(File was lost when AudioBlogger closed, sorry.)
Category Archives: College
Dollar Challenge
Here on campus, there’s been a bit of a thing going around, called the “Dollar Challenge.” Although originally inspired by Christie AHD Max Kalchthaler, Villa has overcome the hatred of all things Christie and embraced the Challenge. The other day at dinner, Michael R. was issued a challenge by Jake H., to pour a glass of water on his head, and received the dollar. The dollar Jake paid with was the exact one that he had received for a previous challenge, and thus the “Dollar Challenge Dollar” was born.
If it isn’t clear yet, the Dollar Challenge is essentially a dare, in which the participant gets a dollar upon completion of the event. Friday night at dinner, we were trying to get someone else to accept a challenge, and somehow or other, we all decided that we would pressure Brett T. to accept the next challenge. A number of challenges were proposed at dinner, none accepted. On the way back to Villa, we stopped by Mehling, for Lindsey to get her glasses. Originally, we were just going to continue to Villa and meet Lindsey there, but we ended up deciding to wait for her to come back down. While we were waiting, Jake was talking to the Hall director of Mehling, and a few RAs that were in the hall office. Somewhere in this interval, Matt P. accepted a challenge to roll an apple into the office as if it were a grenade, shout “fire in the hole”, and tackle Jake to the ground. For this, he became the new owner of the Dollar Challenge Dollar.
Somewhere during this time, a new dollar challenge was thought up by the RAs, that Brett would wear a pair of boxers on the outside of his pants and parade around Mehling. We eventually gave up waiting for Lindsey, and returned to Villa, only to find that as she was not expecting for us to wait for her, she’d gone out the back way, and was already in Villa. Brett got on some boxers, and we decided to watch the first episode of Firefly–a very good series, but I digress. After it was over, we prepared to head over to Mehling.
It was decided that Brett should have an escort, and we all decided to dress in kahaki pants and black shirts. The group assembled, and we escorted him to Mehling. There was a brief scuffle, and we were unable to convince him to remove his coat, so we decided he could leave it on.
We proceeded to escort him through all the floors, one at a time, and then up the stairwell to the next floor. All eight floors. We protected him from any stray threats in the rooms, as we stood in front of any open doorways until he had passed by. There was a small disturbance on the seventh floor, but we were able to protect him from it. Upon reaching the eighth floor, we descended, again, passing through each floor. (Mehling has one central hall, and stairwells on either end of the building.) This time, the insurgents on the seventh floor had obtained weapons, and we just barely saved Brett from being hit by a barrage of foam rings. Upon reaching the 2nd floor, we realized that the stairwell at that end of the building connected only to the outdoors, not to the first floor, so we decided that we would have to go back, and ended up detouring via the seventh floor, where we were able to quell the insurgency and got a few photo ops.
Upon reaching the ground floor, Brett tried to escape to Villa, but we were able to catch up with him, and escorted him back to his room, where he collected the Dollar Challenge Dollar from Matt, his roommate. The guards decided to return to Mehling to offer to guard the RAs on their rounds, as we weren’t quite sure they would be safe on the seventh floor. Jake was chosen as negotiator. They felt that they would be safe in Mehling, but suggested that they might not be safe traveling to Wendy’s for frosties. Driving a hard bargain, Jake was able to get them to arrange a dessert date for us, with some Mehling ladies, at Papa Haydns at some date near Valentines day. (It did help that Jake is behind on planning events again.) With that agreement, we proceeded to pile into 2 cars, (By then, we numbered only eight, plus Jake, who stayed with the RAs.) Only the drive thru was open, and the fellow had to verify that Michael wanted to order 10 frosties. They were obtained, and we returned to campus, delivered the frosties, and returned to Villa, and watched another episode of Firefly. All in all, quite a memorable night–and I must say, the best Dollar Challenge Ever.
More pictures from this event can be found on Page 3 of the Sophomore Gallery.
Semester Recap
Now that the semester is over, I can’t claim schoolwork as an excuse for not posting–although I can say that at times, I just don’t feel like posting. Sometimes sitting in front of my computer is just not where I want to be. I certainly manage to do enough of it without posting, anyway.
I see that the last post was back over Thanksgiving break, after the soccer victory over Notre Dame. As most people must know by now, the team went on to win over Penn State in a (nerve-racking) shootout, and then to beat UCLA 4-0 in the championship match. It was hardly a game, with the first goal scored at 1:32 into the game, and the score 3-0 by the half. Still, there was celebration. The Drum Squad had showed up in force at the live “watch party” in the Chiles Center, and after the game, we went outside to ring (and actually, break) the victory bell that we traditionally ring after a win, and then we paraded all around campus. We went by the 6 dorms, and even decided to go into the commons and walk around the perimeter. Let me tell you, all those drums in there sounded impressive, that’s for sure. About 20 m inutes later, we arrived in Villa. Certainly a day to remember.
So many things have happened this semester, I can’t make up my mind which of them to try and type, and which to leave for later (which will likely be never). A few recent notes-Finals week was quite busy, and I ended up with three finals on Wednesday, never fun. All in all, I think I did pretty well, but I will find out later in the week, when final grades are posted online.
I’m currently listening to the latest CD from a a capella group called On the Rocks, a student group from UO. They’ve become quite popular around the dorm, even though we’ve never heard them in person. It’s a few hour trip, but would be worth it. I bought their most recent CD, and have been listening to it more or less non-stop ever since it arrived on Thursday. So far, everyone that’s heard it has liked it quite a bit, too.
The semester has been pretty fun, overall. I’ve been spending a lot of time with a group of friends, so it’ s been good. I’m also getting along with Cean pretty well–I’m not exaggerating much when I say that I have the best roommate I could ask for.
When I get to thinking about my college experience, at least in social terms, I see that I have had three more or less distinct semesters. The first was perhaps a “getting to know” (the school and myself) sort of semester. People I was likely to hang out with were Nik’s friends, generally. Somewhere near the end of the semester, things must have changed, although it was a pretty gradual change.
Second semester last year was a beginning to “fit in” sort of semester, where I found a group of friends I was more comfortible with, and attempted to integrate myself into that group. As Jake had asked me several times, I decided to go to Stible Buddy (the dorm Bible Study) for the first time, and rather liked it. I began to make a few friends through there, and would often come away with several things to think about. By the end of the semester, I was no longer an outsider, although I was neither a core member of the group.
Third semester (this last one), I began more or less where I left off, and advanced from there. For a while I was feeling as if I was back into the old routine, as Cean was better friends with about everyone that I was friends with, or so it seemed. But as time went on, I developed a few of my own friendships, and activities, and so on, and also got to be better friends with many of the people I was with last year.
This next semester may well be different again. I should begin where I left off, but there’s one more person. Michael R. has spent last semester studying in Granada, Spain, and will be back next semester. He’s good friends with several people in the dorm, and has kept in touch with them, but I have not been in touch with him. I don’t think his coming will be bad, but I think if will change the dynamic enough to make this next semester distinct from the previous one. There’s other issues with him coming, too, but I think they’re mostly in my head. In fact, I think a lot of what I notice occurring is actually just me forcing my hypotheses on the situation, and thinking that it fits. But I digress.
All of a sudden, it’s gotten a lot later than I had planned to stay up, so I think I’ll call it a night. Until next time, which could well be in 2006,
–Nathan
$20,400
Villa Man Auction: Nov. 3, 2005
1 dorm
1 charity
10 groups of guys
10 dates for sale
1 water tower in Tanznia
$10,000 goal
Chiles Center Mezanine
504 screaming girls
hundreds of hours work
and lots more by people who weren’t Ryan Hendricks
$10,200 raised
1 anonymous matching donor
————–
$20,400 raised
1 awesome night
Back from Encounter
Encounter was awesome, and I’m still working on figuring out what I got out of it. A lot of what happens there is secret, just so that there is a mystique about it, so I won’t say much of anything here. If you want to know more, drop me a line or come see me, and I’ll tell you what I can about it.
I got some awesome pics on the beach, and they will be posted eventually.
I apparently forgot to publish this post when I meant to, so it’s backdated to appear somewhere near the time I got back.
Encounter
So I was going to eventually get to doing another status update, but I wound up doing a rant about chain-emails. There’s a few things I’ve been meaning to get around to mentioning, so here they are at the top of a post.
I didn’ t get the job at KDUP, it went to a junior, who apparently was the guy who had e-mailed when I interviewed. I wonder if I was too ambitious for their liking. So far, the only thing that appears to have been done is to take down all the dead parts of the website, and replace last year’s info with a “info coming soon” page. A link to a word document containing the show listings was posted, though.
Really, I’m not as upset about this as I may seem to be. I went into this knowing that I was underqualified (at least on paper) and I’m not too surprised that I didn’t get the position.
As you may have noticed, the blog has a new style. Long time readers may notice that the style is similar to the one I had when I was still using Blogger. We’ll see if I stick with this one or not–I do like having a calendar over there to the right, though.
And as to the title of this post. This weekend, I’m going on a retreat with Campus Ministry, called “Encounter with Christ,” or Encounter for short. Several people I know have gone on this retreat in the past, all come back raving about it, so I think it will be a good weekend. There’s a bit of secrecy about this retreat, which former participants hint about, so I guess I’ll find out about it there.
There’s several other people I know going as retreatants, and a few more as part of the “Encounter Team,” the ones putting on the retreat. Not 100% certain this is a good thing, but but I’ll see how this plays out.
The one peice of advice I’ve gotten in relation to the retreat, from Cean, was to go into the retreat with no expectations, and just let whatever happens happen. I’ve heard so many things about the retreat that I’m not sure I can do this, but I sure don’t know what to expect.
If this were a few months ago, I’d promise to post about it when I got back, but lately I haven’t been posting too much, and I really don’t feel too bad about that. I’ve been keeping busy, between schoolwork, procrastination, and just generally hanging out, and I don’t necessarily have the time/energy/motivation to write to this blog.
I could write about more stuff, but I need to work on homework and study for two tests on Monday, so that I’m not super behind when I get back–I’ll be gone from 4pm Friday to 6pm Sunday.
–Nathan
Arrr, Me Mateys
Okay, so the title is lame. But this post is to mark my participation in International Talk Like A Pirate Day (TLAPD), for the first time ever.
I became aware of it in 2002, the first year it was publicised.I missed it in 2003, visiting a college with my dad, and managed to miss it again in 04, as I was out of town for my cousin’s wedding. Being in Villa, there’s no chance of missing out on the day.
This post will have to stand in for a much longer post that I had half written. I left it open, and FireFox crashed, taking the post with it.
In the meantime, I will mention that I (as expected) did not get the position of Peer Leader, but did browse the campus job listings (turning up “Hydro Ceramic Technician“, among others). I applied for Web Engineer at KDUP, our campus radio station, and have an interview tomorrow.
When I start thinking about the interview, I get nervous, perhaps because I’ve never done a formal interview. When I interviewed at the grocery store, not only was it not for a terribly important position to them, but I had the store owner (who I knew before I applied) pulling for me already. In fact, I was called in, even though they’d lost my application, and they spent the first few minutes trying to re-create the app, while looking for the original (which eventually turned up accidentally tucked inside someone else’s app).
I have no idea how I stand tomorrow. The person who held the post was a Sophomore last year, which means that I’m not too young, in their eyes, but also that he’s still around on campus. I have no idea if he applied, but if he did, he’s got an advantage over me. Still, the e-mail to schedule an appointment opened with the line “We were impressed with your application for the web tech position at KDUP.” (But that could well be a standard line used when calling people in to interview.) At any rate, I’ll find out soon enough.
Stible Buddy, right now, so I’m off.
Circuits in the Sun
Today was a very sunny day, and so Dr. Inan decided to hold class out on the steps of Franz, facing the quad. He is my new favorite professor.
Unfortunately, at web-friendly resolutions, the whiteboard is illegible, so I present it separately. I found myself wondering during class, “What would a random person think of this diagram? It makes perfect sense to me.
I can’t believe it!
There’s only 3 weeks and 2 days until I move back into the dorm! I work the next two weeks, and then will take the last week off for packing, relaxation, and whatever stuff I planned to do over the summer that I haven’t gotten to yet.
I got my housing letter today, telling me which room and roommate I have–not that it was a surprise, as we picked that out before we left. But now all the freshmen have their roommates and are talking to each other, I suppose.
There seems to be a lot of people looking up what to do once you start college. I’ve gotten several Google hits on “dorm life” or “build your own loft” or “dorm room pictures” and things like that. I’ve thought about posting some sort of plans for my loft, and a guide for incoming freshmen, but haven’t given it a lot of time. And there are so many guides that I doubt mine would be very useful, anyway.
I finished the plant stand that I was building yesterday. I’ll take some pictures and post it in the next few days. All in all, it came out pretty much like I’d planned, except for one measuring goof which I was able to improvise on. The finished result is very sturdy, more than the one it replaces. (Which was the whole point, anyway.)
I washed the whites today–I didn’t have any clean work shirts, and I work at 3 today, so it needed done. We got a new front loading washer a month or so ago, and it spins the clothes much drier than the old (top loading) washer. In fact, I checked the clothes less than an hour after I hung them out on the line, and nearly half of them were dry. I suppose I ought to go check them again soon.
Until later,
–Nathan
Year in Pictures
The first year of college is now uploaded.