Life Choices

It's been a while I know, sorry for all you Stacy's Blog groupies...wait...I don't have any? Damn.

Anywho, a lot has happened. I don't know about anywhere else, but here at Allegheny we categorize everything into life choices. Often times they are poor life choices. Taking the grass instead of the sidewalk and ending up covered in mud, playing a game or going out instead of studying, blogging for the first time in two months instead of doing your ridiculous FS project (how dare you accuse me!!!) but you get the point. Second semester has been filled with all sorts of decisions for me...life decisions. Should I do this? Should I join this? Should I apply for this?

One choice however stands out above the rest. It was a huge decision that I had to make immediately upon getting back, even before diving into my classes even. This single decision however has turned into the greatest life decision of my college career, to date and most likely through the next three years. That choice was to join Allegheny College's Mu chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.

I don't really care about your opinion of the collegiate Greek system...that you buy friends or it's just a bunch of hos coming together to get drunk all the time. Theta is different (as well as Allegheny Greeks in general.) I now have this great new circle of people who know me and share things with me. A whole new realm of opportunities has opened up. I can't enter a room without someone saying hello.

It's all hard to explain, but it all truly came out last night as I was dragged out to a mixer with one of the fraternities. It was great. I knew everyone and it was an exciting experience. Beyond that, I went to a fraternity hosted dance party, which I vowed never to do. But it was all made better by the fact that I was with about ten other girls who were vowing to stick together and create our own party at the party. From there came the best part, being able to just have fun as huge beautiful snowflakes soaked us to the bone. Snow angels in senior circle. Wrestling and laughing. It was simply amazing and all came to be the best night of my freshman year.

So I don't care what people want to say about me being in a sorority. When you can run across campus through the great hours of the night laughing and yelling out the apple bottom jeans song, completely comfortable and happy...that is a moment when you know you have found your place. I hope I have many more of these moments, and I am sure I will. For now, I am entirely content with it all.

Now about that project...

Oh Home

3 days. 3 finals. That's all that stands between me and Churchville.







But then yet, I question...do I really want to go home?

This is a bit whiney...

I made a simple comment today. One that so many of us in the hall make when we are stressed or avoiding work or pretty much think we're screwed on a project or something.

"I fail at life."

We usually laugh it off or support each other, or something else like that, but we never really do much about it. I made this comment because of several reasons. I have a French paper due tomorrow, which always stresses me out, I have a ton of other stuff happening in my life that I don't really care to share with everybody because they would not understand, and I really just want to get this next week and a half over with.

So yeah...I fail at life. One girl looks at me as she is slumped on her bed looking at her computer downloading a game and she pretty much yells at me; "shut-up. You don't even know the beginning of failing. You have an A in chemistry and I have nothing near it..."

Since when did the term 'life' come to mean 'academics'? I guess I don't really understand. Yes we are in college to study, but we also live here and living involves having fun. There is more to life than school. There is more to life than what seems on the outside. Sometimes people don't share everything that they are feeling and in conclusion ou have no right to honestly judge if someone else is failing at life.

Oh life...

So a lot has happened recently that just has really brightened me life from my last entry. Melanie called me on Thursday, and I cried at the sound of her voice, I was so happy to be talking to her for the hour and seventeen minutes that we did. Perhaps the best conversation I have ever had. Thanksgiving is only TWO WEEKS away! That means I get to go home and see everyone and eat good food and get a Christmas tree, and it is officially the beginning of the final stretch of the semester. I can't believe it's almost over, the first semester of my first year of college. I just have to now face the stresses of registering for classes next semester. Above all though, the happiest thing in my life officially...Rachel Reeves is making a guest appearance at Allegheny College this weekend!!!!!!!!!

It's going to be the greatest thing ever to see her after a two and a half month drought. Not only that, I get to see her parents as well which is amazing since I consider them pretty much as my second family and I think it is so amazing that they are driving down to drop their daughter off at my school and pick her back up again.

It will be so much fun though. We can eat together, we can catch up on life, I can show her about my new 'home.' My friends here are all sooo excited to meet her...probably to see what type of person would last being my friend this long (just kidding.) But we will have tons of fun, bake pie, maybe go downtown...who knows. I am so very excited though, this will probably be the best weekend yet at Allegheny, I love it, but it is going to be so much better with Rachel here.

So let's move a little faster week...

...

I'm alive.

It's all that really matters.

Home, Home on the Range

Fall Break

Definition: A mid-semester extended weekend given to Allegheny students as a reward for going 6.5 weeks straight of classes. Time is given to go home and spend time with the family, or relax back at your residence hall.

This past weekend, I had opted for the second due to complications at home with an inability to drive 3 hours to pick me up bring me back home and do it all over again a few days later. Unfortunately, nobody notified me that in the end, I would be one of maybe 3 people left in my hall...the others of which I don't talk to.

A call came in Friday night, asking me how to say bitch in French, and I gave her a far more offensive term. She threw me on the phone with her boyfriend, and after a while of talking he offered to get me the next day after work. What a fantastic idea! My sister ended up getting me after work after I had called her 'sick' to get her out of a mandatory RA thing.


It was a complete surprise to my family that I was coming home. My father was thrilled and my mother was pissed because we were so late getting home and almost missed my brother's haunted house. Beyond that all was fine...except my brother's take-over of the bathroom, that was disgusting.

It was nice to be home. I went for pumpkins and picked apples. I ate good food in reasonable portions and got to sleep in my own bed (hard as a rock compared to my school bed...and about 2 feet shorter) I also drove a car again, one thing that I miss terribly here. And I went to Target and saw civilization. I visited school and talked to my favorite teachers and saw my swim team...and realized I really do NOT miss swimming. Overall it was good to be home. But at the same time, at the end of 2 days, I was ready to come back. Very ready. Home is great, my family is great, it was wonderful to see Carolyn and have a good old Tuxedo Latte at Leaf and Bean, but seriously I have been so independent for the past two months that it was a little strange to ask my parents if I could do everything and to live out of a duffel bag in my own home.

But now I have 5 more weeks of straight classes with no breaks, until Thanksgiving. Everyone will be home at Thanksgiving, I will have a reason to be there, to kick off the holiday season with tons of good food, get Christmas decorations and then return at the end to finish off the semester. College goes so quick.

This is probably the most disorganized blog post in a long time. Deal with it.

I USED TO be like that

So I ran into a rather awkward conversation today, at least it was awkward for me. On Thursdays, I eat lunch at French table, where we are supposed to eat and talk seulement en français, but often people ignore that. I was having some pretty good conversations with people around me, and then toward the end, people near the foot of the table started speaking in English. It was all about "that boy with OCD." Nearly everyone on campus knows him or knows of him apparently. This is only the first I had heard of him.

The point is though, they were talking. Pointing out the things he does and discussing them, then going on to try to figure out why, then continuing, as often people do when talking about OCD, to point out their own quirks. Listening in on this conversation, as it was the same people I had been discussing life with in French only five minutes before, I felt awkward. As they continued to talk, I wanted to set them straight with facts and personal experiences, but I didn't feel it was my place for some reason.

For the first time since I have been here, I am uncomfortable with my own OCD.
The conversation at lunch really made me think: do people see me doing my stuff and talk about me over their mandatory lunch periods? Do they actually see t for what it is, or something else?

My real question is, since when did OCD become uch a widely used term for every little stupid thing? Since when did it become a 'competition' to have the most strange habits and title them under OCD? Do they even understand that it is more than just a little organization here, a little touching there? I don't think so. The term OCD is so widely used (often with the wrong verb) that people no longer recognize it so much as an actual anxiety disorder as they do an emotion.

As I sat listening to the conversation, I felt this incredible discomfort so that after a few moments, I just got up and left. It kind of made me think about and realize how far I have come and how thankful I have worked things out, put forth the effort to change, that I am not so bad as to be dubbed "that girl with OCD."

But really, what do you do in that conversation? It's not like you can come out and start talking, setting the facts straight, using the excuse of knowledge as the fact that you do have OCD, not when everybody else is going around saying things that for some reason make it seem like they are competing for the disorder. It really just seems like you are trying to get your sympathy bid in.

I guess I just have to leave it at something that if somebody is curious, they can ask, but until then I just have to get up from the table and ignore the conversation, completely content with the fact that I used to be like that.