ex-mas
Well, a just too late Merry Christmas to all those to whom it applies. To those it doesn't, a just too late, but still perfectly valid merry Sunday, first day of Hanakah (sp?) , or anything else that applies taht doesn't involve cannibalism. I'm afraid I can't endorse that.
So yeah, it certainly has been an extremely long time since I've updated hasn't it? I have been keeping pretty well with all the rest of y'all and your life events and so forth. A tip of the hat to RJ and his most eloquent well wishing.
Oh yes, and a happy birthday to Tyler.
So then.. onward and upward. Hmmm, it's a funny thing emotion. Here I was at the outset planning to write one kind of journal entry, and now I find that I shall be forced to write an entirely different kind, compliments to my shift in mood. Remarkable really. Originally I was going to say something like all profound and deep and stuff, I mean, I just watched this war movie after all. But, now I'm watching Gone in 60 Seconds, or my family here is, so by default I am too. Now, I'm a fan of the movie, don't get me wrong, but it just isn't that profound. So I'll have to give it a go anyway in my emotionaly fluxing state...
I just finished watching the movie Glory and wow. I don't know if any of you have seen the movie, but it's amazing. Real quick, it's about the civil war and the 54 Massachusetts, the first black regiment. Between watching Glory and We Were Soldiers, I've very nearly become a pacifist. I mean, there is just something so terrifically awful about it all. The stupidity, the needless death, the greed, or maybe just misunderstanding. When you look into it, you find that in the case of the civil war, the Union wasn't really on some holy mission of freedom - not entirely anyway. And the Rebels weren't some evil tyrannical opposition either. You have people from both sides praying to the same God for help in the same war. Stupid, horrible, tragic. ... sigh and then I look around at my nice house, all these nice things, my family, all of it. I just, it's good to be reminded that I need to try harder to not be selfish. I mean, I just got done celebrating Christmas with my family, which is all about serving others and giving. At least abstractly :) If you're reading this than you probably know that that's the very least that it means to me.
There are so very many people that are so much better than me, that have done so much more, like I really don't see how I deserve any of the things I have. I certainly haven't earned them. But it'd be wrong to not be grateful. That would just be insulting.
Blahh....
Alright, well I'm afraid that's all I can muster for deepness this time, what with cars being stolen to the sound of techno music being pumped out behind me.
Now for an actual update. Let's see. My grandparents on my dad's side are here, visiting to celebrate Christmas, and my Aunt will be arriving on Tuesday. My older brother just graduated from the university of iowa, and has moved back in with my parents while awaiting whatever he's going to do next, though on the very same Tuesday (the 27th) he'll be leaving for China. In the time that I've been home I've been pretty much spending most of my time either with Holly, or shopping for Christmas presents. It's been pretty sweet, gotta say. Lol, yeah, uhm that's been pretty much what I've been up to since getting home. Saw the movie Narnia, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. That was awesome! It was a really good movie, and just, you should see it, lol. Hmm , continuing on backwards, I took a choo choo train home (two actually), and that was interesting. Like the train out of indiana was pretty uneventful, on time and everything. Chicago was another story. Delays, random stops in the middle of nowhere (like, there were no people getting on or off as it was in the forest) and oh the colorful people that come from the windy city. Like there were these nice amish people with bonnets on the moms wives and even the wee girls. And can't forget the navy guy who looked like he regularly ate cement for breafast, or the interesting mountain man/hippie couple decked out in homespun clothes or so it seemed. Such an interesting city that.
And going further back we have of course, finals. Ahh finals. Okay, so here's where I swallow my pride and not worry about feeling foolish. Because I don't know how many of you know this but going into my finals there was a high chance that I'd fail. Sure everyone says that, oh i'm gonna fail, i'm gonna fail blah blah blah i'm so screwed ect. But like, I really was. Here's the deal for all those who didn't know. Okay, after first semester my GPA had taken a hit but not too bad (thanx honors engineering), but after physics 152 and getting slapped with an F in chem for being accussed of cheating my gpa really dropped. It was still as passing gpa, but i was put on academic probation. Which brings us to the most recent semester, third semester. Okay, so as one could imagine classes in engineering get progressively more difficult each semester or at least for me they did. About half-way through I found out two things that I had been suspecting for some measure of time already. One, I don't really enjoy engineering, which is prbly important. And two, I found that I'm not terribly good at it (if i try real real hard I'm not awful) and that struck me as important as well. So with that, I changed my major. Now, when you change your major, there's this option called "redlining" that allows you to cancel out the deleterious effects to your gpa of courses not relating to your new major. However, due to my unhastyness in changing my major, the effect wouldn't occur until after third semester, so I was still on probation. Back to finals week. I have failed my two statics tests with a goodly margin of brilliance so far, and averaged a 55% on my two math exams. I have historically speaking always done even worse on the final for any class. Needless to say, there was a better than fair chance that I would fail those two classes. Which would garner me 7 credit hours of F, which would result in my getting kicked out of Purdue. Hence my more than normal (if you noticed, i dunno, we were all pretty distracted) level of stress and concern over finals. Now, nowing myself, and that my test scores in statics were more like 30-40% I decided to focus on math. After all, it was math something that I am usually able to comprehend and I only needed to avoid failing two classes. It's a shame really, 'cause I really didn't study all that much for my other classes that I wasn't worried about failing as I kinda poured in hours and hours on math. For all the good it did me. So I tried real hard, left and find out I got a 55% on the final. Which means that my total test avg was 55% and I had missed some quizzes which I guess takes off a percent of your grade for each one you miss. And I had no idea how I did on the statics final, but if life was consistent, pretty darn bad. Math classes are usually curved pretty well though. That's true, but the curve for our class on the first two exams, was like 70% for average. That doesn't really lend itself to a curve, in fact, that's sort of standard normal. And I calculated out that I needed prbly at least a 6-8% curve. So what I'm saying here is, I earned an F in math and was quite confindant in the same for statics. I go home, and check my grades. Yep, F in statics. And an A in psychology (97.89% actually, now if only it were transferrable..) and a C in nuke. Then I saw Math 261 D I didn't really understand at first. And to be fair I still don't. I passed. By all accounts I should have failed, but I passed. Now, there's something that I left out in my little summary of events here. I knew in advance the dire nature of my situation, and so I did what I could. And that definately includes praying. You guys and gals can chalk this up to over extrapolation, faulty logic, or even an emotion spiritual placebo effect, and that's of course your perogative. But as for me, I thank God 'cause He answered my prayers and let me stay. I failed math, but was given a passing mark. I certainly don't think it was by my own skill that I passed, but I prayed over this night and day, and God was merciful. I am just so grateful that I get to go back and see all of my awesome friends. (RJ, we may not see each other, but we'll talk, and maybe even roll dice ;) ) So, yeah, as cliched as it may sound, I mean it - Praise God, I passed. Who says miracles don't happen, lol.
So yes, I shall return to torment you all anew, I failed in my plot to steal Mr. Snow's books, and Tyler will not enjoy the wonder of random new roomate assignment.
I hope that all of you are having a marverlous break, and I shall endeavor to be more prompt with my ehh life updates.
Bye bye for now, :)
So yeah, it certainly has been an extremely long time since I've updated hasn't it? I have been keeping pretty well with all the rest of y'all and your life events and so forth. A tip of the hat to RJ and his most eloquent well wishing.
Oh yes, and a happy birthday to Tyler.
So then.. onward and upward. Hmmm, it's a funny thing emotion. Here I was at the outset planning to write one kind of journal entry, and now I find that I shall be forced to write an entirely different kind, compliments to my shift in mood. Remarkable really. Originally I was going to say something like all profound and deep and stuff, I mean, I just watched this war movie after all. But, now I'm watching Gone in 60 Seconds, or my family here is, so by default I am too. Now, I'm a fan of the movie, don't get me wrong, but it just isn't that profound. So I'll have to give it a go anyway in my emotionaly fluxing state...
I just finished watching the movie Glory and wow. I don't know if any of you have seen the movie, but it's amazing. Real quick, it's about the civil war and the 54 Massachusetts, the first black regiment. Between watching Glory and We Were Soldiers, I've very nearly become a pacifist. I mean, there is just something so terrifically awful about it all. The stupidity, the needless death, the greed, or maybe just misunderstanding. When you look into it, you find that in the case of the civil war, the Union wasn't really on some holy mission of freedom - not entirely anyway. And the Rebels weren't some evil tyrannical opposition either. You have people from both sides praying to the same God for help in the same war. Stupid, horrible, tragic. ... sigh and then I look around at my nice house, all these nice things, my family, all of it. I just, it's good to be reminded that I need to try harder to not be selfish. I mean, I just got done celebrating Christmas with my family, which is all about serving others and giving. At least abstractly :) If you're reading this than you probably know that that's the very least that it means to me.
There are so very many people that are so much better than me, that have done so much more, like I really don't see how I deserve any of the things I have. I certainly haven't earned them. But it'd be wrong to not be grateful. That would just be insulting.
Blahh....
Alright, well I'm afraid that's all I can muster for deepness this time, what with cars being stolen to the sound of techno music being pumped out behind me.
Now for an actual update. Let's see. My grandparents on my dad's side are here, visiting to celebrate Christmas, and my Aunt will be arriving on Tuesday. My older brother just graduated from the university of iowa, and has moved back in with my parents while awaiting whatever he's going to do next, though on the very same Tuesday (the 27th) he'll be leaving for China. In the time that I've been home I've been pretty much spending most of my time either with Holly, or shopping for Christmas presents. It's been pretty sweet, gotta say. Lol, yeah, uhm that's been pretty much what I've been up to since getting home. Saw the movie Narnia, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. That was awesome! It was a really good movie, and just, you should see it, lol. Hmm , continuing on backwards, I took a choo choo train home (two actually), and that was interesting. Like the train out of indiana was pretty uneventful, on time and everything. Chicago was another story. Delays, random stops in the middle of nowhere (like, there were no people getting on or off as it was in the forest) and oh the colorful people that come from the windy city. Like there were these nice amish people with bonnets on the moms wives and even the wee girls. And can't forget the navy guy who looked like he regularly ate cement for breafast, or the interesting mountain man/hippie couple decked out in homespun clothes or so it seemed. Such an interesting city that.
And going further back we have of course, finals. Ahh finals. Okay, so here's where I swallow my pride and not worry about feeling foolish. Because I don't know how many of you know this but going into my finals there was a high chance that I'd fail. Sure everyone says that, oh i'm gonna fail, i'm gonna fail blah blah blah i'm so screwed ect. But like, I really was. Here's the deal for all those who didn't know. Okay, after first semester my GPA had taken a hit but not too bad (thanx honors engineering), but after physics 152 and getting slapped with an F in chem for being accussed of cheating my gpa really dropped. It was still as passing gpa, but i was put on academic probation. Which brings us to the most recent semester, third semester. Okay, so as one could imagine classes in engineering get progressively more difficult each semester or at least for me they did. About half-way through I found out two things that I had been suspecting for some measure of time already. One, I don't really enjoy engineering, which is prbly important. And two, I found that I'm not terribly good at it (if i try real real hard I'm not awful) and that struck me as important as well. So with that, I changed my major. Now, when you change your major, there's this option called "redlining" that allows you to cancel out the deleterious effects to your gpa of courses not relating to your new major. However, due to my unhastyness in changing my major, the effect wouldn't occur until after third semester, so I was still on probation. Back to finals week. I have failed my two statics tests with a goodly margin of brilliance so far, and averaged a 55% on my two math exams. I have historically speaking always done even worse on the final for any class. Needless to say, there was a better than fair chance that I would fail those two classes. Which would garner me 7 credit hours of F, which would result in my getting kicked out of Purdue. Hence my more than normal (if you noticed, i dunno, we were all pretty distracted) level of stress and concern over finals. Now, nowing myself, and that my test scores in statics were more like 30-40% I decided to focus on math. After all, it was math something that I am usually able to comprehend and I only needed to avoid failing two classes. It's a shame really, 'cause I really didn't study all that much for my other classes that I wasn't worried about failing as I kinda poured in hours and hours on math. For all the good it did me. So I tried real hard, left and find out I got a 55% on the final. Which means that my total test avg was 55% and I had missed some quizzes which I guess takes off a percent of your grade for each one you miss. And I had no idea how I did on the statics final, but if life was consistent, pretty darn bad. Math classes are usually curved pretty well though. That's true, but the curve for our class on the first two exams, was like 70% for average. That doesn't really lend itself to a curve, in fact, that's sort of standard normal. And I calculated out that I needed prbly at least a 6-8% curve. So what I'm saying here is, I earned an F in math and was quite confindant in the same for statics. I go home, and check my grades. Yep, F in statics. And an A in psychology (97.89% actually, now if only it were transferrable..) and a C in nuke. Then I saw Math 261 D I didn't really understand at first. And to be fair I still don't. I passed. By all accounts I should have failed, but I passed. Now, there's something that I left out in my little summary of events here. I knew in advance the dire nature of my situation, and so I did what I could. And that definately includes praying. You guys and gals can chalk this up to over extrapolation, faulty logic, or even an emotion spiritual placebo effect, and that's of course your perogative. But as for me, I thank God 'cause He answered my prayers and let me stay. I failed math, but was given a passing mark. I certainly don't think it was by my own skill that I passed, but I prayed over this night and day, and God was merciful. I am just so grateful that I get to go back and see all of my awesome friends. (RJ, we may not see each other, but we'll talk, and maybe even roll dice ;) ) So, yeah, as cliched as it may sound, I mean it - Praise God, I passed. Who says miracles don't happen, lol.
So yes, I shall return to torment you all anew, I failed in my plot to steal Mr. Snow's books, and Tyler will not enjoy the wonder of random new roomate assignment.
I hope that all of you are having a marverlous break, and I shall endeavor to be more prompt with my ehh life updates.
Bye bye for now, :)