in high school-ese) turn into not-so-BFFs to advocate living with someone you know. My advice: go random. If you love ‘em, great, you’ve got a new, random friend; if you hate ‘em, who cares, you didn’t pick ‘em.

I’ll close with some good advice a friend of mine who once tried to catch a squirrel with a lacrosse stick told me. He said, “Dave, you don’t have to love your roommate; you don’t have to like him; in fact, you don’t even have to tolerate him. You just have to not hate him so much that you want to smother him in his sleep.” Sound advice.

In short, Ed Harris isn’t really there.

9/11/2006
There is a fine art, when choosing your living arrangement, to selecting the perfect room. Up until about a moment ago, I had absolutely no idea what I was going to discuss in this week’s blog. However, as I sat here at my desk, pondering just how to go about setting you all off into fits of guffaws or giggles (your choice on which), the music I was listening to was temporarily drowned out by what sounded like several hundred motorcycles (in reality, it was just two—but they were loud) rip-roaring past my window. This is quite a feat, considering that I live three stories above the ground, and it brings up the important issue of selecting the best possible living arrangement.

Fact: I am not, in fact, paranoid: my roommate agrees with me that the squirrels are truly a problem and we both think that they (the squirrels) have at least two scouts posted outside of each of the doors of the residence hall in which we live, just to keep their beady eyes on our whereabouts and to report back to their superiors on our statuses (they know we’re onto them).
Fact: I am currently out of highlighters. My final two, which I have been nursing along for a few days, have bit the dust and I am now rendered all but ineffective in my studies (I do not know why, but I have a much easier time remembering/recalling what I have read when I can highlight the important parts). Needless to say, I need to acquire more.
Fact: Sports at Miami are set up hierarchically: Varsity athletics (we’re D1, which is, I think, a less-than-subtle reference to a series of terrible hockey movies) are of the highest order and you mostly have to be recruited to be a part of them. Then there are Club sports, for which you usually have to pay a hefty sum to be a member and usually they require pretty extensive time commitments – they do sometimes play against other schools and are more serious than the next option. The next option is intramurals, for which you also pay (though much, much less – think like 10-20 dollars), but in which anyone can join and participate. There are, without my normal exaggeration, literally tons of intramural sports at Miami.
Fact: Since I last wrote, I tripped on some fairly unforgiving cement sidewalk/steps and tore a pretty chunk of skin off of the front of my biggest toe on my right foot. No, in case you were wondering, it wasn’t an alcohol-related accident, I’m just naturally this clumsy. Luckily, so was Gerald Ford, and he was president at one point (albeit through some unlikely circumstances), so I’m not that worried about my own natural inclination to switch from vertical to horizontal unintentionally at any given time.

So, when you’re right out of high school, you know, fresh off the metaphorical boat, pre-Conan the Barbarian Arnold Schwarzenegger-style, and you’ve decided to come to Miami, one of the first things you’ll encounter is the continued influx of mail. Yeah, that’s right, colleges don’t get the hint that you don’t want to go to their school even after you’ve chosen Miami. I still get “come to our college” mail to this day. Ah well, I suppose the alternative is bills.

Back to task, you’ve decided to come to Miami and now it’s time to choose (insert dramatic music leading up to something exciting) a living-learning community.

Now, besides the DARS report (which I still haven’t figured out completely and which I believe the squirrels have more than a small hand – no pun intended – in designing), Miami’s living-learning community system is probably the single most confusing aspect about the university’s student policies. What are these mystical communities? Are they real places? Are they happy lands where people frolic and homework is always done ahead of time? Do they have soft serve ice cream stands at every corner?

No.

Living-learning communities are (and this is my own work here – I could look up what Miami defines them as, but then I’d have to go to much more trouble than writing this aside, which is something I am not willing to do) basically over-arching ideas to which each of us Miamians are supposed to feel a particular affinity or relationship. That is to say that the umpteen odd LLCs (living-learning community lingo) are supposed to fit, broadly speaking, a basic overall interest by which you and everyone else who selects that community are defined.

Yeah, I know you’re seeing the same holes in this logic as I do. Perhaps, not everyone can easily fit into such categories. Perhaps, we align directly with more than one. Perhaps, they should have a Comic-Books-Turned-Action-Movies-Rock LLC (this is something I’m going to petition for once I develop time travel and am coming back to be a first year student all over again). Anyhow, I’m sorry but I don’t make the policy, I just report on student life stuff and wow and amaze you with my vocabulary (see words like “guffaw” and “frolic”).

The university, after all the incoming students have selected their LLCs, then determines which buildings will house which LLCs. Let me repeat: the university selects the building in which various LLCs are placed. THIS MEANS (I all-caps for emphasis and I like pointing out the obvious) that you do not, upon entering Miami university, select a building to live in.

So you can’t ask “Dave, which is the best building to live in?” Why? Because, invariably, I will reply with the flippant response “the same one as me, because my presence makes it that much cooler in the warm months and hotter in the cold ones”. And no, I have never actually spoken those words, and yes, I could barely convince my fingers to complete typing that sentence (they, my fingers, happen to be renegotiating with my brain for longer break times and better benefits).

After your first year, however, you do get to select the building you live in on campus (that is, of course, if you stay on campus and choose not to move off – both options have their benefits and negatives, see the PC/Mac argument for my opinion on this subject). In fact, you get to select the very room in which you will be living. So which building and room should you choose to live in after your first year? The same one as me, of course.

9/06/2006
Because, as I’m sure you know by now, I crave attention and any sort of petty ego boost thrills, delights, and triggers all the happy sensors in my brain, I opted to put the link to my blog as one of my websites on my facebook “profile”. I call this a “profile” only loosely because it is, in fact only loosely a true view at aspects of me (or anyone who uses it for that matter). Anyhow, because I put it up there, a friend of mine who actually read my blog offered a few hints on topics I might be of some use in discussing. Unfortunately for her, I quickly dismissed these serious issues and began working on my latest Facts.

Fact: I am terribly compulsive when it comes to cleanliness and order. All of the films I own are alphabetically arranged, my books are lined up by subject and then by size, and my iTunes library has not a single “Track 01” to be found.
Fact: I have already used “blog”, “facebook” and “iTunes”. Can you tell what generation I’m coming from? It’s hard to believe I remember running DoS and actually, true, floppy disks (not the little 3.5 wannabes).
Fact: Despite the fact that Miami has had a short string of semi-high-profile crime alerts this semester alone (and we’re only in week 2!), I still feel quite safe on campus. As do most of my friends (or at least the ones with whom I have spoken about the subject – both male and female).
Fact: I have a surround sound system set up in my room and a neighbor whose domicile happens to align directly in the line-of-fire of most of my speakers… poor kid.

I have decided to stop beating around the bush. To stop prancing along the roof. To stop tip-toeing on the issues. To stop trying to come up with ways of saying that I have avoided serious subjects up until now. There, done. That’s right, I am not messing around with this blog. I’m getting right down to the nitty-gritty, too-truthful-to-really-be-getting-Miami’s-endorsement reality with this one (don’t worry, I still am). I am going to address serious subjects like nightlife, safety, and drinking.

But I already talked about safety in my Dave’s Facts section (see Fact 3), you say? Why, you’re right! Well, that’s “one song in the book” as they (that is, Tenacious D) say. Moving on. Miami’s nightlife. Hmm, this is a tricky subject because, for a variety of reasons, I live in serious tension between my desire to convey knowledge and my desire to be funny, and also between my desire to be honest and forthright and my desire to legally cover my own rear end.

Let’s start with this: I have now been out of the college-search scene for 3 years. Thus, I am not up-to-date with what Miami is considered. Is it a party school? Is it not? I think that the answers to these questions rest completely on important qualifiers and criteria, all of which might be different for each different person. For example, for the incredibly sheltered person (and hey, my mother did her best to keep me from the evils of PG-13 movies until I was actually 13 – with little success, I might add), the fact that, if you really want it, you can probably find some sort of social gathering (not huge, raving parties, but certainly less-than-academic-minded behavior) just about any night of the week can mean a drastically different lifestyle to what you might have been used to in high school. Then again, to the party-waiting-to-happen-at-the-drop-of-the-hat high schooler, the fact that academics really are important to most Miami students (social gatherings really taper off I’ve noticed during the weeks preceding mid-term and final exam weeks) might also suggest that Miami students don’t know how to have a “good time”.

As with the question of laptop or desktop, I’m not entirely sure I can truly give you sound advice in this subject – which is precisely why I am going out of my way to talk about it (remember my mother’s intent with regards to movies and the actual degree of success) – but I will say this: my good friend, let’s call him “Kyle”, but who shall at this time remained unnamed (his alter ego is still obscure on campus), once said to someone asking about Miami’s party scene that the unofficial saying at Miami is something like: “party hard, study harder”. That is to say that it’s great, fun, and dandy to enjoy oneself (I, for example, watch a lot of movies and work on my one-line zingers while avoiding sunlight and human interaction), but it’s also important for most Miami students to keep at their school work… it is, after all, the reason we’re here, right?

I didn’t really cover drinking above, did I? Well, that’s ok, I’ll get it now. Drinking is illegal if you’re under 21 in the state of Ohio. I know, I know, drinking was, at one time, legal for people under 21; then for no one, regardless of age; then only for people 18 and over; then only 21 years old and over; and so on. Suffice to say that the history of America has been anything but definitive on what is the correct age to start drinking alcohol. Luckily for America, I am definitive and I do have the logical answer… (drum roll please) … never! Uh-oh, I can feel my audience slipping away (for various reasons – the parents think “this kid really does avoid human interaction” and the students think “they must have upped his pay for these blogs”)… but wait, you, O my audience, are failing to read carefully what I said. I made the argument that logically, we would never drink. Even while certain wines might have some positive health benefits (which, I might add can also be obtained through other dietary sources), there is no real logical reason why we drink (it’s not good for us, it causes major safety issues, some people relate it to cultural decadence – not me – and it makes people’s breath smell pretty bad – also not me, my breath is like roses and cherry lollipop all the time, regardless of what I eat or drink), so, logically, we would never start. The good news, for alcoholic beverage companies at least, is that people rarely follow logic (I would cite the relative lack of fuel-efficient vehicles in our country as good evidence to support this claim, but, I don’t really have to since no one can respond to this anyway!)… and alcohol-consumption does exist on Miami’s campus and surrounding areas.

I think it is important, however, to note that drinking pretty directly aligns itself with the topic of nightlife and reading this blog: if you really want to do it (if there’s a will…), you will figure out how to go about getting ahold of it (…there’s a way – please note that italics here signify sage-like advice). Parents, don’t be under any illusions. Kids have a way of trying things (hand-in-fire, going to the bathroom without diapers on, not telling you when they’ve filled the diapers they do have on, eating worms, dirt, and other foul things, et cetera), and college is certainly no exception.

But I have hope. Just as the will-way thing works on behalf of students being able to maybe get their hands on things they ought not (legally) be imbibing, the will-way can also work in favor of sticking with America’s tricky and confusing alcohol policies. For example, I didn’t drink when I first came to college. In fact, I didn’t drink my second year. See, it was very important to me to be both a law abiding citizen (and I didn’t want the hassles that goes with the responsibility of the drinking person, especially not an underage drinking citizen, where responsibility becomes heavily mixed apprehension of the law). So, through two years, my will paved my way and beyond that… well, I can say that even I, at one point in time, have filled a diaper or two without telling my mum about it.

8/28/2006
The wonderful thing about opinions is that, no matter what they are, they can’t really be wrong. Sure, I may be terribly misinformed, skewed, or biased on some matter… but to be wrong? Nope. You can be wrong about statements and about facts, but opinions can’t be wrong.

Fact: Someone will probably want to argue with what I just wrote. I laugh because there’s no way they can argue with me. I reign supreme on this blog. *insert sinister super-villain laughter.
Fact: Bringing a car to Miami’s campus is a bad idea and should be avoided for as long as humanly possible. You can walk everywhere and if you need to go somewhere that can’t be reached by walking, it’s pretty likely that of the 15,000 students or so who attend Miami, someone else will have a similar interest/need and you could probably get a ride to and from wherever it is that you need/want to go.
Fact: I signed up for Basic Ice Skating. Yes, as a course. Yes, I am looking forward to it. It’s two credit hours, held four times a week, for 50 minutes at a time, over half the semester (called a “Sprint Course” due to its being less than a semester).

Since you’re reading my blog, my opinion must hold some weight for you. Either that or my style is amusing enough to keep you here. It must be one of these two reasons, because I am not so delusional as to guess that you’re expecting me to actually discuss something pertinent to you, my audience. Glad we see eye to eye.

What’s that? You’re still hung up on two of my sixteen credit hours being Basic Ice Skating? I’m sure you’re wondering what the reasons are for this course decision. First, there’s the basic graduation requirement. To graduate from Miami, one needs 128 credit hours, which, if you divide it between four years or eight semesters, ends up averaging at sixteen credit hours each semester. (Or at least I hope it does, I’ve never actually bothered to check the math.) Anyway, I wanted to hit at least sixteen hours, so that I wasn’t living gripped in fear that I might not graduate (this isn’t the case: due to transfer credit from AP and summer coursework, I’m way ahead in credit hours, but that doesn’t make the story nearly as interesting). My other fourteen credit hours are in the following courses:

GRK 101 (4 hrs)
HON 280 (1 hr)
HST 296 (3 hrs)
LAT 410 (3 hrs)
POL 101 (3 hrs)

Now, looking at that list you may be thinking a couple things. You may say to yourself, “What in the world do those abbreviations mean,” or “My oh my, as a junior, the ol’ boy sure is taking a lot of 100-level courses!” or maybe even, “What do the numbers mean?” So here’s a quick crash course in Miami course naming. The abbreviations signify the field (LAT = Latin; GRK = Greek; HON = Honors, etc.), and the numbers indicate the level of the course (in terms of difficulty and the year you should aim to take the course – obviously, based on the 100-level courses included, your fearless hero and blogger has been putting some things off). Thus, 100-level courses are introductory, generally easier, and directed towards first year students and those who are unfamiliar with the material. 200- and 300-level courses are intermediate and more in-depth and aimed at sophomores and juniors, and 400-level courses are very intense and greatly immersed in specific fields. Edification complete.

Anyway, going back to my hours. So, I was sitting on a lazy fourteen hours and decided I needed one more course to round out my schedule. At first I thought to myself that I should take something to fill a requirement, but I quickly dismissed this idea into the general file folder in my head filled with “good, useful ideas” and moved on. My next thought was to take a course that really interested me. I was pondering just what I should take when I realized that I was late for a hockey game. Now, I started playing ice hockey spring semester of my sophomore year, and prior to playing, I had only ice skated a whopping six times in the 20-odd years leading up to my first game. Needless to say, I was no Wayne Gretzky out on the ice.

Fast forward about 45 minutes. I am now on the ice, literally, as I have fallen. And it dawns on me that maybe, just maybe, it would be beneficial for me to get better at ice skating in order to compete without looking like an utter fool at hockey.

So, Basic Ice Skating: It’s a course I’m interested in taking. It probably won’t be drastically difficult. It has practical application.

Since I’ve been talking about course selection, you may be wondering how to select courses. Beyond saying that it’s done on-line, I can’t really offer too much advice in this category, simply because in all likelihood you won’t have the same major(s) as me and thus my advice isn’t terribly applicable. For example, some majors are really sequential and a lot of the courses you have to take are already selected, or limited in their scope. Heck, come to think of it, since there is only one upper-level (200- or above) Latin course offered each semester, I’m sort of limited too! (Thank goodness for departmental advisors. They help handle this sort of thing, which is good, because I probably couldn’t on my own.)

I will offer you this hint: most likely you will have room to take an elective or two, and I’d highly suggest that you take your time to peruse the bulletin, which Miami hands out to all incoming freshmen (and prospective students, if they’re interested). There are some appealing, non-mainstream classes that might grab your eye or tickle your fancy. Check it out.

So let’s recap:

1. My blog, my opinion. You decide if it matters to you or not.
2. Unless you want to be a nefarious character (that is, a fifth or sixth year “super-senior”), make an appointment and actually talk to your advisor and/or become acquainted with the bulletin (I hear it likes long, quiet walks on the beach).

I can’t ice skate, but I’m going to remedy this situation hopefully. If not, at least the other people in the class are going to have a good time watching me fall.


8/21/2006
Greetings, greetings, O my audience! I am back, writing yet again to give you insight, wisdom, and probably more references to comic books that have been turned into action movies than you really want to read about. But I also have some exciting stuff to talk about after the break, so stick around through these brief messages

Fact: I studied abroad for three weeks in Italy during the summer after my freshman year. I traveled Europe for two weeks, then spent two weeks studying in Rome and a week in Naples. I will also be studying abroad in London, England for the spring semester of this upcoming year, and plan on doing plenty of travel during my tenure over in the U.K.
Fact: I am a big fan of Kevin Smith’s movies, Douglas Adams’ books, and I do my best to read only science fiction and fantasy for my leisure reading (I get plenty of the real world each day by living, when I read I like to lose myself a bit in tales of an impossible nature).
Fact: There is a serious problem, in my opinion, with Miami University’s policy towards the squirrels on campus.
Fact: I will never answer the questions “Mac or PC?” or “Desktop or Laptop?” because it’s a purely preferential issue, and thus totally irrelevant to me. Currently, I have a PC desktop, but I plan on also purchasing an Apple laptop in the near future (for travel abroad purposes, the desktop is a bit bulky and probably won’t fit in most overhead storage). So, like I said, don’t expect me to answer or even address these questions. Make your own decision and then argue with the other side vehemently just because they have different opinions.

Remember how I said I had “some exciting stuff to talk about”? Yeah, I forgot what they were, so I guess I’ll just ramble (I’m sure that you, my weekly readers and biggest fans, are shocked and amazed by this result!).

Move-in day. There is a topic I can talk about. Yeah, so you’ve made your college decision (*cough cough Miami cough cough*), you’ve cleaned out Target, Wal-Mart and Bed, Bath & Beyond buying various things to fill your dorm room, and now you’ve loaded up your vehicle, torn up the grass to get close, and are sweating as you watch some overly-eager campus staff member try to direct the utter chaos and confusion around you. Ah, move-in day is a fine time. Having done it now 3 times, I have become something of an expert at it. I can break down and pack everything I need to survive in my room in under an hour and half. I know where certain things have to go to best keep the room open, easy on the eyes, and not looking over-the-brim full of junk.

Will I impart this knowledge upon you? Of course not, it’s something you have to learn for yourself. I wouldn’t want to be the one to burst your bubble by telling you what to bring or not to bring or even where to put it. In all reality, a great deal of the process is determined by how you set up the basics in your room. Do you bunk or un-bunk your beds? Can you stand having your desk close to your roommate or do you need plenty of space? If your dressers are moveable and your closet door wide enough to fit it in the closet, are you willing to push it in and give room space, or do you have so many shirts to hang up that this is impossible?

I can’t answer these questions, but I can tell you that I write with my left hand.

As far as moving in and out of college living, here’s general advice: err on the side of less. You can always have stuff mailed to you at mom and dad’s expense. If you, however, bring too much, you get hosed and have to send it back yourself. Also, try to live with your beds bunked. It frees up so much more space and, honestly, when you’re asleep, it doesn’t matter to your body much what’s around you, or how near the floor you are. Worry much more about whether your roommate will snore than about bunking issues.

When packing, don’t over-pack boxes. I say this for a couple of reasons. First, if it’s heavy when you first try to lift it, it sure as hell isn’t going to get lighter by the time you’ve lugged it up stairs, through doors, and past ump-teen other rooms. Second, an over-packed box, no matter how seemingly strong and sealed it may seem, has the very real possibility of bursting open, thus exposing your Scooby-doo boxers, personal products, and Catwoman posters to the casual passer-by. And when it’s move-in day, there are a heck of a lot of casual passer-bys. Third, you don’t win a medal for having the fewest boxes. If you have only 3 boxes that are each so large they won’t fit through the door and you throw your back out lifting them, you’re not better off than the “inefficient” packer who has 8 or 9 smaller boxes that he or she can carry with relative ease.

Ah, move-in day. You see new faces, smell new smells, and get to say a final good-bye to your potentially sobbing parents. Then again, you might get lucky, like I did, and have an older brother who got all the tears so that, when it’s your turn to go away, mom tosses you out of the car with your two bags and says “you’re lucky we slowed down to 10 miles per hour before I did that…” and the rest is lost because she’s already accelerating away into the distance.

Middle-child syndrome speaking there, I suppose. Mom goes out of her way to combat it with me, so I like to reward her compassion by making her feel bad as often as possible. Hey, you don’t get the self-dubbed title “Devil Child” without hard work and a little mischief.


8/18/2006
You may have thought, upon reading my introductory blog, that I was trying to be amusing or clever or witty or maybe even a bit silly to ensnare my audience, but that I would, in writing afterwards, soon lose my flare and tone it down. Sadly, this is not the case. This is just how I write when I have a say in the style and flavor of my writing.

Fact: Despite what the little caption below my picture says, I am not just majoring in Classics. I am also working on a Latin degree and a minor in History.
Fact: I am an avid broomball player. More to come on this in future blogs.
Fact: My favorite fictional characters are Pe Ell and Truls Rohk (author: Terry Brooks), Fingolfin (author: J.R.R. Tolkien), Boba Fett (I begrudgingly give credit for this one to George Lucas), Batman (co-created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger), and while this is an old one, Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul (author: K.A. Applegate). I’m not sure why I added this fact as I do not plan on continuing this train of thought beyond… yep, it’s gone.

See, the reality of having a blog and the inherent responsibility to you, my audience, is that I have actually maintain this bad boy with semi-frequent updates. Not being one to do things ad hoc, I have thus decided that I will do my very best to post once a week. It’s almost like homework, except that home is 4.5 hours drive away, making the locale difficult, and this is only “work” in terms of the actual energy required to peck away at my keyboard for a couple of minutes. Plus, I never type anything nearly this complex in my actual homework. Nay, my sentences for that area of life consist mostly of concise, precise, academically structured sentences. I have included the following to give you a clue of what I am talking about:

See Dave. See Spot. Spot is Dave’s dog. This is coincidental because the dog named Spot actually has a spot on him. There is just one spot on Spot. In fact, one could potentially spot the spot on Spot.

In truth, I don’t actually have a dog named Spot. Nor does my academic writing really look quite like the above. But it did amuse me to write “spot” three times in one sentence without just saying “Spot, spot, spot.” I do have a dog, but she is back home and her name is Vera, which is Latin for genuine, honest, trustworthy, et cetera. I had high hopes for this dog, as I got her as a puppy and began training her in Latin commands (hoping that when someone spoke English to her she would give them a confused look and begin licking various body parts while ignoring the obviously barbaric language). This plan, however, backfired. First, I did not take into account my extended family’s willingness (they had very little of this) to learn the simple Latin commands (thus giving Vera absolutely no consistency). Second, I failed to foresee just how motivated by her stomach my future puppy would be. She is very intelligent and will, if you’re holding food or something that looks vaguely food-like, do whatever it takes to get whatever-it-is out of your hand and into her belly as fast as possible. She responds not to Latin, English, or any other language. Her tongue is that of all things food-related.

What does Vera have to do with being a college student, you might ask. Well, it may not be something you think about too much right now, but the process of leaving for college is not all fun and games and freedom and sleepless nights. It also includes leaving cute little critters at home, in my case my puppy Vera and my younger brother Jared (I tried training him in Latin too, but I unfortunately started too late and he, being much smarter than I, just ignored me and went back to reading. Being 18 now, I’m sure that he also wouldn’t appreciate my reference to him as a “cute little critter”, so let’s keep that on the down-low when he’s around, all right?).

In all seriousness though, it’s the stupid little things that are familiar to you and you don’t really expect to miss much until you’re actually gone. Mark Twain said, among other things, that “familiarity breeds contempt,” but it also engenders a sense of place, and the loss of that sense of place can be really truly disturbing and unexpected when one goes away to college.

This is not to say that I advocate staying at home and commuting. On the contrary, one of the best pieces of advice I can possibly give is to whatever degree possible (within comfort range), get away from home and live on campus. I love my parents, but the process of living on my own and figuring out my priorities and time management skills has been a very important part of my college education. I am not telling everyone to move 4.5 hours away from home and go to school. But do make every effort possible to live on campus in the beginning of your collegiate career, for the experience if nothing else. And this advice works whether you’re going to school 10 minutes away or 10 hours away. Pull yourself out of your familiar zone, live with the discomfort of being uprooted for a bit and learn from the ordeal… eventually you’ll re-establish your own new sense of place. Or you’re spontaneously combust. All right, maybe I stretched it a bit on that one.

8/14/2006
Apparently, some scientists, somewhere, did some sort of testing which concluded that… Hold on one moment, let me take a step back and give you a little background information.

Fact: My name is David Sheehan. (Sub-fact: Sometimes I introduce myself like Bond.)
Fact: I am currently an Honors student at Miami University (insert fanfare, confetti, happy crowds, etc.).
Fact: During the summer after my sophomore year I worked for the Honors & Scholars Program as both a summer orientation staff member as well as the Visit Coordinator (a fancy title for a job that has been more or less become completely electronic, thus rendering me useless).
Fact: Because of my sometimes jovial nature and natural ability to wow, amaze, and charm my superiors, they, for reasons unbeknownst to me, decided it was a good idea to contract me for a highly classified, super- über-important position in their newly created Honors & Scholars website.

All right, now that we’re on the same page I can continue. So these scientists, with their scientific method, determined/concluded/found/confirmed that prospective college students and their parents, when perusing various universities’ websites online, seem to appreciate seeing how life goes for a student. This finding was then related to one of the Honors & Scholars staff members who, in turn, asked me if I would be interested in being that student. I, like any smart student worker, asked if there was any pay increase (student wages are notoriously low nationwide), a question to which the response was a resounding “no”.

This is where, were I not something of a gloryhound (and more than a little bored), our story would end. Luckily for the Honors & Scholars blog (which may have, in another universe, landed a more responsible, credible, respectable, and concise Honors student blogger), I changed my mind… and so, as a result, here we are.

It appears that now, for something like two more years, you, my faithful (and probably accidental) audience will have the distinct honor (and I’m truly stretching the definition of that word in this context) of being somewhat privy to various parts of my life and have some limited access into how my (admittedly warped little) mind perceives the world around me.

O my audience, we are embarking on a journey through my Junior and Senior years together, and, as only a Classicist such as myself can provide, it is sure to be filled with epic tales of courage, love, loss, happiness, sadness, squirrels, and (occasionally) useful knowledge about being both an Honors and a Miami-in-general student, to help give you a sense of what life is like here in Oxford, Ohio… and no, we never get treated badly by the hurricanes, so don’t ask, it’s an old joke and rude to those who truly suffer through such calamities. The worst we get here is some nasty humidity, bad tan lines in the middle of winter, and cicadas (all tales best left for another time).




That’s it. That’s my introduction. There isn’t anymore. No, I’m not going to do the standard Name/Major/Year/Residency Choice/Desktop-laptop thing because then I won’t have any useful knowledge to add to future blogs. And yes, I am both very sarcastic and only infrequently serious about most things, regardless of their relative importance to life, the universe, and everything else. My intent is to inform, amuse, muse, and get a little extra dough in the process, so don’t expect any altruistic motivation… just my own flavor of honesty.