My Hardest Day In College

I have become that guy who consistently updates a mere three times each month. How the mighty have fallen. So what’s been happening?

A week ago Monday I gave a speech in my speech class that, I learned today, I got an A on. It had to be an informative speech, so I chose “How to be an RSO President” as my topic. I barely prepared and faked it pretty well. The whole thing was recorded and put on a mini DVD. If you all want (and by ‘you all’ I mean ‘both of you’) I could put that video up on my site. It’s not exciting, but hey, new site content is new site content.

Last Wednesday night I pulled a most-of-the-nighter studying in the library. I had two strange things happen to me, both involving women I don’t know. The first one all happened on the fifth floor of the library. I went up there to study because there’s usually no one else up there, and the people who are up there are also up there because there’s no one else up there. That made no sense. Whatever. Now picture this. Along the back wall there’s a row of desks. In the far left corner there are three desks, then a long bookcase, then a single desk, another bookcase, three more desks, and so on. I took the single desk for the maximum distraction-free zone. I’m probably there for twenty minutes when in walks this very pretty girl. (This is the part of the story when the storyteller is getting uncomfortable telling the story.) She walks over to the desks in the left corner and sits down at the middle one. How pretty is this girl? Let me put it this way. Because of where I’m sitting she is the only thing that is capable of distracting me, but if she were one of a million things that could distract me she’d be the only one with my attention. So as I’m studying my mind is starting to create all
sorts of fictions. You know in the movies when this happens, only the guy in the story looks good, and the girl gets up and goes over and talks to the guy and/or she slyly leaves her phone number on the guy’s desk? Well, that’s what’s going through my head. Over the next hour or
so she got up a few times to answer her phone, which wasn’t helping matters. At some point she packed up to leave. At that particular moment I was actually working, so I about fell out of my chair when she stopped next to my desk and started talking to me. I had to practically
reboot my brain to figure out what it was she said to me. Evidently we had been studying for the same test, and we were in the same section. Beyond that I don’t really remember what was said. I do remember I didn’t say much, mostly because I was utterly dumbfounded. I’m still not totally convinced any of it happened.

The second woman story is not nearly as funny. It’s actually pretty scary. At 2 AM the library closed, so I had to pack up and leave even though I had more studying to do. As I was walking home right outside the Union a girl in a tight black dress called out to me from behind me.
At first I didn’t think she was talking to me so I kept walking but upon her second call I turned to find her asking me for a cigarette. I had to tell her sorry, that I didn’t have one. When she said that it was alright it became obvious that she had been crying. Now I have to tell you, I’ve become pretty used to not asking why a girl is crying. Either the answer is for no reason which is an answer that a man just simply cannot accept or there is a good reason but she sure isn’t going to tell you. But as soon as I heard her shaking voice — and remember it’s 2 AM and she’s out alone in the dark — the first and only thing that went through my mind was “this girl has been raped.” It was such a strong feeling that I immediately went against my programing and asked her if there was anything I could do. After asking twice and being told no both times we parted. Even now I feel like I should have insisted on at least walking her home or to her car or something, but how creepy would that have been for her?

Last Thursday might have been my hardest day in college so far. A bold claim, I know. I have three classes on Thursdays. Last week I had tests in each of them. And those classes are spread out such that there really isn’t any time in between them to study, so everything needed to be done the night before. I stayed up all night studying for Risk Management,
just because there’s only three tests in that class and that’s your entire grade. Following that I had a Spanish oral in which I had to talk about body language. My last test was in Christianity after the New Testament. That was my only truly easy test of the day. All in all I think I did pretty good. I might have mixed up a couple of definitions on the Risk Management and I know I answered one question flat out wrong in Spanish, but I think I’m looking at As and Bs.

Now if it were just tests you could argue that the day was just tough and nothing all that significant beyond that. But then there was Nav Night, where for the first time the praise band I lead would be leading worship. For many of them this would be the first time they would publicly be playing their instruments. For me it would be the first time I would be the lead singer in the Nav band. Leading up to that night I was pretty nervous. We had only
practiced eight songs, and I was making the decision to drop one of those eight because we just weren’t ready to play it. In the past we had had a need for as many as ten songs. I didn’t know if we were going to be able to fill the time given to us. As it turned out we had the opposite problem. We had too many songs. I knew we were going to have a lot of discussion and prayer and that kind of thing, but we had so much that we only played four songs! Now granted, we played two of those songs twice through so technically we sang six times and four different songs. As for the band? They did great. I was really proud of them. We had only had three practices before Thursday night and they sounded far more experienced. I’m very excited for October. Not only will I be leading the singing and playing piano but I’ll also be leading the meeting. Dave will be out of town so it’ll be up to me to do it all. It’s a big job, but I think it’ll be a good growth experience.

I’ve got to talk about sports. First, FSU won their game and benefited from UF and LSU losing. So now we’re #4 in the AP poll and #5 in the USA Today poll. And we’re not that good! But this year we might not lose to an unranked team, so we may fool everyone. But I just keep thinking about our final four games of this season: Clemson, Florida, the ACC Championship game versus Virginia Tech (or possibly Miami I suppose), and then whoever in our bowl game. That’s four games where we have the opportunity to show everyone that we’re not as good as our ranking suggests.

And now baseball. It’s time for the playoffs. That means it’s time to look at how my preseason predictions stack up with what really happened, and time to make postseason predictions. So here’s the regular season breakdown:

National League:
East: Braves (preseason pick: Braves)
Central: Cardinals (preseason pick: Cardinals)
West: Padres (preseason pick: Dodgers, finished 4th)
Wild Card: Astros (preseason pick: Marlins, finished tied 3rd)

American League:
East: Yankees (preseason pick: Yankees)
Central: White Sox (preseason pick: Twins, finished 3rd)
West: Angels (preseason pick: Angels)
Wild Card: Red Sox (preseason pick: Red Sox)

All in all not too bad. (These picks, by the way, were made on April 2 in my blog if you care to go back and look.) My logic for picking the Dodgers was because of Gagne, who was injured for the better part of the season. But I’m still not sure why the Padres won. I don’t think anyone could have seen the White Sox being a 99-game-winner this season, but I did predict that the Indians would be good this year. My poor fish once again tanked in September. I thought this year would be different, but they finished with the same record as last year. I’m sad to see Jack McKeon go too, but it’s probably for the best.

I’ll close this blog entry with my postseason picks:

NLDS: Astros vs Braves - Astros in 5
NLDS: Padres vs Cardinals - Cardinals in 3
ALDS: Angels vs Yankees - Angels in 5
ALDS: Red Sox vs White Sox - Red Sox in 4
NLCS: Astros vs Cardinals - Astros in 7
ALCS: Red Sox vs Angels - Angels in 6
World Series: Astros vs Angels - Astros in 6