Crunchy Granola

It’s hard to write a review of the first year of college! I don’t know where to start. I guess I’ll talk about my classes and the academic side of Lewis & Clark first, since I am a ~student~ after all.

First semester, my classes were harder than any semester of high school. I read more, wrote more, studied more, and became frustrated more it seemed. I expected this I guess since I didn’t try that hard in high school haha. I didn’t think I would be taking music theory, but I did, and it was boring. E&D was okay and I enjoyed the books we read but I liked my geology class the most because of the professor and the field trips. I liked the labs too because we got to run around Tryon Creek for three hours every week, yet the lab syntheses we had to complete afterward were usually torture. 

Second semester classes were probably the same difficulty level, yet I did a lot better in them. I feel like I definitely grew a lot academically my first semester and that showed second semester. I hated my E&D class because the professor was a buttface. Everyone was afraid to share their opinions and thoughts in class since she would often argue with us or completely ignore what we say, so the conversations in class would stagnate after like 15 minutes. Somehow I ended up with a decent grade in the class despite not reading the material and starting/completing the final 10 page paper in one night, but overall the class was an awful experience except for one book- The World Without Us -which I recommend very much. Spanish was easy, econ was boring, and environmental studies was my favorite-because of the material and the professor (same geology prof from first semester). I know I want to be an ENVS major for sure now. The major provides so many possibilities after college which is a plus, but I actually find the subject interesting so I’m def sticking to it.

I’m glad I went to LC despite the lack of diversity and constant clouds haha. For the most part the students are excited to learn and explore who they are, and aren’t just going through the motions of school to get into a good grad school. The people I have met are nice, supportive, and chill. The majority of the professors are the same way and it’s really nice to be treated as an adult.

I went to the Columbia Gorge, Mount St. helens, Crater Lake, Spokane, and got to explore the city of Portland all year long. Lived in VAPA, performed in a thriller flashmob in the dining hall, discovered a lot of new music, switched dorms, played in the snow in the middle of the night before the rain washed it away, walked to class through the second prettiest campus in the United States, joined the Pep Band, Wind Symphony, and Percussion Ensemble, became a vegetarian for a while and learned I was allergic to soy, watched every episode of Portlandia, Walking Dead, Sherlock, and Game of Thrones, and overall really enjoyed my experience. The only time I drank was during NSO, and I never smoked, so I feel like that’s a thing. It makes sense that I’ll be living in the Health and Wellness Dorm next year (which really is just the dorm for all the awkward people like me).

I’m happy with the whole college thing. I think I picked the right place and it’s good that I left home. Heppi heppi. I want ya’ll to come visit! :]

-E

Maria’s Year in Review

So since i listed a lot of the things that have happened to me/i attended this year, I guess this post will be pretty specific. 

Let’s begin.

• I went to a flea market, the origins of hipsters and it was really good. 
• I went to an overnight stay at Catalina, as part of TO and went on wacky adventures there
• I went to a Walk the Moon, Gotye, M83, Cobra Starship, and Foster the People concert 8D
• I went to a bonfire party
• I did the LA art walk
• I went to College Night at the Getty Villa, and saw lots of ancient Greek things and plays (Trojan Women), and at LACMA, where there was really good exhibitions of women modern artists
• I saw other plays, like Waiting for Godot, an Alonso Kings Lines Ballet, and a wonderful Midori/USC symphony concert
• I went to a circus!
• I took lots of hikes around the Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood Sign
• The book fair was awesome this year, got Cornelia Funke’s signature (though I did trip on her), got to hear Anne Rice, Libba Bray, Betty White, and Julie Andrews talk about awesomeness. also I managed to get a free dentist appointment somehow. 
• I attended lots of football games, and managed to have overall good times there
• I had lots of milkshakes from Ground Zero, as well as tons of studying in there, and some small live concerts and Spoken Word Performances
• I went camping…er cabining in an adorable cabin in Big Bear during winter break
• also, I managed to get a job at the Natural History Museum and an internship at the ACLU, so that was pretty cool
• I had a huge TO conference, that was a presentation of one of my loooong essays, but it went pretty well overall!
• I went to a writing workshop all second semester, and it was really beneficial. good times mostly
• I wrote over 20 essays this semester, and got through them all, more or less. so yay. i wont list out all my classes this year, but there were some really good ones. 
• there’s been lots of sleepless nights, some were bad, some good. more parties than last year, but also more dorm drama which was unnecessary, but I think that’s fine. my “family” in college was comprised more of the people i work with than the ones i live with. 
• my room/dorm were horrid and smelly and loud! but college..well it was fine

i think overall that this year passed incredibly fast and i actually did learn a lot. im glad about a lot things. usc wasnt as bad as i thought it was gonna be, though next year i will definitely have to put more effort into studying that watching shows. and oops, forgot to list the ones ive watched from beginning to end this year alone!

1. doctor who
2. misfits
3. sherlock
4. american horror story
5. new girl
6. merlin
7. avatar: the last airbender
8. pan am
9. how i met your mother

plus keeping up with downton abbey, community, office, parks and rec, modern family, and im watching supernatural, legend of korra, skins, and dont trust the b in apartment 23 now..so yeah. 

i wont tell you which ones i plan to watch later this summer, those will be a surprise haha, because outside of school, my life has been about fangirling to shows. nonstop. 

so i think thats it, and i think ill just add that somebody that i used to know, was the main song of this year’s soundtrack, cuz from september to may, that song has topped the charts for me personally.

thanks if you read all that nonsense 

~M

Freshmen Finale

I’m the last one to finish school and I am the first one to write a reflection about this year. Come on guys! :P

Looking back, it is crazy to see how much has changed.  I can’t believe there was a time at school when I did not know anyone. Or know how to get to my classes.  And there was a time I believed that it can take less than 30 minutes to get to school.  Oh and my cooking skills have improved. I think…I hope.

I have had some amazing experiences this year. I went to a lot of concerts, went to San Diego, and met a lot of people. I learned a few things like never have an 8 AM class and that you can never have enough tv shows to watch to distract you.

From some dude telling me to bang him, a girl wanting me to type her essay, the daily “do you want to study the bible?”, to the weekly random questions, I had some random experiences with strangers.

Fall semester I had to write 10 essays, but spring semester I managed to write none! Such an accomplishment, but I did have to write 9 speeches aka a total of over 30 minutes talking infront of the class.

Next year looks very promising for various reasons like being social chair for the honors executive board and having my weekends longer than my weekdays :)

Hopefully next year I will have a better schedule so I can have a time when I can workout. And a job would be nice too. lol

Who knows if that is gonna happen, but I can dream right? ;)

There’s no rush to get to the end of August just yet, lets enjoy what SUMMER 2012 has in store for us :)

~A

The Attractive, Australian, Amazing Gotye!

Last Thursday we (A, M, Taylor, A’s mom and Taylor’s mom) went the Goyte Concert at the Nokia Theatre.

When we got to our seats in the nosebleeds nosebleeds, there were better seats in dead center nosebleeds.  No one claiming those seats, we took them.  The mothers decided to be good people and sit in their own seats. They had row M seats and the last row was N..

But then even though they said they didn’t want to sit with us, the moms decided to come sit with us because we found better seats. 

Gotye, with his new haircut, clean shaven face, and supersexy defined forearms, came on stage at 9:15 with his song Eyes Wide Open.  It was really cool how every song had a little music video playing behind it. Each one would be unique to the song, and unlike most bands, where the effects are something trippy but boring, most of Gotye’s videos contributed to the overall feeling of each piece.

Fast forward 8 songs and he played Somebody That I Used To Know. Since Kimbra wasn’t able to be there, the opening act (Missy Higgins) sang Kimbra’s part. The song went by so fast. I felt like I missed it and hoped he would play it again! It was strange how he decided to preform that song as not his last song or the encore.  He played a couple more songs and then had 3 encore songs.  During all his encore songs, this woman in front of us and to the right was dancing all funny and so we decided to imitate whatever dance move she was doing. The moms thought we were going crazy(what else is new), but then caught on to what we were actually doing. 

Listening to Gotye’s album is an ok experience, but listening to him perform was amazing. I (m) got excited with each new song, because it just sounded amazing and he was so into it! He also played the drums, which might be a sort of trend now, like Foster, Walk the Moon, etc, where lead singers don’t play guitar anymore, they play drums. Which would explain why Gotye had such delicious forearms that made me want to caress them. Also it helped that he had a nice dark blue shirt on, didn’t sweat, and was altogether well polished…

now moving on before my writing starts to be creepily obsessed and manic, the end line here is that the concert was great, and it was good to hang out. hope to do it again soon, with all 4 of us (if thats cosmically possible you know, to find a band we all like)

~A AND M

ps, sorry for the bad camera photos. we were like half a mile away and these were taken by my phone, so if you dont like gotye here, its because of a terrible camera, not because of his precious little face

Nostalgia in lieu of productivity…

Whenever I’m trying to avoid homework and studying, I usually end up looking through old pictures. Tonight, I ended up on prom pictures and senior year adventures. Man, good times. I definitely didn’t appreciate life back then. Now I’m 2500 miles away from everyone, on the verge of sleep, pondering life. Hopefully I don’t look back to these years and think the same thing that I didn’t appreciate life. 

So I was just thinking about how we’re all majoring in completely different things (because we’re the strangest group to end up together), and I don’t know how everyone else is doing with their respective classes, but biology is killing me. This is the second time I’ve had a chem and bio test at the same time! Sometimes things go really smoothly and I understand concepts and then other times I have a minor meltdown and consider changing my major. Apparently Magnesium is supposed to be a natural calming element so I’ve been taking it.

Anyway, I’m just wasting time and rambling. Any survival tips? For any and all aspects of life. Hope everyone’s staying…alive. Lol. Miss you guys!

~K

Old the Midget

Yesterday Taylor, her mom, and I went to the concert in San Diego.  There was a ton of people! When we got into the venue, there was already a lot of people inside, but we got pretty close going near the side of the stage.  Unfortunately, there was these two dudes 2 rows up right in my way so I could not see. short.girl.problems.  The first band played and they were really good. Super happy when they played Anna Sun.  

After they were done and the warpaint came off their face, the band I wanted to see (but this week I found out I do not really like them because their songs are so hard to memorize! Good reason, right?) went on.  They played some new songs and of course, their most popular songs.  The lead singers voice is amazing. It is so mesmerizing and a couple times during the night, I caught myself drifting into lala land.. 

After the concert, I went to the merch table to get a shirt and the first band was there just selling their merch.  I was the next person in line and I’m like, “Taylor, I am starting to get starstuck.” and she is all like playing it cool laughing at me for still having that feeling every time I meet someone famous.  I thought the lead singer from the band Walk the Moon looked like a cool indie guy in the music video but up close, he is such a nerd! He cut his hair so it is in the awkward stage of too short and he wore glasses like Harry Potter wears! So did not expect that.  

We then went to lurk the tour bus to see if anyone from YTG was taking pictures with fans.  We go and the lead singer Sameer (who is surprisingly pretty short) is taking pictures and signing autographs.  As we are walking towards the tour bus, Taylor is like ” Eeeep”  and  I am like wow. You just made fun of me for being starstruck…

We got there too late because he had to leave so I was a little bummed, but we did get to take a pic with the most attractive guy out of both bands. (See profile pic)

Well thats another concert story for the blog.

~A 

Back at the Beach!

Yesterday it POURED at my school.  My first class was public speaking which is an honors class.  It was nice to see a ton of people I knew from either my HP class or my human geography class.  When my friend and I first walk in, I see the professor from the class before talking with a student.  I tell my friend, ” I like that teacher because he is wearing a bow tie.”  It turns out that he is our teacher! I was pretty excited. haha. He cares about his students a lot which reminds me of Justin Timberlake’s character in Bad Teacher. They look nothing alike except for maybe the age factor.  The whole class he talked about himself and how he was a terrible student all through high school until his junior year in college.  He only cared about making speeches and debating. We are going to have to do a lot of speeches and he is going to film us! If getting up in front of the class was not scary enough, that factor just makes it worse.  This will probably my most difficult class, but he is so far my favorite teacher.  Being all young and hip, he said that if we have a question we can email him or skype him.  Next thing you know, he will probably say that we should follow his tweets ;)

On my way to my microeconomics class, I discovered that my school floods.  My first class is on the upper campus and I had to walk all the way down to the lower campus.  The fastest way to get there?  Follow the river flowing down the stairs.  And that is when I got super soaked.  My clothes, backpack, and shoes=drenched.  It was not a fun time. If you guys ever come to my school, I can tell you all these stories and where exactly they happened. haha.  My econ teacher is ok. I went from my public speaking teacher telling us his life story to this guy who was already going over chapter 1.

Today, I first had my critical thinking class and that professor is so random.  He goes off on these tangents and I have a feeling it is going to be like that all semester.  He has 9 degrees and funny enough, he first flunked out of college. In that class I am like the only freshman.

American Government was typical. It did not seem like anyone was paying attention and there was only one political science major in the class.  But that lecture hall was so nice! You can walk by people and do not have to squeeze by with difficulty. 

And lastly, Statistics! This is just a basic math class, yet there were only 3 freshmen out of 160 people.  There were a ton of juniors and seniors in that class.  The teacher was boring, but he gives a ton of EC so I am ok with that. 

It looks like I do not need to write any essays this semester *yay*, but i bet i will be doing the most presentations!

~A

Where the tides collide…

I hardly ever go on tumblr these days, so 1. I never write about stuffs and 2. I never notice when others post stuffs. Which are both annoying!

Anyway, the other weekend I walked to Goat Island. It’s about 400 yards off the coast and on low tide, you can walk there. We weren’t exactly sure of the “launch point” until we saw the place where the tides collided. That, my friends, is the passage to Goat Island.

All the websites say not to swim on high tide because the currents come from both sides and they really aren’t lying; waves come at you from both sides. The water went up a bit higher than we thought it would (at it’s highest it was about rib cage high) but we made it! And it felt totally triumphant taking those last few steps out of the water and onto shore. 

Goat Island has nothing to do with goats, in fact, we have no idea where the name comes from. Some say farmers used to take goats there to eat the grass, though if WE barely got there, I doubt the goats could make it there. It’s actually a bird sanctuary and from an aerial view, it looks like a cat. So the middle of the island is roped off because that’s where the birds lay their eggs.

It was a lovely adventure! We had lunch on the island and the beach is really cute and secluded and the sand is super soft. Well, lots more to do this semester!

~K

Winter Break and Back to College

We haven’t posted in a while guys, what have we been doing? what with starting college again, analiese’s cat fact posts, and me watching sherlock now and reading fanfics, time has just flown.

anywho, sometimes i feel like winter break was like a golden time in my college life, but i feel like that for every school year. let’s see, what did i do? i watched and completed How I Met Your Mother, i went indoor skydiving, i went to Big Bear for a day, in this incredibly cute cabin and went sledding a lot, i got a longboard, i slept a lot, i did no reading, and i think that’s about it. not too bad…

then back to school, where i just want to keep being on break, surprise surprise. i’m not gonna restate how my week has been so far, but i’ll tell you about my weekend!

analiese and erin visted for a sleepover at usc and they are now working on transfer applications, and we plan to convert kelsi sometime soon as well.

then today, i went on this spontaneous trip to a flea market in la, which was really fun! its in the parking lot of fairfax high school, but the market itself just keeps going on and on and on. it’s huge! there were lots of interesting people and interesting things, crap things, cheap stuff, cheap people, expensive stuff, and hipsters galore, prancing about like they own they place (which they kinda do). i bought these cat earrings, which are awesome, two hair accessories, and a shirt, and with admission and a crepe that i bought there, it all came out to under $25. not bad…and i didn’t even haggle that much ;)

the atmosphere was really nice, and theres just so much little treasures and trinkets to see. its open every sunday, so you guys, again, open invitation to see more of la! :D

~M

ps sorry i have no pictures, but one day i will actually do be a proper hipsterphotographer

2012 To Do List

• 1: Sky High, indoor skydiving, skydiving
• 2: Quarter Mania Bowling
• 3: Ultimate summer experience: medley of birthday + beach + pool + sleepover
• 4: Keep meeting celebrities (definition of celebrity - we ALL know who it is, hem hem analiese and youre weird celebs)
• 5: get a job so we can go on a trip to --
• 6: learn how to drive the freeway
• 7: coning/cupping/planking/opposuming
• 8: spelunking
• 9: ice blocking all together
• 10: go to a good tv show showing
• 11: finish Hunger Games books (erin) and read a booky book (analiese)
• 12: all go to midnight showing of HG no matter where you are
• 13: watch shows (merlin, sherlock, game of thrones, misfits, skins, american horror story, how i met your mother,big bang theory, modern family, pan am, community, office, parks and recreation)
• 14: go camping
• 15: finish this list
• - M A K E memories in the future ;)

Language!

yeah.. i couldn’t think of a good title for this post.

So Sunday I went to church and if you didn’t know.. There has been changes in what we/the priest says at mass. Apparently it’s the biggest change since the 60’s.  People have been translating and translating and so what we say now is a more accurate translation. The changes.. was it necessary? I guess enough people thought so.  It’s weird saying something different than what i have been saying my whole life. The picture is a sheet that they gave us and the stuff bolded is the words they changed. (There was also a back page)

Some examples:

“we believe” is now  “I believe”

“And also with you” is now “and with your spirit”

“of all things seen and unseen” is now “of all things visible and invisible”

“he suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day he rose again” is now ” he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day.”

Also this week, Jackson Katz had a talk at our school and i went to it. Jackson Katz is (if your too lazy to look him up) well i dont really know, but he made a documentary that i saw in my human geography class called Tough Guise. It is basically about how guys need to prove that they are masculine.  At the talk, he talked about how males are violent to women. He brought up the fact how people think that domestic violence, rape, etc are womens problems, but it is not.  When you see in the newspaper that says “Woman raped.. ” you automatically think: well, it was a midnight, she should not have been out or she was asking for it by the clothes she was wearing.  Why do women have to put a curfew on themselves? He is saying how these are actually mens problems and no one is dealing with it. And he also points out about the way we write. Our language. (yay for tying it back into the church stuff ;)) Since the Kobe case, the victim is now the “accuser” which makes the victim seem like the bad guy. There’s so much more to say about what we talked about and I hate not being able to write what I am thinking in my head…

I find these topics interesting and this is basically stuff we learn in my human geography class.

~A