KK’s Blog

It’s been raining a lot lately. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it had been so pretty for so long that I kind of am. Yesterday it was raining off and on all day, and I was feeling a bit homesick. Everybody graduated yesterday, and I couldn’t be there for any of it. Bellarmine, UofL, G-town, and EKU, all places where I have good friends. So I thought about all my friends yesterday. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it rushing through everything, which I feel like I’ve done. Both my college degrees will be accelerated degrees. The people I’m closest with are technically in the class below me. Even in high school, I felt closer to a lot of people in the class above me, and I tried to graduate a semester early, but they wouldn’t let me. Sometimes I think I should slow down, but then I just want to move onto the next thing in my life. I’m also always tired of my school by the end of it all. We’ll see if it will work that way with Oxford too.

So yesterday, there was a barbecue at Stanley Road, which turned into having pizza because the weather was too nasty. I didn’t feel like going, but my mom said I should and Jennifer convinced me to come. On the way, it started raining again and my purse strap broke. But I was glad I went afterward. I needed to get out of my room and stop wishing I was somewhere I couldn’t be. Before going out, I had been in my sweats all day, and wasn’t too productive. I found out that there’s a new way to upload photos to facebook for people using Macs and iPhoto, so I put up a bunch of pictures. And I read a couple chapters for one of my tutorials. I need to do some work on my thesis today and do some laundry. But I feel like I’ve been somewhat productive because I did an erg this morning, 4k in 19 minutes, which I think is pretty decent. And then Celia and I went to church and had our usual pizza lunch. And now I’m writing in here before I make myself get down to work. I’m feeling lazy again. This weather is not good for me because it makes me just want to stay in my sweats and sleep. I have to will myself to do work instead since I’m not even halfway through my term, though I wish I had just graduated and could take the summer off starting now.

If any of my friends are still reading this, I hope you had a wonderful day yesterday. Happy Graduation and Congratulations!!! I wish I could have been there.

I think I’m going to bed now. I’ve been up since 5 a.m. and I went rowing this morning. But I just wanted to say, I went through three tutorials in less than 32 hours and wrote three essays this week, two of which I had to present, and I’m still alive. I think that’s a pretty good accomplishment.

Yesterday, I got up early to do work, but I wasn’t too successful in my endeavor. I did get some work done, but with a lot of procrastinating. Every time my e-mail thing made a noise, I went to look and see what e-mail I had gotten. And one time, it wasn’t something I expected. I got an e-mail from Nancy Ruppel, whom I haven’t seen in forever. She was in Oxford and remembered that I was here too. So I e-mailed her back and said name a time and place and we’ll meet up. I didn’t hear from her for a while, so I sent another e-mail and said we could just have tea or coffee the next morning before she left, but then I got a phone call. It was Nancy and she said she thought she was standing in Regent’s entry. So I went, and there she was. Crazy stuff. For those of you who don’t know, Nancy was a year older than me and went to high school with me. We were on the soccer team together, she was also friends with Brendan, and she lived in the neighborhood next to ours. I was friends with her sister too, who was a year younger than me, who is apparently coming to England over the summer, but I’ll be gone already. Nancy has been in France teaching English, but flew in and out of London, so she’s spending a little time here before she flies home.

It was quite exciting to have someone come visit me, since that doesn’t happen too often over here, though I guess I better get used to it this term. We called Brendan, and they’re going to try to meet up today. She didn’t know he was in London. Then we talked for a while in my room, and ventured to the Eagle and Child for dinner. She’s a big fan of Narnia, and she hadn’t known about the pub, so I’m glad I got to introduce it to her. Then we came back, and I met up with Jennifer to go watch a movie in the JCR for Cinema Night. Nancy had already seen the movie so she headed back to her hostel, but it was really good to see her. Jennifer and I watched The Prestige as everyone passed around little tubs of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, each of us with our own spoon, taking a spoonful at a time and eating out of the the same container. The movie was good, had some unexpected twists, and I’m not sure how I feel about the ending, but I’m glad I watched it. Now I have to get down to work and finish this essay that’s due today. I feel like I’m not putting in as much work this term, but still getting everything done. Maybe it’s because both my tutorials are econ and that just takes less time for me. But it’s nice to not stress out as much and still have fun and get work done. Hopefully I won’t start stressing now that I’ve written that.

That’s right. Three showers. Yesterday we had rowing at 5:30. I took a shower around 8 afterward. Then I had dinner with Ula and fell asleep reading. This morning, I got up and it was raining outside, but we had rowing, so shower number 2 was going to be cold. We were soaked through by the time we got off the river around 8. I came back and took my last shower to try to warm up. So I guess it was 8:30 by the time I got back, so it wasn’t exactly 12 hours. But it was close. And even in the outing Sunday evening, I was quite wet. That’s what happens when you sit at 6. When I was at stroke, Jenni sat at 6 and she was always wet by the end of outings. I guess it’s something about stroke putting the first stroke in and 6 being the first person on that side behind stroke. I don’t know if that makes sense. But I’m usually quite wet at the end of every outing. So lately I have been wet a lot and cold a lot. Ashley had bought a heater when she was here because their heat wasn’t working, and she left it with me when she left. I didn’t think I’d ever use it because we have a little electrical heater in our room that we can use when the big heater isn’t on. But that one just doesn’t do much, and Ashley’s I can put right by my bed. So I’ve gotten quite a bit of use out of it lately. I feel like Christi when she always had her little space heater right by her in the dorm.

So anyway, I’ve been quite busy since I last wrote in here. Thursday I had my tutorial, which went well. Friday, I met Sarah for breakfast, then had formal hall that night, followed by a Spanish fiesta and pinatas. Saturday we had a birthday bash for Celia at Sarah’s, and Celia, Verity, and I went and got food beforehand. We had a braai, which is pretty much the South African word for a barbecue. It was a lot of fun. Sarah had bought a mini-croquet set, so we played that. And I won the game I played! Then we watched a couple movies, eating dinner of the same food we had for lunch. I stayed over at Sarah’s, and we were going to have a nice breakfast together, but we both didn’t get ready in time. I went to church with Celia and we had lunch together of pizza and left-overs from Sarah’s before rowing.

Today, I’ve gotten my essay pretty much done, and I’m getting ready to at least start my second essay tonight. I’ve got three essays for this week, so I’ve got to work ahead quite a bit, which is not easy for me. But I’m forcing myself. I want to get everything done by Wednesday evening, or at least to the point where I just have to read through the essays to make sure they make sense for the later tutorials. Then Thursday I’ll have two tutorials, so I’ll most likely be exhausted, but Friday I can start on stuff for next week so I can work ahead because then I’ll be looking forward to Rita coming and the rowing regatta starting the week after that. And Amanda will be here soon too. Plus, I need to get to the point where I can take some time to get my thesis proposal together. Too much to do, but I’ll get it done. I just might have to cut out some of the social stuff, since I’m already such a social butterfly. Haha. Okay, back to work now before a nice night’s rest.

Okay to compensate for the bad news yesterday, I woke up this morning to an e-mail from my macro tutor saying he had just gotten our collections last week and graded them all over the weekend. He had sent us a general e-mail with some comments on everyone’s essays. He warned there might be an upward bias since some of the questions we chose were ones we had for essays in our tutorials. However, that was only the case for one of mine because a second one we had in a tutorial that I did, I didn’t write the essay because it was my presentation week. He said most of the essays were of medium quality, with the exception of one excellent essay. I was talking to Kyle while I read this. And he said, “That one’s yours.” I said, “Yeah, right.” I opened the attachment with general essay writing comments.

And then went onto my next e-mail, which was the one with my personal comments and overall score. I got a 68!! When 70 is pretty much the best you can get, that’s pretty exciting. I was so happy, I almost started crying. Only now it sort of makes my 62 on politics look bad. And next collections, I have to live up to this new standard. However, it does prove that I am better in econ than politics, which I was starting to doubt. That’s a good thing since I’m taking mostly econ tutorials for my options and my thesis is in econ. Both these collections also proved that I always do better the second time around. When it comes to tests, usually I do mediocre on the first test, and then I know what to expect and I improve from there. (Except with Dr. Tallant’s class when I got pretty much the same grade on everything.) So anyway, I got a 67 on three of the essays and on the fourth I got a 70, with the comment that it was an excellent exposition and there wasn’t much more he could say about it. And it wasn’t even on one of the questions that we had for an essay in the tutorial or the topic I did the presentation on. So I guess maybe Kyle was right, maybe mine was the excellent one, unless there’s another one out there above a 70. But that e-mail put me in a much better mood today. I’ve been working all morning on my econ presentation that I have to turn in today, but I feel like I can actually do it well this time. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, I’m just really happy. I might suck at ergs, but on my collections, I’m not too shabby.

I know, two entries within like 4 hours is a little much, but I wanted to write about one thing so I don’t forget. We just had cake for Celia’s birthday, and I remembered one amusing thing that happened after the erg session. I was walking along the path by the river, with my iPod in and sunglasses on, in my shorts and long-sleeve t-shirt, probably still red-faced from the erg. And there were these two guys riding their bikes. They barely got out of the way enough for me to get by them, and as the second guy passed, he turns and looks at me and says, “You could be my wife.” That’s it. Nothing else. I don’t know if he even smiled. Just said I could be his wife. I don’t know if that was offering me the pleasure of his company or if he already had a wife and I just really looked like her, but I have a feeling it was the former. Not a way to get a girl, I’m afraid. He didn’t even ask, just told me it was a possibility. Anyway, I don’t think I really reacted, it was so strange. I might have with my eyes, but he wouldn’t have been able to see because of my sunglasses. I just kept walking. Pretty bad when that doesn’t even faze me, not that I get hit on that much. Maybe it was just because he looked strange, too. That’s enough writing about that.

One more thing. Just as I apparently have asthma when I work out over here, I apparently have worse allergies over here. I’ve been sneezing quite a lot for the past few days, or having my nose tickle like I’m going to sneeze and then nothing happens, which I hate, and then my nose runs. No other symptons, so I assume it’s just allergies. Well, now I have a cough and a sort of sore throat, but that’s just one more pleasant side effect of the ergs.

I think I’ve come close to fainting more than the average person, most usually when I try to give blood and realize they shouldn’t have taken as much as they did because I weigh less than I thought I did. But the first time I came close to fainting was during a soccer practice or a game. I can’t remember which, but I got overheated because I don’t sweat much, especially when I’m out of shape. And then I came close to fainting, but my coach told me to put my head between my knees and it was all okay after a bit. The first time I actually fainted, I realized why they show stars around cartoons’ heads when they get knocked out. I gave blood at Central in high school, and I became that kid who fainted who everybody talks about. They thought I was faking because I apparently had a smile on my face. I was sitting next to Kyle, across from Railey White, trying to watch her lips as she talked and keep them in focus and thinking to myself, “I hope I don’t faint.” And then I woke up a few minutes later, lying down in a chair across the room from where I’d been. Then I gave blood at GSP, and after sitting up and seeing stars, told the guy I thought I was going to faint so I had to lie down for a while and sip Sprite out of a straw before they let me leave. So I know how it feels when I’m getting ready to faint.

We had an erg today, and I was doing well. Breathing right, sweating some, until we were doing a 1k really hard as fast as we could. I had about 150 meters to go when I started seeing stars. Nicola said she started to worry when my lips started turning blue. I didn’t faint. I put my head between my knees and breathed really hard for a while, then went outside and laid down on the metal platform with my feet on the stairs. I finally drank some water and went back inside, with a sore throat and my awful cough that comes from ergs. I puffed my inhaler a couple times. I had done it before the erg too. And now I’m okay. Hannah said not to lose my confidence over it, if I had been in the boat I would have definitely finished, and my posture and form were really good and my rate was really good up until the end. But I’m so mad at myself. I was so close to finishing and in a good time, but I just had to stop. I wonder if I could have finished, but I think I did the right thing in stopping. I know how I feel when I’m getting ready to faint, and the last thing I wanted to do was faint. I just hope this doesn’t move me in the boat. The ergs are what kill me when it comes to rowing. Put me in the boat, I’m good. Put me on an erg, I suck.

But I know I can’t dwell on it, or else I’ll get depressed, and I’ve been so positive lately. So I’m writing about it, and hopefully that will help. I need to work on my presentation for econ, but I really don’t want to. I want to talk to someone, but Kyle’s taking his last final at UofL. My mom is teaching at the school where her phone doesn’t get service. Kim and Lee aren’t online. And Jennifer is up in the JCR in a meeting, I’m guessing, because I saw her bike but she’s not in the library. And Celia is buying a cake for her birthday, which was today, on May Day.

On May Day in Oxford, everyone goes to this bridge where a choir sings at the top of a building and then there are morris dancers as well as many other types of dancers. Most people stay up all night drinking and then go to see the celebrations being very drunk at 6 in the morning. They have to close the bridge now because people would jump off it into very shallow water with sharp things in it and injure themselves, being taken to the hospital shortly after. Apparently, this year, people just waited until the police were gone and jumped a little later, but no serious injuries. Celia and I slept and then got up at 5:30 to see the celebrations at 6 in the morning. I fell asleep last night around 8:30, so I did fine on sleep, though it was broken sleep. Yihlyn and Verity didn’t make it, but Celia and I went, as did Jennifer, Taylor, Tyler, and four other Regent’s people. I got a balloon from G&D’s and took lots of pictures. And then we had breakfast in the JCR. So it was a pretty exciting morning. And the day started out well. So I should focus on that instead of this afternoon. And now I should try to do some work. We’ll see how that goes.