It was the other day. I was sitting in a ginkgo tree near Younker Hall, on the field. I was supposed to be reading Emerson, but there was a squirrel in the tree. It was holding some sort of nut. It started eating the nut, making scraping sounds with its teeth. It just sat on that branch, just a short distance from me, slowly cracking open and getting into that nut. I ended up reading the Emerson eventually, not that I liked it. (I vastly prefer Thoreau to Emerson, not least because it's actually possible to read and make sense of Thoreau. Even when you're fully awake, Emerson makes you want to go to bed.) As the day moved on, I biked around, and saw some more squirrels. I started thinking. I guess the squirrels weren't so much a metaphor for anything I thought about as they were just a catalyst to get me thinking. I started off thinking about how they subsist just on the nuts that are out here. The college, like any place that's built up, isn't really an ideal ecological system, but the squirrels managed anyhow. So anyhow, from that I somehow figured out the way I can live my life and enjoy it all the time.
-Previously, though I hadn't really thought about it, I think I was subliminally dreading the course of life. How does it go? Go to school for seventeen years. Then get a job. Do that job for about forty years. In doing your job, you're banking money so that you can eventually retire and enjoy the later years of your life doing whatever you want, although with perhaps diminished vigor, simply because you're older. There are vacations and weekends and evenings that you can use to do stuff in the meantime, small breaks so that you don't lose sight of what you're aiming towards. In this life course, for about sixty-five years, you mostly put off doing what you want to do.
-Sixty-five years is a lot of delaying gratification.
-So, what's the solution? I've decided to live my life how I want to even when I have a job. How do I want to live? For one thing, I don't want to spend my days, weeks, months, and years all indoors. We don't think about it often, but a building is a dead environment. We engineer the spaces we live in so that we're the only thing that lives in them. Maybe it's because we want to feel important. But as soon as you step outside, you're in the middle of life; grass underfoot, trees rising overhead, even the soil full of life. I suppose it's not actually going to kill you if you're inside, but at the same time, isolating yourself so habitually - almost obsessively - is something I find deeply disturbing, and I have a suspicion that it runs opposite to human nature. If not in general, it certainly runs opposite to my human nature. I want to be part of the world. That doesn't mean just sitting outside instead of inside when I do work that I have to do. Nor does it mean taking hikes every once in a while or even frequently. These are things that tourists do. As a citizen, I won't live in the forest. I'll live with it. Now, that sounds mystical, and perhaps, BJ, you're flexing your fingers to warn me that I ought to be more careful about my life. Let me clarify. I will have a house. I mean, come on. I will also have a job. Obviously. I'll get a house in a forest, preferably near a stream or, even better, a lake. But I won't spend a whole lot of my time in it. Preferably, the majority of my time will be spent outside of it. What will I do? Well, you know how most people go to the grocery store for their groceries? What I would enjoy is to learn how we got our groceries before that. Very few people actually get their own food; most buy it from other people. I'll hunt, fish, and collect. Now, from time to time, I'll still go to stores; you can't pick ginger snaps. But the stores will be something I could live without. Eventually. I'm not saying it'll be instantaneous; it'll take me years, probably, to become proficient in getting what I need from the outdoors. But that's all right with me. I love learning new things, and I don't think the forest will ever fail me for new things to learn. And, at the same time as I'm having so much fun outdoors, I'll be saving money by dropping less of it back into the black hole of food bills and an endless supply of things (here I'm talking about living Thoreauvianly). Our civilization operates cyclically; we get money, but we always have to feed it back in almost instantly. By saving money, I can pay off my student loans quicker, pay off my house quicker, pay off my car* quicker, and eventually just use it for anything I want to do: vacations, books, college educations if such a thing comes up. Not only will I have a life that I'll enjoy every day, I'll also be able to enjoy it more and more as I get rid of worries and obligations. If I work it right, I might even be able to retire early. My life will never suck; I will get up each day and look forward to how awesome it's going to be.
-That's how I want to live. Now, other people may not be so hot into the forestry thing, and while I disagree with that personally, I respect it. I'd say in general the way to enjoy life is to think about what you would do if you were retired, and then figure out a way to do it without retiring first. Quit putting off enjoyment for when you're old. Life is for you to enjoy, not to enjoy later. We don't get that many days, after all; I intend to love every one of them.
Note that I have the added advantage that if civilization does collapse, I'll be able to cope just fine, and if it doesn't, I'll be having fun without it.
*Sometimes necessity dictates that you have to have a car, but it is another thing that I will use sparingly, giving vast preference to bicycles.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Whooshhhhh
That's correct, everything goes fast around here. It's because they keep us so busy. By the time you're finished doing the stuff you have to do, there's way less time left than you'd expect for doing other stuff. That wouldn't be such a bad thing, but I tend to spread out all the suff that I have to do, and the time between the stuff just gets filled by browsing the internet. I just realized last night that the internet has become my crutch, my TV. It's my default activity; I do it when I have some free time. But realization is the key. Now that I've realized that, it'll change. The internet is for utilitarian purposes only, except once I've done all my work, and even then I'll put preference on real activities. It's become apparent to me that I don't get out as much as most people seem to. We don't get much time for aimless socializing here, and what little time I get, I've been squandering away in my room.
-What's some other stuff? Well, last week I did a sort of experiment. I'd read about the "Paleo Diet", which is where you eat as a forager would eat, on the theory that humans evolved to be best able to use those sorts of foods. Basically, it decries grains, beans, and potatoes as too recent additions to our diet. That's because these foods require cooking to be edible, and cooking wasn't invented until comparatively recent; also, they couldn't have been very widespread until the Agricultural Revolution, about 10 000 years ago. They're inedible before cooking because of chemicals in them with names like "lectins" and such, which, the advocates say, are still residually bad for you even after they've been cooked. (The Ag Rev is seen in these circles as "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race", as even so illustrious a persona as Jared Diamond put it.) Anyhow, I decided I'd scientifically try the Paleo Diet out for a week. It's not like I need to lose weight, but I've heard claims that, if you go on it as a regular person, you'll end up more energized than ever before in your life, now that your body is detoxifying and finally getting exactly what it needs: Meat, eggs, vegetables, and fruits, mostly. Our society is built on grain, though, and it took a lot of creativity to stay paleo at the dining hall. I mostly managed, but I believe the experiment was tainted, because one day there were ginger snaps and another day there was angel food cake, and sometimes the only meat was breaded. I also didn't have any way to objectively measure whether I was feeling better, or rather I hadn't come up with one yet. Now, I'm back off paleo, and trying to observe the contrast, but there's sure a lot of static in the data; for example, I think I've now picked some disease up from Jeremy (who is perpetually sick). The experiment, then, was pretty much inconclusive, though I have a vague feeling that I felt a bit better last week.
-Some prospies (that's prospective students) came over last week as well. Jay and Jeremy got them completely trashed. It's becoming pretty evident to me that my roommates aren't just average when it comes to wanting to drink and party; they do it at absolutely every opportunity. Luckily, the triple we share has sectioned-off rooms, so when it gets to a fever pitch of ridiculousness I just close my door and wait for everything to get closer to normal. Thus, until Jeremy told me I didn't know that they had gotten one prospie so drunk that - he? she? - peed on Jeremy. I don't even know how that happens. And I'm glad about that. Despite it all, I'm doing fine, thanks to the trusty door that can separate me from all the idiocy.
-Aside from classes and that, not much really happened to me last week. That's because classes take up so much time and effort. I suppose they're a valid thing to write about, though. In English, we've been reading Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe, and we're getting into more people of that period. In calculus, we did vectors in 3 dimensions, and now we're getting back to doing derivatives and integrals. In Russian, we're gradually learning how to say less and less simple stuff; we've now learned how to tack endings onto adjectives. What's a tutorial? Well. I guess I'll explain a tutorial. It's a class everyone takes in their first semester here, designed to help you out gaining all the skills you'll need for such a thorough education as you'll get here. It has a topic besides "tutorial"; before coming, we picked our top five choices from a list of thirty or so tutorials. There are ones about climate change, the aesthetics of home, weird music, and Icelandic Sagas. I am in Professor Savarese's tutorial, "Dis Lit: Disability in Literature" - actually the title is a little longer, but I don't remember it. So, we're reading books written by deaf, quadruplegic, blind, or otherwise disabled people. So far we've read just two books, one by a Deaf actor (Bernard Bragg) and one by a quadruplegic woman who is a much better writer than him, because she writes for a living (Nancy Mairs). Also, I suppose, because Bragg's was translated out of sign language, but Mair's has more structure, which is something that wouldn't have been lost in translation. And we're beig taught how to write effectively and read critically. That type of stuff. So, now you know. I'm going to go have lunch.
-What's some other stuff? Well, last week I did a sort of experiment. I'd read about the "Paleo Diet", which is where you eat as a forager would eat, on the theory that humans evolved to be best able to use those sorts of foods. Basically, it decries grains, beans, and potatoes as too recent additions to our diet. That's because these foods require cooking to be edible, and cooking wasn't invented until comparatively recent; also, they couldn't have been very widespread until the Agricultural Revolution, about 10 000 years ago. They're inedible before cooking because of chemicals in them with names like "lectins" and such, which, the advocates say, are still residually bad for you even after they've been cooked. (The Ag Rev is seen in these circles as "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race", as even so illustrious a persona as Jared Diamond put it.) Anyhow, I decided I'd scientifically try the Paleo Diet out for a week. It's not like I need to lose weight, but I've heard claims that, if you go on it as a regular person, you'll end up more energized than ever before in your life, now that your body is detoxifying and finally getting exactly what it needs: Meat, eggs, vegetables, and fruits, mostly. Our society is built on grain, though, and it took a lot of creativity to stay paleo at the dining hall. I mostly managed, but I believe the experiment was tainted, because one day there were ginger snaps and another day there was angel food cake, and sometimes the only meat was breaded. I also didn't have any way to objectively measure whether I was feeling better, or rather I hadn't come up with one yet. Now, I'm back off paleo, and trying to observe the contrast, but there's sure a lot of static in the data; for example, I think I've now picked some disease up from Jeremy (who is perpetually sick). The experiment, then, was pretty much inconclusive, though I have a vague feeling that I felt a bit better last week.
-Some prospies (that's prospective students) came over last week as well. Jay and Jeremy got them completely trashed. It's becoming pretty evident to me that my roommates aren't just average when it comes to wanting to drink and party; they do it at absolutely every opportunity. Luckily, the triple we share has sectioned-off rooms, so when it gets to a fever pitch of ridiculousness I just close my door and wait for everything to get closer to normal. Thus, until Jeremy told me I didn't know that they had gotten one prospie so drunk that - he? she? - peed on Jeremy. I don't even know how that happens. And I'm glad about that. Despite it all, I'm doing fine, thanks to the trusty door that can separate me from all the idiocy.
-Aside from classes and that, not much really happened to me last week. That's because classes take up so much time and effort. I suppose they're a valid thing to write about, though. In English, we've been reading Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe, and we're getting into more people of that period. In calculus, we did vectors in 3 dimensions, and now we're getting back to doing derivatives and integrals. In Russian, we're gradually learning how to say less and less simple stuff; we've now learned how to tack endings onto adjectives. What's a tutorial? Well. I guess I'll explain a tutorial. It's a class everyone takes in their first semester here, designed to help you out gaining all the skills you'll need for such a thorough education as you'll get here. It has a topic besides "tutorial"; before coming, we picked our top five choices from a list of thirty or so tutorials. There are ones about climate change, the aesthetics of home, weird music, and Icelandic Sagas. I am in Professor Savarese's tutorial, "Dis Lit: Disability in Literature" - actually the title is a little longer, but I don't remember it. So, we're reading books written by deaf, quadruplegic, blind, or otherwise disabled people. So far we've read just two books, one by a Deaf actor (Bernard Bragg) and one by a quadruplegic woman who is a much better writer than him, because she writes for a living (Nancy Mairs). Also, I suppose, because Bragg's was translated out of sign language, but Mair's has more structure, which is something that wouldn't have been lost in translation. And we're beig taught how to write effectively and read critically. That type of stuff. So, now you know. I'm going to go have lunch.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Eh
I didn't have any really good ideas for a title, so I didn't come up with a good one.
So, what has Grinnell been like? Well, it's been busy. Busy but excellent. Even though I'm out in the center of Iowa, there's still so much stuff to do. It's such that I don't even have time to do it all. I haven't really been bored at all yet. Whereas, in Cincinnati, even though I was in a big city with theorietically tons of activities to do, I found myself bored out of my gourd. Right now I'm sitting on the loggia, doing my best to touch-type and look out over the big campus field at the same time. It's kind of interesting typing without looking at what you're typing at all.
So, here's a sample of something I did. I may have mentioned CERA, the college-owned parcel of prairie about eleven miles down the road. They have 365 acres there, of all different types of prairie, plus a pond and some scrub oak forest. Last Friday, there was I guess what you'd call an activity out there. It was called "Prairie Night: Sights and Sounds". So, basically a bunch of people from the college and the town got in a big ol' bus and went down to CERA. I personally rode in a van with the director of the program, because there were a few van seats available, and I figured why not? When we got there, it was late evening. Everyone congregated in a big mowed spot and sat down. A few guys who were part of the trip came up front. The sun started to set. As it did, one guy read excerpts from a few different passages and poems about prairie nights. I believe Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were represented. Once he was done, a different guy took his place and started telling us about insect sounds, and stuff like that. I paid more attention to the sunset. Earlier that day, we had been rained on with vehemence; there was a mist in the air, and the sun caught it and turned it into hanging art. Sunset in the prairie is different from sunset in the city. In the prairie, when the sun goes down there's a clear, straight dividing line between the sky and the earth, and it glows. A corona of energy. As I watched, a few points of light started appearing in the darkening blue. I counted them as they came in, three four five, but it wasn't too long before that became futile. The corona shrank until it was just a lingering fringe of day trying not to be forgotten. And so, once people were done presenting, the last person told us that we should walk on down the mowed trail, and take in the night.
-I did. I had visited the prairie before, during the day, so I knew what it looked like, but now by night it was much changed. It was no longer possible to pick out compass plants or Indian bluestem; instead, the prairie was an indistinct sea, raised four feet above the ground by the mower blades. The grass was wet on my bare feet. I started out ahead of everyone, so I had a sphere to myself. A symphony, an unpretentious symphony, set my background. I don't know the names of the players, but I know music. There was a bass line, a steady drone; melodies that shifted as I walked by; and solos that broke out erratically, disregarding others, only concerned with getting their notes in the air. I found my way to the pond and ended up standing on a dock. I hadn't visited the pond before, so I only know it by night. I stood and surveyed. The night was a dark one, but peopled by clusters of light, ones I seldom see.
-I realized I ought to get back, or I'd be left behind and not get to hear about any of the other stuff that was happening, so I turned around and walked to the lab building's basement, where everyone was. There was apple juice, and some other stuff. After that, we got to see some moths that they attracted to trees nearby with a mixture of sugar and beer and wine and honey, I think. And the professor of astronomy had a telescope, so he let people take a look at Jupiter, the brightest thing in the sky tonight; its four brightest moons were easily visible. He also told us the names of some of the constellations up there. Now I know a little more about that. Finally, we drove back to Grinnell.
-Not everything was that fun, and most of it I would be hard pressed to write that profoundly about. Everyone's been having party fun. Jeremy and Jay like partying. Jay is much more into it than Jeremy, though, and Jeremy seems to just get dragged around by him. He says he's done with Grinnell's parties; the only thing they have going for them is free beer, handed out indiscriminately. I've heard that it's really bad beer, and the only reason to drink it is to get drunk. I've been pretty busy overall with my classes. I certainly set myself up a hell of a course load. Two reading- and writing-intensive classes - the tutorial, and American Literature Traditions II (AmTradsII, because no one's really going to say all that). So I've kept occupied, which keeps me from being unoccupied. I've also been working in the dining hall, sorting silverware out on Fridays and Saturdays at dinner. The dining hall pays $8.25 an hour. I'm going to sub for lots of people who ask for subs, because that's darn good money. And résumé padding, too. I already subbed today at lunch for some guy I don't know. I did the first dish line. The food's real good here; I don't care what anyone else says. I will speak more of food in a forthcoming entry. They do their best to change it up a lot. Their desserts are great. They had ginger snaps a few days ago! Ginger snaps are the very best cookies in the world. No, they are. I don't care what you think are the best; it's ginger snaps. Deal with it.
So, what has Grinnell been like? Well, it's been busy. Busy but excellent. Even though I'm out in the center of Iowa, there's still so much stuff to do. It's such that I don't even have time to do it all. I haven't really been bored at all yet. Whereas, in Cincinnati, even though I was in a big city with theorietically tons of activities to do, I found myself bored out of my gourd. Right now I'm sitting on the loggia, doing my best to touch-type and look out over the big campus field at the same time. It's kind of interesting typing without looking at what you're typing at all.
So, here's a sample of something I did. I may have mentioned CERA, the college-owned parcel of prairie about eleven miles down the road. They have 365 acres there, of all different types of prairie, plus a pond and some scrub oak forest. Last Friday, there was I guess what you'd call an activity out there. It was called "Prairie Night: Sights and Sounds". So, basically a bunch of people from the college and the town got in a big ol' bus and went down to CERA. I personally rode in a van with the director of the program, because there were a few van seats available, and I figured why not? When we got there, it was late evening. Everyone congregated in a big mowed spot and sat down. A few guys who were part of the trip came up front. The sun started to set. As it did, one guy read excerpts from a few different passages and poems about prairie nights. I believe Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were represented. Once he was done, a different guy took his place and started telling us about insect sounds, and stuff like that. I paid more attention to the sunset. Earlier that day, we had been rained on with vehemence; there was a mist in the air, and the sun caught it and turned it into hanging art. Sunset in the prairie is different from sunset in the city. In the prairie, when the sun goes down there's a clear, straight dividing line between the sky and the earth, and it glows. A corona of energy. As I watched, a few points of light started appearing in the darkening blue. I counted them as they came in, three four five, but it wasn't too long before that became futile. The corona shrank until it was just a lingering fringe of day trying not to be forgotten. And so, once people were done presenting, the last person told us that we should walk on down the mowed trail, and take in the night.
-I did. I had visited the prairie before, during the day, so I knew what it looked like, but now by night it was much changed. It was no longer possible to pick out compass plants or Indian bluestem; instead, the prairie was an indistinct sea, raised four feet above the ground by the mower blades. The grass was wet on my bare feet. I started out ahead of everyone, so I had a sphere to myself. A symphony, an unpretentious symphony, set my background. I don't know the names of the players, but I know music. There was a bass line, a steady drone; melodies that shifted as I walked by; and solos that broke out erratically, disregarding others, only concerned with getting their notes in the air. I found my way to the pond and ended up standing on a dock. I hadn't visited the pond before, so I only know it by night. I stood and surveyed. The night was a dark one, but peopled by clusters of light, ones I seldom see.
-I realized I ought to get back, or I'd be left behind and not get to hear about any of the other stuff that was happening, so I turned around and walked to the lab building's basement, where everyone was. There was apple juice, and some other stuff. After that, we got to see some moths that they attracted to trees nearby with a mixture of sugar and beer and wine and honey, I think. And the professor of astronomy had a telescope, so he let people take a look at Jupiter, the brightest thing in the sky tonight; its four brightest moons were easily visible. He also told us the names of some of the constellations up there. Now I know a little more about that. Finally, we drove back to Grinnell.
-Not everything was that fun, and most of it I would be hard pressed to write that profoundly about. Everyone's been having party fun. Jeremy and Jay like partying. Jay is much more into it than Jeremy, though, and Jeremy seems to just get dragged around by him. He says he's done with Grinnell's parties; the only thing they have going for them is free beer, handed out indiscriminately. I've heard that it's really bad beer, and the only reason to drink it is to get drunk. I've been pretty busy overall with my classes. I certainly set myself up a hell of a course load. Two reading- and writing-intensive classes - the tutorial, and American Literature Traditions II (AmTradsII, because no one's really going to say all that). So I've kept occupied, which keeps me from being unoccupied. I've also been working in the dining hall, sorting silverware out on Fridays and Saturdays at dinner. The dining hall pays $8.25 an hour. I'm going to sub for lots of people who ask for subs, because that's darn good money. And résumé padding, too. I already subbed today at lunch for some guy I don't know. I did the first dish line. The food's real good here; I don't care what anyone else says. I will speak more of food in a forthcoming entry. They do their best to change it up a lot. Their desserts are great. They had ginger snaps a few days ago! Ginger snaps are the very best cookies in the world. No, they are. I don't care what you think are the best; it's ginger snaps. Deal with it.
Monday, September 3, 2007
I ♥ Crime-Free Grinnell
Note: I was going to post this two days ago, but my internet connection crapped out. Inexplicably, it was still fine on my laptop (but I didn't have the post saved on that computer, so it did me no good).
There's so little theft around here that many people don't even bother to lock their bikes, instead leaving them strewn about major congregating places. I locked my bike anyhow. Though, I increasingly have just been putting it in a rack, if I'm not going to be long. Yesterday, Security sent out an email saying that there's been a rash of bike theft and stripping, and people ought to start using their locks.
-But I didn't check my email yesterday. I got up to go to breakfast, and went to my bike, and my bike was gone. In my naivety, I had left it unlocked over the night banking on trust in my fellow Grinnellian. It was nowhere around. So I had to walk to breakfast instead. Then I called up Security to report it, but I didn't have time before class to file a report, so instead I went to class. Afterwards, I called them up again, and they said to come on down to the Security building to report it. I walked there. And before I got in, I noticed my bike was in their bike rack. The lock was still on the lock-holder bracket, so I undid it to prove to the lady on duty that I knew the combination and it was mine. She had no idea why it was there, and I was the second person to come to file a report and find their bike there that day. She asked someone else in the back, "Do you know how's come we have all these bikes?" So I have my bike again. It took a different theft to convince me to lock my bike up every time I used it; now it's taken this one to convince me to lock it up every time, no matter where. On a side note, people suck.
-So, now that I've said that, let's get an in-depth look at my first week or so at Grinnell. The first few days were taken up completely by New Student Orientation stuff, which booked our schedules. Luckily, I had already gone on the Outdoor Orientation, so I was able to skip some of the stuff and take a rock climbing class instead, in the old gym. They created all sorts of events to get us to meet new people, most of them flawed in one way or another. For example, in the new gym, they had everyone aggregate on the floor and get in groups by various attributes, like shirt color. Then they had us make a human map, and then they had us line up by birthday. The flaw in this is that we met at least a hndred new people and were expected to learn the names of all of them, and consequentially we overloaded, and I only remember one person from the whole thing (Sadish). Another time, we played a massive game of freeze tag on Mac Field, but it was well over the critical mass for a freeze tag game, so everyone stopped playing and fractured into little groups, standing around. As far as I'm concerned, the very best way to meet new people is through something like GOOP. At the very least, they should do this stuff in way smaller groups and more organically. Anyhow, despite all that, I managed to meet a whole bunch of people, although I've forgotten many of them. And everyone here is someone I could get along with, and also carry on an intelligent conversation with. It's weird coming out of a place like Finneytown, where there are only a few people among the mass who actually have the faintest clue about anything, and coming to Grinnell, where my intelligence is probably only about the average, and everyone understands when you talk about abstruse, obscure, or non-sports things. I won a game of Scrabble at a Board Game night. And did other fun stuff.
-They had a hypnotist come over; he's been coming here for about 7 years to give a good time to each incoming class. Being interested in the unconscious, because of a book that I'm going to write sometime, I tried to get hypnotized, but it didn't work. I just had to content myself with watching the 30 or so people on the stage. It was pretty awesome. There was no specific moment where he signaled "Now you're hypnotized", so it was weird watching them gradually become entranced without feeling anything. He started out tame, making them think they were hot and then cold. Then he had them experience various tastes from an imaginary piece of candy, finally locking their jaws open with it by making it expand inside. After that, we got to watch a butt dance competition, and everyone put their all into it; two people were actually quite impressive, putting some creativity and energy into it. He trained one guy to take an imaginary cat to the litterbox every minute or two, and trained another guy to be physically attracted to a microphone stand. He also struck a soft spot by maltreating a stuffed dog, which they thought was real. And the had some people put on an Aretha Franklin concert, complete with a girl lip-synching "Respect". Finally he wound down by planting some suggestions that they could keep, like, some people had to answer to a ringing sound he had by taking off their shoe and answering it, and some people ot dragged by imaginary dogs when he said "Big dog," and one guy, at the sound of a slide whistle, rushed out to a tiny life preserver on the stage and called for help from an invisible ship. All of this las stuff was post-hypnotic stuff, too. It all ended after they left the room, at least. Oh man, it was great. I have a feeling this place is going to be the time of my life. Where else would they bring in a hypnotist? And, you can start a student organization and request funding for it, so obviously I'm going to create a krokay group, and hopefully get some extraordinarily durable nylon 6,6 for some mallets that will last a lifetime. I've joined some other groups already, like the newspaper, the press, Quiz Bowl, and possibly Dag (people hitting each other with foam swords in a melee situation) and some other stuff. The organizations here are so great. I didn't realize until I got here how little fun I had before.
-The classes are tough, though; especially English 223, which was my second choice, and I'm trying to get into 228, so I just have to hope someone already in it drops it. The professor opened the class with a quiz. Honestly! The others are some better, but that might just be because they haven't gotten into full swing yet. I'm sure I'll be quite familiar with unending torment by the end of the semester. DID YOU KNOW: Grinnell's workload is rated the third highest in the country, approximately, depending on the source.
There's so little theft around here that many people don't even bother to lock their bikes, instead leaving them strewn about major congregating places. I locked my bike anyhow. Though, I increasingly have just been putting it in a rack, if I'm not going to be long. Yesterday, Security sent out an email saying that there's been a rash of bike theft and stripping, and people ought to start using their locks.
-But I didn't check my email yesterday. I got up to go to breakfast, and went to my bike, and my bike was gone. In my naivety, I had left it unlocked over the night banking on trust in my fellow Grinnellian. It was nowhere around. So I had to walk to breakfast instead. Then I called up Security to report it, but I didn't have time before class to file a report, so instead I went to class. Afterwards, I called them up again, and they said to come on down to the Security building to report it. I walked there. And before I got in, I noticed my bike was in their bike rack. The lock was still on the lock-holder bracket, so I undid it to prove to the lady on duty that I knew the combination and it was mine. She had no idea why it was there, and I was the second person to come to file a report and find their bike there that day. She asked someone else in the back, "Do you know how's come we have all these bikes?" So I have my bike again. It took a different theft to convince me to lock my bike up every time I used it; now it's taken this one to convince me to lock it up every time, no matter where. On a side note, people suck.
-So, now that I've said that, let's get an in-depth look at my first week or so at Grinnell. The first few days were taken up completely by New Student Orientation stuff, which booked our schedules. Luckily, I had already gone on the Outdoor Orientation, so I was able to skip some of the stuff and take a rock climbing class instead, in the old gym. They created all sorts of events to get us to meet new people, most of them flawed in one way or another. For example, in the new gym, they had everyone aggregate on the floor and get in groups by various attributes, like shirt color. Then they had us make a human map, and then they had us line up by birthday. The flaw in this is that we met at least a hndred new people and were expected to learn the names of all of them, and consequentially we overloaded, and I only remember one person from the whole thing (Sadish). Another time, we played a massive game of freeze tag on Mac Field, but it was well over the critical mass for a freeze tag game, so everyone stopped playing and fractured into little groups, standing around. As far as I'm concerned, the very best way to meet new people is through something like GOOP. At the very least, they should do this stuff in way smaller groups and more organically. Anyhow, despite all that, I managed to meet a whole bunch of people, although I've forgotten many of them. And everyone here is someone I could get along with, and also carry on an intelligent conversation with. It's weird coming out of a place like Finneytown, where there are only a few people among the mass who actually have the faintest clue about anything, and coming to Grinnell, where my intelligence is probably only about the average, and everyone understands when you talk about abstruse, obscure, or non-sports things. I won a game of Scrabble at a Board Game night. And did other fun stuff.
-They had a hypnotist come over; he's been coming here for about 7 years to give a good time to each incoming class. Being interested in the unconscious, because of a book that I'm going to write sometime, I tried to get hypnotized, but it didn't work. I just had to content myself with watching the 30 or so people on the stage. It was pretty awesome. There was no specific moment where he signaled "Now you're hypnotized", so it was weird watching them gradually become entranced without feeling anything. He started out tame, making them think they were hot and then cold. Then he had them experience various tastes from an imaginary piece of candy, finally locking their jaws open with it by making it expand inside. After that, we got to watch a butt dance competition, and everyone put their all into it; two people were actually quite impressive, putting some creativity and energy into it. He trained one guy to take an imaginary cat to the litterbox every minute or two, and trained another guy to be physically attracted to a microphone stand. He also struck a soft spot by maltreating a stuffed dog, which they thought was real. And the had some people put on an Aretha Franklin concert, complete with a girl lip-synching "Respect". Finally he wound down by planting some suggestions that they could keep, like, some people had to answer to a ringing sound he had by taking off their shoe and answering it, and some people ot dragged by imaginary dogs when he said "Big dog," and one guy, at the sound of a slide whistle, rushed out to a tiny life preserver on the stage and called for help from an invisible ship. All of this las stuff was post-hypnotic stuff, too. It all ended after they left the room, at least. Oh man, it was great. I have a feeling this place is going to be the time of my life. Where else would they bring in a hypnotist? And, you can start a student organization and request funding for it, so obviously I'm going to create a krokay group, and hopefully get some extraordinarily durable nylon 6,6 for some mallets that will last a lifetime. I've joined some other groups already, like the newspaper, the press, Quiz Bowl, and possibly Dag (people hitting each other with foam swords in a melee situation) and some other stuff. The organizations here are so great. I didn't realize until I got here how little fun I had before.
-The classes are tough, though; especially English 223, which was my second choice, and I'm trying to get into 228, so I just have to hope someone already in it drops it. The professor opened the class with a quiz. Honestly! The others are some better, but that might just be because they haven't gotten into full swing yet. I'm sure I'll be quite familiar with unending torment by the end of the semester. DID YOU KNOW: Grinnell's workload is rated the third highest in the country, approximately, depending on the source.
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