Bri's College Blog

Evening, readers!

Well actually it’s midnight. Shhh.

Tonight, as it is very nearly the end of my first year of college (!!!), was the final large group gathering for Cru. We said a long and hearty good bye to our seniors and a lot of the staff too. The whole thing has put me quite in a reflective mood. That being the case, I decided to look back through my blog from the last 9 months.

9 months. Geez.

When I first got here, to college I mean, I didn’t want to be here. I was happy with my safe little life in my safe little home with my safe little friends. I was happy to stay in my hometown for my whole life. The world was cool. And it seemed like a lovely place to visit, assuming everything had been perfectly planned out first. And college wasn’t even some cool place like London. It was just school, far from my dear, dear friends, family, and everything I knew.

But God quickly showed me that he had a plan for me here.

In my freshman year, I have done so many things I never expected to. God has shown me that he’s got a plan for my life, and it’s not boring. It’s not “safe”. It’s crazy. And awesome and unexpected.

In my first few months here, I received a cinnamon roll from a near stranger, I did worse than ever before on a few tests, I dropped my phone in the toilet, I cosplayed for the first time ever, I was adopted by some really lovely friends who still amaze me with their wonderfulness, and I had some kinda crazy adventures.

As Christmas approached I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning singing Christmas carols into a telephone.

Second semester, though the place and people here were now more familiar, was no less fantastic. I had a few more crazy adventures. I waS IN A FREAKING BAND So I guess I can check that off the bucket list. I learned a lot about what the phrase “friends forever” means when I only got to see some of my favorite people in the world very occasionally.

I think the most important thing that happened in my first year here was that I learned a lot about Jesus. God grew me in my desire to serve Him, to give my life for whatever He has for me. To love others as myself. To trust in Him for all my needs. To get excited about how He saved me and about sharing that with others.

And those are just the things that made it onto my blog.

I am so excited for what God has done in my life this first semester, and I’m even more excited to see what He is going to do with my summer, the rest of my time at college, and the rest of my life on earth.

I’m going to be spending my summer in Ocean City, New Jersey on a mission project with Cru. And I am so excited to see what God is going to do with me there.

Relient k release a new song this past week. It’s called “Don’t Blink”. The chorus, I think, pretty accurately describes how I feel about my freshman year in retrospect…

Hold on now

Don’t you blink or its gone

I’ve been terrified of life for way too long

Oh no now

Don’t you blink or it’s gone

In another life who knows what we’d become.

I highly recommend you just listen to the whole song.

My freshman year has been one of the best years of my life. Definitely the most… Amazing? Influential? Interesting? Awesome? Maybe a combination of all of those. I’ve seen my darkest nights and some of my brightest days in the past year and I’m honestly glad of all of it.

(Although I never did see that gorgeous British boy again. *sigh*)

Hi there, readers!
I am at a boring thing. Its this student panel thing at my college for this prospective students thing. I’m hosting a prospective student so i have to be here. Hooray! I’ve given up on trying to pay attention. These people are too impressive. They just make me feel down on myself. :P
Anyway, besides the fact that I’m bored and kinda sleepy, this weekend has been super amazing. Yesterday I got a really lovely email from a man at my church who has agreed to support me for the mission project I’m going on this summer with Cru. It was just a really nice, encouraging email. And that was only the beginning of the happiness.
Later in the day, I discovered I had done really well on the differential equations quiz I took earlier that day and I basically danced around the room because I needed those points after the unfortunate results on my previous quizzes. And, oh readers, it just gets better.
Shortly after finding out about my math quiz, I finally found out about the ECE test I took a couple weeks ago. It was a programming test so we literally spent 3 hours to write 4 computer programs. And readers… I did real well. Reeeeal well. I found out and I about screamed out loud. It was so amazing. So amazing.
Today has been slightly less mindblowing but the girl I am hosting has turned out to be super cool. I wasn’t sure about her at first because we seem like such different people. But then she told me she liked zombies and her favorite movie was Inception and she earned about 50 cool points in my mind. And she’s so nice. Getting to know new, lovely people is one of my favorite things, even though, as an introvert, it can be difficult for me.
I guess my point is that I’ve been extremely blessed. And it’s so awesome. I feel like that’s kinda been the point if a lot of my blog posts lately. But it’s so true!
This meeting is still going. But oh well. Until next time readers.

Hello, readers.

I spent a little time today looking back through my blog posts from the past 8 months so I figured I’d give you an update (although it will have to be brief because I have to go to orchestra soon).

Today was a lovely day. I woke up, got coffee, had class, worked on my machine problem*, had more class, had a wonderful lunch with my wonderful friends, finished my machine problem, came back to my room, went for a run in the gorgeous spring weather, got dinner with my wonderful friends, and now I’m blogging.

I was super psyched when I finished my MP (machine problem). You know that feeling when you can’t get something right and then you try all these different things and you’re about ready to give up but then you try one last thing on a whim and suddenly everything just works? Well, if you don’t know that feeling, it’s a bit like this:

So that was cool.

I also spent time today thinking about the friends I have here. How thankful I am for them. How much I really will miss them when I don’t get to see them every day.

I guess today was just a day of simple joys: a completed assignment, a tiring run in the fresh, warm air, a sweet piece of peanut butter pie, a good laugh with a good friend. It’s not the kind of day you’ll remember forever, but it’s one you’re always glad to have had.

*A machine problem, for those who don’t know, is basically just a project where you have to write a bunch of computer code that does a thing.

Good day, readers!

I cannot express to you how utterly content I feel right now. I am sitting at a table behind the student center, looking out on the quad. The grass, though was only a week ago buried in snow, is a deep green, and the show is a vibrant shade of blue. It’s always rather impressed me how perfectly the grass matches the sky. Also, have you ever noticed how the sky is not just one shade of blue? It’s really more of a gradient of very pale to a much deeper blue. Across the quad people are walking and throwing frisbees and there is a group of people “slack-lining” between two trees (it’s like tightrope walking except the “rope” is more flat, like a seat belt). Just in front of me, a rock band is jamming. It’s not an official performance or anything. I think the four guys just realized that today was too perfect too stay inside so they hauled all their instruments and amps out the quad. They’re quite good too.

I think it’s needless to say that I love spring. It is definitely my favorite season. This kind of weather is my favorite, and I love how everything finally starts to warm up and come back to life. The small of spring is fresh every year. The feeling of the sun warming my skin is unparalleled by any other. The weather seems to know that today is the most glorious day of Spring, that is, Easter.

I didn’t really like Easter for a pretty long period of my life. My parents’ Easter egg hiding got more predictable every year, and I never really liked the idea of the Easter bunny. Actually the idea of an Easter bunny completely freaked me out. (Although that may have been largely because of this sucker on the Sims:

*shudders* That freaking bunny haunted my childhood I swear.)

Honestly, when I was younger, Easter in my mind was essentially lame Christmas. You still went to church and had an awkward (but delicious) dinner with your extended family, but you only got one present in the morning, and usually the present wasn’t even that good. It’s not that I hated it. But it never seemed very special.

Over the years, though, I’ve come to realize the wondrous, knowledge-surpassing joy that Easter brings.

I went to church this morning, just as I do every Sunday morning, but this time with a little more joy an excitement in my heart, just for the fact that it was Easter. At my home church we never say “Happy Easter” on Easter. It’s not that we don’t like saying that or anything. We just have something far more fantastic to communicate to one another. At that church, we always greet each other on this holiday with a hearty, “He is risen!” to which it is customary to respond, “He is risen, indeed!” My church here at school does not have that tradition, however, I could feel that they still had the “risen indeed!” spirit about them this morning.

Easter brings me so much joy, joy that bubbles up inside me and threatens to bubble right out of me in fits of laughter, not because anything is funny, but just because my soul is overflowing with joy. Easter is that special day set aside each year, right as the sun finally comes to stay, and the snow melts away, and the earth begins to show signs of life, that I and many others set aside to remember that Jesus died and rose from the dead.

At the time in my life when I only saw Easter as “lame Christmas” it was because I did not know my need for a Savior. Jesus death and resurrection meant nothing to me. I was not a sinner. I had done nothing terribly wrong. I was good. I was, in fact, better than most people I knew. Easter was insignificant. 

The fact is, the very thought that I was good made me not good. A few years ago, God showed me that I am not, by my very nature, good. I was a sinner. I had been prideful and hurtful and deceitful. And I had given all my time and energy to pleasing myself rather than the greatest thing in the universe, which was God himself. I was, as Isaiah was, “A man of unclean lips” who had no right to be anywhere near the presence of God. And realizing that terrified me.

But that is what makes Easter so fantastic, because God did not leave me where I was. For some reason, some crazy reason, even though I, deep down in my heart cared, nothing for him, God loved me. And a long time ago, He loved me so much that He sent His holy, perfect Son, Jesus, to die, so that I could be saved from all my sin. Forgiven. Granted all that Jesus had as a child of God. So I could experience an eternity of otherworldly joy.

That seems like such a brief sentence for such an infinitely amazing reality. Jesus died. He did not just die, but He died the most painful, violent death that the wicked hearts of men could imagine up. More than that, the was completely abandoned by all His friends, who had hours earlier promised to stay by His side. His father, the God of the Universe, who He had been divinely connected too since before the beginning of time, cut Himself off from his son, left him totally alone, as every sin I ever committed was whipped, beaten, and nailed into Him. And in this state Jesus died.

But Jesus also rose from the dead. He did not just survive, only to die a less painful death later on. He defeated a death that could not hold Him because it was a death He did not deserve. He was raised to a new life. A new existence the likes of which had never been seen before, and which death could no longer touch. He paid the price for all my sins, and rose from the grave into a perfect life. 

And when God impressed that truth on my heart and my mind, so I could really believe it, oh, it changed everything.

In church this morning my pastor posed the question, Why does suffering hurt so much? Why do we hold so tightly to our money and possessions? Why does death frighten and grieve us so much? It is because so many people believe that this is the only life they will ever have. This is the only money that they will ever have. The pain of suffering on earth is the only experience we will have. Death takes us all, and then everything we have and are is gone. But with Christ, when we see His resurrection, we have life, new life, the likes of which we have never felt before. It is the life Jesus won when he rolled away that stone. And in this new life there will be no more tears. No more pain. No more frustration or stress. Everything will be as God intended it in the beginning of time. Good. When you have that hope of the future, it changes everything. It gives me strength to face all the pain I have in this world (and this year I think I have experienced more of the brokenness of the world than ever before in my life) and face it with joy. It gives us courage to take chances. It gives us freedom to leave our bubble of comfort and security and become more than we ever could have imagined.

Because Jesus rose from the dead, I have a glorious future to look forward to…

There will come a time you’ll see

With no more tears

And love will not break your heart

But dismiss your fears

Get over your hill and see

What you’ll find there

With Grace in your heart

And flowers in your hair

And, reader, if you ask God to help you believe this in your heart as well—if you see your need for a Savior and ask him to save you—you can look forward to that time too.

Happy Easter, readers.

Bonjour, lovely readers.

I had a college snow day today. I felt like it ought to be put into words for posterity’s sake, as it’s not a frequent occurrence.

Speaking of making history, I got back to school from spring break yesterday, and, at the end of March we got some record snowfall. Crazy.

Midwest weather, my friends.

Despite the winter we are having this spring, my spring break was quite nice. Many of my high school/hometown friends were not on break, so I had a lot of time to just chill on my own. Watch Merlin. Tumbl. Study for my three exams this week. Go on walks. Drink coffee. Watch more Merlin. Watch weird British arthouse films. It was actually extremely pleasant.

Of course, I didn’t spend my whole break alone. I also spent some quality time with two of my best friends in the world.

On Friday, I got up bright and early in order to procure a vehicle for myself—that is to say, I had to drink my mom to work so I could drive her monster of an SUV around all day. I then proceeded to drive up north so I could pick up my friend from her school and we could get some breakfast. Thirty minute drive to a university campus. Pick up friend. Drive to IHOP. Sounds easy, right? 

No.

See, the address given on the website for this university is, in fact, very incorrect. Well, maybe not very. But the address is basically smack in the middle of this row of shops in the middle of the downtown, with a bunch of houses to the left and a river to the right. I circled it about ten times, and started to wonder if maybe the college was underground.

Turns out it was just half a mile further down the road I was on.

But I found her eventually. I didn’t even panic. I’m actually pretty proud of myself.

We went to IHOP, as its kind of a tradition of ours. (Although, in the past, we usually went in the wee hours of the morning when our shifts at our horrendous retail job ended, and we kidnapped our hipster friend to come along as well.) The food was amazing. Although to be fair, all food seems amazing after you’ve been eating dorm food for two months. Trust me.

We talked and laughed and got thoroughly caught up on each other’s lives. Then I drove her back and she showed me around her tiny private university, which is super bizarre for me because my school is gigantic. 

On my way home, I rolled down the window, blasted the Mumford and Sons as loud as the monster SUV’s sound system could handle, and belted it out so loud that my throat hurt.

Honestly, there are few things more wonderfully liberating.

I was feeling pretty good so I rode out my good mood by going to the bank to deposit my tax return (booya) and finally going to get my glasses fixed.

When my family arrived back at home we had some noms and watched the 2009 Star Trek movie (you know, the one with the lovely Chris Pine). Quality movie, that. Plus, it was extra important that my little sister see it so she could get super psyched about the sequel that is coming out on May 17 because it stars the ever wonderful Benedict Cumberbatch as the gorgeous vengeance-obsessed villain. If you don’t understand, just go on Netflix and watch BBC Sherlock. There’s only 9 hours of it, and they are all fantastic. 

Ahem.

Anyway.

Returning to the story.

Saturday was a lovely day, too. Becky (my little sister) and I took a walk because the weather was delightful. We got sandwiches at a local place, then got coffee at a new coffee shop downtown where the people were especially friendly. Walking around downtown my hometown in the beginning of spring has become something of a tradition for Becky and I, I realized. It felt good to continue the tradition even though I’m in college now.

The evening of my penultimate day was simultaneously the best and the worst. 

I headed out to the home of one of my dearest friends for an evening of joy and revelry—by which I mean, we were gonna eat junk food and watch a stupid but awesome movie. I’m not being sarcastic when I say that this is probably my favorite thing in the world to do.

Unfortunately, just as we were sitting down to start the movie, my friend’s mom came to the door.

“Bri, I’m afraid I have some bad news,” she said, poking her head in the doorway. “A man was backing out of the driveway across the street and he hit your car.”

Me:

The guy who hit my car was at the door, so I went to talk to him. He was extremely nice, but I didn’t really know what to do. I felt like I suddenly needed to be an Adult, but I had no idea how. How to react to your car door being smushed by a giant truck is not something you learn in high school. 

Lets just say, I didn’t handle it very well and it kinda put a damper on my mood.

But I called my dad and he swooped in to deal with it and save the day.

After that little ordeal, my friend and I made chocolate chip pancakes (the most beautiful chocolate chip pancakes ever, if I do say so myself), and watched our movie.

The movie was called Three Blind Saints. We originally chose it because it had one of my friend’s favorite actors, and because the plot synopsis looked utterly ridiculous, so it was just our kind of movie. But it actually ended up being one of the most genuinely hilarious movie I have ever seen in my life. Highly recommend.

After that we just hung out and rewatched scenes from Starkid musicals until my contacts started to go funky and I decided I ought to drive home while I could still see.

My time spent with three of my favorite people in the world, even if it was just to share a breakfast, a walk, or a ridiculous movie, definitely made this spring break truly fantastic. I’d like to think these are the memories I will hold onto as my life goes on. The little things that made my relationships so specially. So brilliant. So joy-filled, even in the midst of some nasty stuff.

Stay classy, readers.

Hey, readers.

I’m home. I feel like I often blog from home. Maybe it’s because I’m bored. Maybe it’s because I’m procrastinating all my homework. Maybe it’s because all my friends don’t live down the hall.

Actually I think the most likely reason is because I finished all five seasons of Merlin about a week ago and now I don’t even know what to do with myself.

I kid. Well… Sort of.

Hmm… Stories…

Yesterday night I arrived home from college, as it is spring break.

WOOO SPRING BREAK!

Buttttt actually it’s more like, ughh spring break…

I’ve got three extremely difficult tests the week I get back from break, and then another beastly test the week after that, so I’m going to be spending essentially my entire break like this:

Or, more realistically:

So I guess just pray that I don’t die of information overload and that I do okay on my tests. Or at least I’m humble enough to not die if/when I fail them all.

On a lighter note, I had a really fantastic first evening of break watching A Very Potter Senior Year with my siblings. A Very Potter Senior Year is the third and final installment in the Very Potter Musical trilogy. Basically back in 2009 a bunch of crazy Potterhead theater kids at University of Michigan—including the ever handsome and talented Glee star Darren Criss—decided it would be fun to throw together a parody musical about Harry Potter, and then post it on the internet. And it went viral, so they made a second one. That one only increased the group’s popularity. There was always a demand and even a plan for a third Harry Potter-based musical, but when their leading man got a role on Glee that completely monopolized his time, all hope for the Threequel seemed lost. However, this past summer, the group—known as StarKid—managed to grab Darren for a day in order to perform a staged reading of the final musical at a Harry Potter convention. And it is so fantastic. All the Very Potter Musicals are extremely hilarious and well-done, and, since I watched the first one shortly after I finished reading the Potter books for the first time in Summer 2009, they were an important little piece of my high school years. 

Suffice it to say that I really enjoyed watching AVPSY last night and would highly recommend it. (But be warned, all the musicals can get pretty inappropriate at times.)

So… That happened. Sorry, I didn’t really mean to give a history and review of StarKid when I sat down at my blog today. But I guess that’s just how it goes.

I went to my home church this morning, which was really wonderful. The lady next to me told me I had a beautiful singing voice, which was flattering. But, of course, the best part was Jesus. Learning more about Jesus, and more about myself. That’s always a good thing. (If you are interested, and because this paragraph is so vague, you can listen to the sermon here.)

Besides church, I haven’t really done much. I’m still getting over the plague so my ability to do stuff has been pretty restricted.

It’s going to be an interesting break, readers. Things are different. But I know God will carry me through.

Until we meet again.

Yo, readers!

I just wanted to make a blog post because I’m super excited cuz I lived one of my secret crazy dreams this weekend.

I was in a band.

This has been a secret crazy dream of mine since my first ever Relient k concert back in freshman year of high school, and I don’t think I even realized I was living my dream until somewhere around the end of it all. 

My story of becoming a member of a band begins a few weeks ago. Or perhaps months ago. I’m not sure.

See, some of my best friends here at school were in charge of organizing our Cru Freshman Getaway, and they were in need of a band to lead worship. Now I don’t exactly sing or play guitar, but in a moment of odd courage, I asked if I could play my violin in the band. 

I guess not many people here realized that I play the violin, which is strange since most of my high school friends knew about it—and were better than me at music.

At first, I was really worried about what I had gotten myself into. Yes, I play the violin, but I didn’t know how to improv or play in a rock worship band.

But when the time came God showed me that he had been preparing me for this for a long time. 

The whole band was gathered together by our fantastic drummer, who was so kind and excited to organize everything. We had two practices before the actual retreat, and then we practiced a few times while we were there.

During the actual worship… It was amazing. I don’t know if I was amazing, but God was amazing through each of us. We all played and sang to worship God, and in the beauty of the resulting sound was all the more reason to give God praise. 

To all my band members I say this: Thank you so much for your kindness to me, for sharing your talents, for your desire to build community, for the hours you sacrificed, and most importantly for your desire to lift God’s name high and spread his wonder through all the earth. 

God bless, readers.

Hey there, readers.

I’m tired and bored and have lots of responsibilities I should be tending to, but I’ve decided to write something instead. 

It’s been a while. How have you been? What’ve you been up to?

[Insert your response here]

I think this may be the longest I have ever gone without writing a blog post (well, for this blog anyway). It’s not because I’ve been too busy (although I have been busy, I always am at college). But it’s definitely not because I have nothing to say either. On the contrary, my life has been… crazy this semester. A lot has changed. Things have happened to my life that I never expected, good and bad. (Lots of bad actually. But still plenty of good.)

I walked home from class in a blizzard today. To all those people out there who say they loveee snow and winter:

I mean, it’s pretty I guess, but walking in it is probably THE most unpleasant thing ever. I can’t even decide what the worst part was:

1. Having to walk slowly lest I slip and slide down the sidewalk.
2. Wet hazy all over my glasses.
3. Spear-like snow somehow managing to get past my glasses and stab me in the eye.
4. Wind.
5. I finally make it inside where it is warm but my everything is wet for the rest of eternity.

But I’m probably being too negative. It is pretty I guess.

Another reason I’m blogging today is because I’m trying to (temporarily) overcome my addiction to the TV show Merlin. If you enjoy British things, gorgeous plotlines, pretty people, and/or crying until your tear ducts are numb, Merlin might be the show for you.*

The first four seasons of the show are all on Netflix, so naturally I watched all that in about two weeks. However, now my friend Zach has asked me to slow down and wait for him to catch up so we can watch season 5, the final season, together—as much as two people who live 10 hours apart can do something “together.”

Anyway while I’m on my Merlin fast, I really ought to be doing productive things like, say, filling out scholarship applications, working on my Ocean City preparations, working on my study abroad application, or studying, but…

I’m blogging instead. 

I wish I had some better stories to tell you, dear readers, but I feel at a bit of a loss. 

I know, if you want, you can leave questions in my ask box. I’ll probably answer them, since I am bored and don’t want to do important things.

Until next time, readers.

*Common side effects of Merlin include lack of sleep, poor work ethic, broken heart, addiction, and confused roommates. Consult your court physician before using Merlin, as it may not be right for everyone. (Except actually it’s fantastic go watch it now.)

[EDIT: I wrote this many weeks ago and never finished it. Oops. I felt like I should share it anyhow because it made me sad to have to delete it. So here ya go.]

Hey there, readers.

I hope you’ve been doing well. I’ve been doing pretty good, except I think I’m catching a cold. Which is a bummer.

I’ve had quite an exciting weekend so far. 

My story begins on the cool afternoon of Friday, January 25, 2013. And, by “cool” I mean “extreme Illinois cold.”  I got out of my computer programming lab at 1:00, then headed back to my dorm. The day had been vastly uneventful. But I was optimistic about the weekend. Upon returning to my humble abode, I joined with my dear friend Sarah, and we went to work out at the recreation center across the street.

I quite enjoy working out with Sarah. We work up a light sweat on the elliptical while chatting about the future. The future used to scare me. It was blank and terrifying. But I’m not scared of the future as long as Sarah will be there with me. And she gets so excited about the rest of our college years and whatever lies beyond. 

After our workout sesh, I spent a little bit of time hacking away at my homework, then it was time for dinner.

I kind of love dinner. It’s one of the only times during most days that all my friends are in the same place. Which is great.

After dinner, my friends and I braved the cold and the snow and the ice to go to some kind of tennis tournament thing. I’m not gonna lie, I really don’t like tennis. The only reason I really went was because most of my friends had decided to go. (Also I had been promised free chocolate chip pancakes.) 

The whole endeavor was, unfortunately, pretty disappointing. The tennis was boring (mostly cuz I have no idea how tennis works), the building was hot, we stood the whole time, my friends weren’t very chatty, and I didn’t get any chocolate chip pancakes. I did, however, get a blueberry pancake on the way out and the trek home with my friends was alright. 

When I got back to my room, I was feeling kinda blue. Socially exhausted, in a way. I didn’t think I had the energy to be social, but I also didn’t want to be alone. 

Despite the loneliness that was beginning to creep over me, I decided to grab a Cherry Coke from the vending machine, pull my laptop up onto my bed, and settled in to watch some Office U.K. (Gotta love that Martin Freeman.)

Just as I had gotten about halfway through my second episode, however, I noticed I had missed a call from Uhniqua. Shortly after that there was a loud banging on my door, but when I finally dragged myself off my bed to open it, there was no one there. Then I got another call from Uhniqua.

“Hey! Get your shoes on and hurry over to the bus stop! We’re going to see a movie!”

“Huh? What??”

“Bri, we’re going to see Silver Linings Playbook, but the bus leaves in like 5 minutes so you have to hurry.”

After about half a second of deliberation, I decided to go for it.

So, at 9:30 at night, me and seven of my coolest friends piled onto a bus and headed to the movie theater. 

We made it in just as the previews were ending.

The movie itself, Silver Linings Playbook, that is, was really fantastic. It was real, and full of raw emotion, but also funny and romantic and sweet. It was basically a story about two broken people helping each other heal. 

After the movie, sometime around midnight, we headed back on the bus, concluding our Friday night adventure. I went to bed in a fantastic mood, overwhelmed by the joy of spontaneity and the general love of my friends.

[EDIT: And this is where I stopped and I don’t really remember what I was going to write after that. Sorry. :P]

Evening, readers.

I’m baaaack at school, and kinda really bored.

I had a really lovely winter break. I spent some quality time with some of my bestest friends, which was great. I went to this amazing conference called IndyCC. I watched all of the Lord of the Rings movies (and then saw The Hobbit twice). I read a bunch of Sherlock Holmes stories. Generally I just chilled out and enjoyed not having homework.

But now I’m back and classes have started and the homework has struck again.

I’m not actually surprised by this. I expected it. But I hate starting new classes. It just takes me a little while to get used to new teachers and topics and schedules and all that. So when I got my first two homework assignments today, I was feeling all confident that they would be easy-peasy. But then I started them, and they were so simple, but because of that I over-thought them majorly and was tempted to just give up.

But I put something down. Hopefully it’s right. Hrng. *grump*

On the bright side it is wonderful to be back with my college family. When I got back yesterday there were plenty of joyful little reunions as my friends all gathered back together.

We all watched the Golden Globes together. One of my friends critiqued all the celebrities outfits and hair, while another humorously complained about the length of all the speeches, and we all wondered aloud what the heck “Girls” was about (we looked it up and it looks super dumb so I don’t know why it won so many awards). I fangirled hardcore when it showed Benedict Cumberbatch, and then loudly complained when he didn’t win for his role as Sherlock. 

I do love my friends though and I’m excited about what second semester has in store for us. And I know even if my classes are eating me alive, my friends will always be there to hold me together. (Yes, I realize that analogy made very little sense. Don’t worry about it.)

Wish me luck, readers. It’s gonna be a crazy couple of months.