TooMuchTooSoon

So, clearly I haven’t written a post in about 2 weeks. I have been extremely busy.

That’s what being a Greek on a major University campus will do to you. You get so consumed in your activities that you have no time for ANYTHING. Not even posting something that takes 5 minutes out of your day. This specific lapse in writting revolves around the time of the season (no, not the Zombies song).

It is Homecoming season. My school goes all out for Homecoming, and rightfully so. Greeks especially go all out, what with everything they do. We make floats, pomp, do skits, have a blood drive, do service, decorate the city. It’s crazy. It lasts literally almost 3 weeks at times. It’s insane.

This specific time, I’ve been busy making props for our skits, making backgrounds, just being super busy. It’s almost over though. Our skits are tonight, and Greek Town is buzzing.

That’s one of the best parts about being Greek. We all put in so much work, especially on our campus, and when these times come around, it’s so exciting and thrilling to be a Greek. All anyone can talk about is their skit, homecoming stuff, etc. As grueling and annoying as it may be, it’s the most fun. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Now that my 5 minutes of down time are up, I must go… maybe I’ll write a little more in a few weeks once this is all over.

Don’t forget about that sweet Hotel party story.

At my school, I am a tour guide, showing prospective students and their parents the school. As part of the job, we are required to walk backwards while we talk about everything, as to make the experience more personal and fun.

One of the fun parts about that, though, is when people don’t tell you what’s coming up behind you, and then you walk into it. It wouldn’t be that bad if you were expecting it, but you usually aren’t. That abrupt shock you get through your body, plus the ounce of pain, isn’t all that fun.

I gave a tour just today, and back into two supports, a door, and a wall. It’s a great time when you see the eyes of the people you’re talking to widen, and you don’t know why… but once you realize it, it’s too late because you’re hitting the object.

The reason I bring this up is because I was recently told that not every campus has their tour guides walk backwards. I want to tell you, it’s really not that bad. We weren’t taught how to do it, but you just have to get down the whole talking about something, walking backwards, looking at people, and being aware of what’s around you as to not hit it. It is quite a feat, but it’s really not that hard at all.

The hard part is getting people to tell you what’s about to happen.

Also, never wear flip-flops while walking backwards. Shoes with no backs tend to come off easily, especially if you step in mud, and your shoe suctions down, and your foot comes out and lands in the mud.

Note: Tip your tour guides.

Now, let me give you a little forewarning. I have never been in a long-distance relationship. The longest distance I had was a 25 minute drive, and that doesn’t constitute a long-distance relationship. However, my roommate (Wheaton) and several friends of mine, (CS and Quincy - whom will later be introduced) had and still have long distance relationships. While I can’t speak for all of those in long-distance relationships, I can give my view of them from a third party source.

Of my three friends with long-distance relationships, I’m really good friends with one girlfriend (Wheaton’s), pretty good friends with CS’s girlfriend, and just friends with Quincy’s. So there’s a wide range of connections I have with them, and can speak pretty confidently on some of these topics.

Long Distance Relationships suck. I didn’t need to tell anyone that, but it had to be said. Anyway… here’s my point oh two (a phrase coined by my friend which is just another way to say my 2 cents).

As hard as it is to be in one of these, they can work. All three of my friends love their girlfriends more than anything, and they make it work. All it takes is the willpower and the devotion to one person. If you know you’re not in love, don’t even consider a long-distance relationship. It’s just not worth it. The shit they go through, the length of time they go without seeing their girls, and the amount of temptation that lies within our school is so amazing, it’s simply amazing. Nonetheless, they don’t give into the temptation, they talk to their girls every day, see them as often as they can, and deal with it.

I’ve seen a lot of other people do shitty with this, but these guys are troopers. You can be too. If you’re having doubts, I have a few questions for you to ask yourself, and a few pointers. Here they are…

1) How much do you really love your partner?
2) How devoted are you to making things work?
3) How trusting are you?
4) How easily do you give into sexual temptation and desire?

Ask yourself these, and also ask your friends. Maybe they, like me, have a good view of your long-distance relationship, and can give you a good idea of what the deal is.

Just… don’t be a garbage dick…

These are the worst, no? You have a late night of either partying, studying, just hanging around. You don’t really do anything, or you go crazy and get hammered drunk, get hopped up and make some bad decisions. Either way, late nights happen a lot more often than we plan on. We could have a specific time set out for us to go to sleep… “I’m going to bed at 10:30 tonight”… and then 11:45 rolls around as you just start a movie you put in, leading you to stay up past the hour of 2:00. We lose track of time a lot, but it really doesn’t matter in the long run. 

I once heard somewhere that we spend 2/3 of our life sleeping. If that’s the case, late nights are better for us, it helps us live longer. We get more out of our lives. Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a nice nap (even though I can rarely take them), and I LOVE a good nights’ sleep, but everyone has one of those memories of going to sleep early, and then missing out on some AMAZING thing that happened, and you would have been there if you had just stayed awake and taken that late night. 

College is notorious for late nights. You hang out with your friends, watch some movies, talk about your lives, connect. Or just be dumb and sit around doing nothing but making fun of people. And of course everyone’s favorite, getting hammered and partying the night away. That leads right into the early morning. So you’ve spent a whole not putting away shots, downing beers, and being a champ among mortals of partying. Then you have to wake up for work at 7:30, class at 8:00, or some other stupid thing you knew you shouldn’t have signed up for, but you did anyway because the girl that was also signing up was cute, but then she wasn’t even there anyway because SHE was up late partying too, but you went just to see her. Amongst my rambling, there was a point. Don’t be afraid to have those late nights, even when you have to wake up early.

I also heard somewhere that you should sleep in hour and a half rotations. The body’s sleep cycle lasts an hour and a half. So, be sure to sleep for either 1 and 1/2, 3, 4 1/2, 6, 7 1/2, or 9 hours. Now, if you have a late night/early morning ahead of you, chances are you wont be getting 9 hours of sleep. But shoot for a nice round hour and a half number. It works, I’m telling you. Also, be sure to set two alarms. This morning I had to work at 8:00, and my alarm was set for 7:30. Just in case, though, I set my phone alarm for 7:45. Sure enough, I wake up to the sound of a ringtone on my phone, and I have 15 minutes to get ready, get all my shit together, and get to work. I’m sure glad I remembered that backup alarm. 

This is college. When you get out into the working world, you wont have time for a life, so you will naturally go to sleep early. Live it up. You only go to college once (as long as you complete it that one time), so be sure to stay up late, wake up on time for your early morning obligation, and set two alarms. 

Also, be sure to remember to put on pants during your early morning scurry… 

Hopefully one of the things everyone experiences is a late night dorm life in college. Hanging out with all of your friends, sitting around watching a movie or a tv show. Go get some late night snacks. It’s just so much fun.

Where we lived freshman year, there was a 24 hour convenient-store esque place right next to our hall, including a Subway, meaning we had some late night visits over there. One of the best late night snacks is frozen burritos cooked in the microwave, because I’m pretty sure that’s all we ate.

When you know you’re not going to go to sleep until late, don’t just sit around and do nothing but creep on facebook or some stupid shit like that. Hang out with your friends, go get some junk food, do something stupid together.

One of the funniest things we did was have wheel-chair wednesdays. Someone had found a wheel-chair somewhere, and on Wednesdays, we’d take turns riding it around campus, at night of course. We’d go down the big hill on the street we lived on. We’d take it all over the place, and it was just silly.

Above all other things, the shit we talked about, memories we made, and times we shared were some of the best memories I have. If all else fails, have some fun with your life. Nothing works better to bring people that had never known each other together than a few long nights of absolutely nothing.

The things you talk about when you have… nothing else to talk about. It’s funny how much you can learn from people. So make sure you do it, live life, don’t be afraid of being tired in the morning for class, you’ll have plenty of time to sleep when you’re in the real world working…

Or when you’re dead…

Awkward moments are one of the greatest things to witness in life, but not necessarily one of the best to be involved in (unless you like that sort of thing). When you are submerged in an awkward moment, you feel like you should do anything in your power to punch all of the awkward participants in the face and yell. Or something of the sort.

There are also a few different types of awkward motions you can do, and I’m sure mostly everyone has heard them. You have the awkward turtle, awkward turkey, awkward basically any animal you can think of, probably. One of my favorite things, though, is the ‘it’s hot in here’ awkward motion.

If you aren’t aware of this, when something is really awkward all you do is put a finger in the collar of your shirt, and pull it out a little, as if it’s so awkward that it’s really hot.

The only reason I bring this up is because of a pretty funny story from Freshman year. The really short annoying kid was ‘drunk’ one night, and was chasing around one of the hot girls on our floor. Now, this was funny in itself, because he actually thought he had a chance with girls. So anyway, he was chasing this girl around the floor… and it was really awkward.

Up to this point in the year, my roommate (Wheaton) and I had been doing the awkward ‘it’s hot in here’ thing, and it had been pretty funny. So anyway, on this specific occasion, my roommate went out into the hall to watch this, and after they ran by, he did the awkward ‘it’s hot in here’, but it was so awkward, he put both hands on his collar and just ripped his shirt off.

There was no alcohol involved in this, and it’s not necessarily the funniest story in the world. However, it was really funny at the time, so I guess it’s one of those “you had to be there” stories. Or, as my friends would say, it was a ‘Mike Story’. I will explain those tomorrow.

If I hadn’t mentioned it before… my name is Mike…

The main priority of college is to get an education (for most people). You pay way too much money, but get so much out of the experience that it isn’t even funny. Aside from all of the goofing around, debauchery and everything that goes with it, college is a learning experience both in the educational and life sense.

While most of my posts are about the latter form of learning experiences, this one is slightly about the former, educational learning experiences. We all have a few classes we LOVED taking in college, as well as a few professors who ‘changed our lives’. In the process of transcribing the information from powerpoint to notebook, interpreting teacher speak into poor college kid vernacular and trying to fight off the hangover/lack of sleep from the night before in each class, we actually tend to learn something, no?

Most college students retain what they want to, like things that impact their lives. Who remembers linear equations and the biological workings of a frog? In the end, the only thing we really learn (besides how much alcohol our livers can hold) is what we care about. And in this sense, we must attend class to learn these things.

But, this leads me to my main point, cutting class. We all do it, well, most of us. Now I’m not saying I cut more classes than I go to, but I am not a perfect little angel that has a consecutive class streak that rivals Cal Ripken Jr.’s streak. In my first semester in school, my sister moved to a big city in the state to work, and I helped her move. Two of her best friends from college (one being her roommate) were there also, and they somehow got onto the topic of skipping classes.

Her roommate shared her experience from her graduation day. Her father asked her, “Now Beth, how many classes did you skip in your 4 years?” And she replied, “Honestly Dad, I can count them on one hand.”

WHAT!?!?!?!? I could barely count the number of classes I had skipped in not even my first full semester on two hands. I’m not a bad student by any means, but only skipping less than 5 classes your entire college career, that’s insane. My sister wasn’t much worse, nor was her other friend. I’m pretty sure up to this point (now my 5th semester in college) I’ve skipped twice as much as all of them combined.

Skipping class isn’t a crime, it’s not a sin, it’s a way of life. We shouldn’t be expected to attend every single class for 15 straight weeks, should we? Nevermind 4 or 5 or 6 different classes for that long of a time. This is college, a time when we’re supposed to get all of our stupid shit out of the way. If we skipped out on so many days of work, we’d be fired. But this is college, and skipping classes isn’t a huge deal.

If you’re reading this, and you don’t skip many classes, if you’ve even skipped any at all, re-evaluate your life, and maybe try to live a little. Teachers don’t really care, even if they say they do. Have a friend sign you in if they do attendance sheets. And if it’s a big lecture hall, screw that. NO ONE will know you’re gone.

Just make sure you don’t skip out on the day of a quiz or test… it’s happened, trust me…

Bad luck is one of those things that you can never avoid. Everyone experiences bad luck, some worse than others, and it sucks hardcore. Tonight I experienced some bad luck, and it just got me thinking about bad luck in general.

In my life I’ve had some bad luck on several occasions. In 8th grade, I stayed with a good friend while my parents were away. We were playing video games one Friday night, and he asked me what the most pain I ever endured was. I had answered his question with a story from my childhood, thinking nothing of it. The very next day, I broke my ankle while playing basketball (it’s actually a long, funny, stupid story, but I’ll spare you). That same friend asked me a similar question in our Senior year of high school. He asked if I had ever been in a car accident, and I had not. The VERY next day he and I were driving back from the mall, and sure enough I got into an accident, my first one ever.

Maybe some people are more cursed than others (like my friend, clearly), but we all catch that bad-luck-bug at one point or another. To some, bad luck is a sign from god that you are doing something wrong. Others view it as things happening for a reason. I’m not here to preach beliefs (maybe I’ll save that for another day), but bad luck is just straight up bad luck. Plenty of people have good luck all the time (see: Lottery Winners), and they don’t complain about it when they do. Why should we complain when we have bad luck. As far as I’m concerned, bad luck only builds up your character. If you can succumb all of the bad luck you are given, you can take the good luck with grace.

My bad luck today involved a school project. I had to load some video onto a computer, and it would not work at all. The lab with the computes closed at 9, and it’s due tomorrow at 1:00. The lab opens at 9:00 tomorrow morning. I don’t have a lot of time, and it’s just bad luck that it wouldn’t load. There are a lot of reasons why it wont load, none of which I have concretely answered or explored yet, but I am working on it. In a class where your professor gives negative grades, you can’t afford to NOT have video. Anyway… that’s where the bad luck ideas stemmed from.

The way I look at it (this is a good phrase for a post like this), this bad luck will make me realize that not everything should be taken for granted. Like I said before, bad luck happens to us all, but it by no means kills us (unless the bad luck you experience involves death, in which case, I’m sorry).

And you know what they say about that which doesn’t kill us…