It's All Coming Back To Me Now..... Freshman Year In College
So… as promised… reflections on my first real big fancy function at LMU.
For some pregame… as part of the function… I had to make a board with all the photos and mini biographies of all of the new grdaute students. I did the bios off of information sheets they filled out at orientation. Well… included in that job was chasing down all the people who a). didn’t have their ID card and so had no photo for us and b). who didn’t come to orientation and therefore didn’t fill out an info sheet. Much annoyance. By the day of the event I had 2 people with no photos and 1 person with no bio. So they got stuck without things. But yeah… writing biographies about people you either don’t know or don’t know well….. really fun. Especially when thy write names of places that I have no idea what they are or how they should be listed… thanks to yahoo search for the massive help it provided on figuring out all of that. But still… annoying.
So yeah… to start off with the actual day of the event… my boss Jen was really sick. She had the flu. She shouldn’t have been there at all… but she was. I think that was bad as it is. So she came in to our office at like 2 to check up on stuff. And she was just pissed and taking it out on us. She came in and looked at our board and asked what was going on with it. The photos were up on the board as well as the title message. I had just finished designing how I wanted the bios and had printed them out. Abby was going to cut them up and put them on the board. I told Jen as much. And she was all… that’s not good enough… because this board looks terrible. Things were not good. I was all…. huh what? I just sat there stunned. I mean… I have never ever seen Jen angry or anything.. I didn’t think she was capable of it.
So then Jen looks to Abby who has her back to Jen because she’s cutting out the bios. And Jen is all… Abby…. look at me when I’m talking to you. It was all… oh shit. Her tone was so pissed. Then Jen lambasted her for not meeting Jen to setup the tables, except Abby had but the tables weren’t there so she had come back to the office. Yeah… so both Abby and I just apologized. I tried to lighten the mood and tell Jen that we had everything taken care of that the board was going to be done in plenty of time and that everything was going to go great…. but she was hearing none of it. Luckily Jen’s boss sent Jen home at 3 to like rest. It was good.
So…. preparation was crazy. Richard…. my officially assigned mentor (each new student is assigned a mentor to kind of guide them) was on the flower arrangements. He was fantastic… actually worked for a florist before… so he spent 5 hours on 8 arrangements…. but they looked amazing…. like wedding quality.
Then came setup… putting white Christmas lights on all of the fake plants in the room, setting up the flower arrangements…. setting up the drink station… I as in charge of maintaining the bar and keeping it stocked and bottles open. The place looked amazing. Abby and I struggled for like 30 minutes to get the sound system to work so we could get some nice relaxed music going too. It was awesome. I should totally include links to the pictures once they go up on the website… because the place looked awesome.
But yeah… then the event started and it was cool… lots of people showed up… we used 4 out of the 5 big rounds that were set up…. so pretty good on attendance… especially considering all the junior faculty was at a required meeting they had and therefore couldn’t attend the dinner. But it was fun… I was all nervous and awkward in my mingling and socializing and trying to watch the bar…. but I knew most people so it went well.
So then we ate and I got the awesome table Richard invited me to sit with him and Edin. I’ll mention Edin later… he’s the one giving me a hard time about Manny. And the rest of the table was pretty awesome… including this girl Mercedes who is in one of my classes and really awesome. Also, one of my professors, Dr. Siker who teaches my new testament course. Then Joseph who’s in my Psychological Foundations of Pastoral Counseling Course as well as his girlfriend whom he brought. Lastly… Sr. Perpetua…. who is a sweet older nun. It was a cool table.
So… why was the table cool… first off… Dr. Siker and I got to bond fairly well. He asked about my collar because it had been killing him and he wanted to know about it… so that was a fun conversation… so then we talked about his daughter who’s massively into punk and stuff and how every so often some real good punk bands come through LA and she hits every show. It was nice.
But then…. Dr. Siker started initiating the fun conversation. First he wanted everyone to talk about what plans they had out of the program… which was interesting to listen too… and Dr. Siker’s plan was to retire as chair of the department so he could spend more time writing and researching and with students. (insert….. Dr. Siker is a protestant and writing an article about homosexuality and Judaism… and I’ve read most of his articles on homosexuality since I found out he wrote about that…. he’s a very cool guy on the right side of the debate)
So after that… he moved onto politics….and was all… Obama or McCain. That was a fun conversation as I was all… not Palin. Exept man does that woman get to me… she’s a fucking hockey mom… she dropped the opening puck at the Flyers opener with Ranger’s captain and Alaska native Scott Gomez taking the faceoff…. which is just awesome. Plus she’s hot… plus she has just the most endearing and funny and entertaining personality when she’s not crazy or clueless. I mean… I want to route for her…. I really do…. and then she talks about creationism and the endtimes and the evil of gays and I cry.
So yeah.. finally he moved onto prop 8. yes or no. Proposition 8 here in CA is a ban on gay marriage. So he introduced it all… so.. because I’m curious….. let’s all pretend Jason is no sitting at this table…. so what do you guys think of proposition 8. It got Sr. Perpetua to admit she’s against gay marriage and I got to go toe to toe with her… and Dr. Siker kept questioning her as to why she felt that way…. but she felt put on the spot and didn’t want to go into it. I told her to come talk to me sometime…. I would have a blast talking to her about it. So yeah… it was a fucking awesome table conversation.
The night was just fun… I drank 3 glasses of wine…so was nicely relaxed and having a lot of fun. It was just such an awesome experience. Plus I took home 3 half full bottles of wine, and like 2 trays and 3 Tupperware containers of extra food. Fuck yeah… I am Scavenger Master. I waste nothing…. plus God does it save on buying food.
So yeah… Edin. besides giving me trouble for not liking Manny and claiming that it was all a racist conspiracy against him in Boston and not at all related to him beating up 75 y/o men for not giving him extra tickets and faking injuries because he wanted more money or didn’t want to face a hard pitcher to damage his numbers as he’s coming up for contract…… anyway…. he works on the Latino committee of his local church and was fighting to get use of the big kitchen at their biggest fundraiser…. since the kitchen is always given to the evil Filipinos who are smaller in number but greater in favor with the Church. So he asked me to help him write a persuasive letter to argue his case to get his community the kitchen. It was so much fucking fun. I mean… I rarely get to write stuff like that… being all persuasive and stuff in a non-academic argument kind of way. It was a blast and apparently it did work some which is cool. Now both communities are going to share the kitchen. But he’s wicked cool… also a grad student in theo, we just have no classes together to anything… but he comes by to hang out and stuff sometimes.
That’s it for school/work related. Now we come to the massively strange event of the day. I get an IM. No idea who it is… but the screenname totally seems familiar. He calls me by name… so he knows who I am. He asks if I remember him…. I’m all…. no clue. So he gives me a hint. We used to watch Everwood together. I’m all….. Everwood say what? I was like…. no clue… I remember I first watched that show freshman year in Michigan… it could’ve been one of the people on my floor or something. Yeah… it was Gary… my freshman roommate at Michigan… the one that made fun of me behind my back for being fat (he and his friends joked that if they threw a thing of ice cream out a window I’d leap out to chase it) and the one that would only live with a homosexual if it was in a cage. Yeah… I was all…. WTF? Am I actually talking to him?
But it was cool. I don’t think he knows anything about me… nor do I know how he found me except I had this screenname back then. We didn’t get to into it, so he still knows nothing about me… which will be curious if he continues to talk to me. But… he spoke to me out of the blue because he wants to rewatch Everwood and was reading about Diablo 3 coming out and both reminded him of me. I was all… awwwww… that’s kinda nice. So yeah… it was interesting. He works in VA as an industrial engineer at a health system.
So yeah… it was just so shocking and out of left field….. but kinda nice. I figured he’d found me because I now recently have a facebook because there are certain people back in MA that want to chat with me and that’s the only way they do things. But yeah… that wasn’t it. It really was just out of nothing. Just so strange to me. Strange… but kinda cool. Just makes me shake my head because I was such a screwup and mess back then. I mean… he only saw the worst year of my life. That’s a great first impression. So yeah… it shall be interesting to see if we like talk more. Plus now I’m all anime at things when he was the original one to try to get me into it with Gundam. We might have more in common now than we did back then. Could be cool.
So yeah… that’s all for now I believe. Now comes crazy midterm week…. should be a blast.
For some pregame… as part of the function… I had to make a board with all the photos and mini biographies of all of the new grdaute students. I did the bios off of information sheets they filled out at orientation. Well… included in that job was chasing down all the people who a). didn’t have their ID card and so had no photo for us and b). who didn’t come to orientation and therefore didn’t fill out an info sheet. Much annoyance. By the day of the event I had 2 people with no photos and 1 person with no bio. So they got stuck without things. But yeah… writing biographies about people you either don’t know or don’t know well….. really fun. Especially when thy write names of places that I have no idea what they are or how they should be listed… thanks to yahoo search for the massive help it provided on figuring out all of that. But still… annoying.
So yeah… to start off with the actual day of the event… my boss Jen was really sick. She had the flu. She shouldn’t have been there at all… but she was. I think that was bad as it is. So she came in to our office at like 2 to check up on stuff. And she was just pissed and taking it out on us. She came in and looked at our board and asked what was going on with it. The photos were up on the board as well as the title message. I had just finished designing how I wanted the bios and had printed them out. Abby was going to cut them up and put them on the board. I told Jen as much. And she was all… that’s not good enough… because this board looks terrible. Things were not good. I was all…. huh what? I just sat there stunned. I mean… I have never ever seen Jen angry or anything.. I didn’t think she was capable of it.
So then Jen looks to Abby who has her back to Jen because she’s cutting out the bios. And Jen is all… Abby…. look at me when I’m talking to you. It was all… oh shit. Her tone was so pissed. Then Jen lambasted her for not meeting Jen to setup the tables, except Abby had but the tables weren’t there so she had come back to the office. Yeah… so both Abby and I just apologized. I tried to lighten the mood and tell Jen that we had everything taken care of that the board was going to be done in plenty of time and that everything was going to go great…. but she was hearing none of it. Luckily Jen’s boss sent Jen home at 3 to like rest. It was good.
So…. preparation was crazy. Richard…. my officially assigned mentor (each new student is assigned a mentor to kind of guide them) was on the flower arrangements. He was fantastic… actually worked for a florist before… so he spent 5 hours on 8 arrangements…. but they looked amazing…. like wedding quality.
Then came setup… putting white Christmas lights on all of the fake plants in the room, setting up the flower arrangements…. setting up the drink station… I as in charge of maintaining the bar and keeping it stocked and bottles open. The place looked amazing. Abby and I struggled for like 30 minutes to get the sound system to work so we could get some nice relaxed music going too. It was awesome. I should totally include links to the pictures once they go up on the website… because the place looked awesome.
But yeah… then the event started and it was cool… lots of people showed up… we used 4 out of the 5 big rounds that were set up…. so pretty good on attendance… especially considering all the junior faculty was at a required meeting they had and therefore couldn’t attend the dinner. But it was fun… I was all nervous and awkward in my mingling and socializing and trying to watch the bar…. but I knew most people so it went well.
So then we ate and I got the awesome table Richard invited me to sit with him and Edin. I’ll mention Edin later… he’s the one giving me a hard time about Manny. And the rest of the table was pretty awesome… including this girl Mercedes who is in one of my classes and really awesome. Also, one of my professors, Dr. Siker who teaches my new testament course. Then Joseph who’s in my Psychological Foundations of Pastoral Counseling Course as well as his girlfriend whom he brought. Lastly… Sr. Perpetua…. who is a sweet older nun. It was a cool table.
So… why was the table cool… first off… Dr. Siker and I got to bond fairly well. He asked about my collar because it had been killing him and he wanted to know about it… so that was a fun conversation… so then we talked about his daughter who’s massively into punk and stuff and how every so often some real good punk bands come through LA and she hits every show. It was nice.
But then…. Dr. Siker started initiating the fun conversation. First he wanted everyone to talk about what plans they had out of the program… which was interesting to listen too… and Dr. Siker’s plan was to retire as chair of the department so he could spend more time writing and researching and with students. (insert….. Dr. Siker is a protestant and writing an article about homosexuality and Judaism… and I’ve read most of his articles on homosexuality since I found out he wrote about that…. he’s a very cool guy on the right side of the debate)
So after that… he moved onto politics….and was all… Obama or McCain. That was a fun conversation as I was all… not Palin. Exept man does that woman get to me… she’s a fucking hockey mom… she dropped the opening puck at the Flyers opener with Ranger’s captain and Alaska native Scott Gomez taking the faceoff…. which is just awesome. Plus she’s hot… plus she has just the most endearing and funny and entertaining personality when she’s not crazy or clueless. I mean… I want to route for her…. I really do…. and then she talks about creationism and the endtimes and the evil of gays and I cry.
So yeah.. finally he moved onto prop 8. yes or no. Proposition 8 here in CA is a ban on gay marriage. So he introduced it all… so.. because I’m curious….. let’s all pretend Jason is no sitting at this table…. so what do you guys think of proposition 8. It got Sr. Perpetua to admit she’s against gay marriage and I got to go toe to toe with her… and Dr. Siker kept questioning her as to why she felt that way…. but she felt put on the spot and didn’t want to go into it. I told her to come talk to me sometime…. I would have a blast talking to her about it. So yeah… it was a fucking awesome table conversation.
The night was just fun… I drank 3 glasses of wine…so was nicely relaxed and having a lot of fun. It was just such an awesome experience. Plus I took home 3 half full bottles of wine, and like 2 trays and 3 Tupperware containers of extra food. Fuck yeah… I am Scavenger Master. I waste nothing…. plus God does it save on buying food.
So yeah… Edin. besides giving me trouble for not liking Manny and claiming that it was all a racist conspiracy against him in Boston and not at all related to him beating up 75 y/o men for not giving him extra tickets and faking injuries because he wanted more money or didn’t want to face a hard pitcher to damage his numbers as he’s coming up for contract…… anyway…. he works on the Latino committee of his local church and was fighting to get use of the big kitchen at their biggest fundraiser…. since the kitchen is always given to the evil Filipinos who are smaller in number but greater in favor with the Church. So he asked me to help him write a persuasive letter to argue his case to get his community the kitchen. It was so much fucking fun. I mean… I rarely get to write stuff like that… being all persuasive and stuff in a non-academic argument kind of way. It was a blast and apparently it did work some which is cool. Now both communities are going to share the kitchen. But he’s wicked cool… also a grad student in theo, we just have no classes together to anything… but he comes by to hang out and stuff sometimes.
That’s it for school/work related. Now we come to the massively strange event of the day. I get an IM. No idea who it is… but the screenname totally seems familiar. He calls me by name… so he knows who I am. He asks if I remember him…. I’m all…. no clue. So he gives me a hint. We used to watch Everwood together. I’m all….. Everwood say what? I was like…. no clue… I remember I first watched that show freshman year in Michigan… it could’ve been one of the people on my floor or something. Yeah… it was Gary… my freshman roommate at Michigan… the one that made fun of me behind my back for being fat (he and his friends joked that if they threw a thing of ice cream out a window I’d leap out to chase it) and the one that would only live with a homosexual if it was in a cage. Yeah… I was all…. WTF? Am I actually talking to him?
But it was cool. I don’t think he knows anything about me… nor do I know how he found me except I had this screenname back then. We didn’t get to into it, so he still knows nothing about me… which will be curious if he continues to talk to me. But… he spoke to me out of the blue because he wants to rewatch Everwood and was reading about Diablo 3 coming out and both reminded him of me. I was all… awwwww… that’s kinda nice. So yeah… it was interesting. He works in VA as an industrial engineer at a health system.
So yeah… it was just so shocking and out of left field….. but kinda nice. I figured he’d found me because I now recently have a facebook because there are certain people back in MA that want to chat with me and that’s the only way they do things. But yeah… that wasn’t it. It really was just out of nothing. Just so strange to me. Strange… but kinda cool. Just makes me shake my head because I was such a screwup and mess back then. I mean… he only saw the worst year of my life. That’s a great first impression. So yeah… it shall be interesting to see if we like talk more. Plus now I’m all anime at things when he was the original one to try to get me into it with Gundam. We might have more in common now than we did back then. Could be cool.
So yeah… that’s all for now I believe. Now comes crazy midterm week…. should be a blast.