No More Class on the Hill

Believe it or not, the time has come, the last day of class for this, my final semester at Gustavus, was yesterday. Sometimes it sets in that I’m leaving, sometimes it seems like I’ll go on living here for another few years and everything will continue to be like it has been.
Back on Saturday I went up to the Cities to meet my parents and their friend Orrel for lunch, basically to talk about what I should do this summer. But now I think I’ve finally decided what I’m gonna do — I’ve decided against doing Prepare Ministries’ “Camel Camp” for the last 5 weeks of the summer, and instead will go to the 1-week Answers in Genesis conference out in Virginia with my oldest brother Nathan. That’ll also enable me to look for a job, now that I know I’ll actually be able to work for most of the summer. Although I’m sure leaving this to the last minute and all, considering I graduate in a week and a half. When I was in the Cities I also stopped by the Mall of America and picked up some Penn State apparel, a sweatshirt and t-shirt, so that I can finally start showing some of my school spirit! 🙂
Almost right after I got back to Saint Peter on Saturday evening it was time to head down to Mueller’s house for the Physics Christmas in May party. It was a blast! We had heaps of good food (fried fish, grilled burgers, chips, etc) and drinks (mmm, Boone’s Farm), and plenty of good company. We even sang a bunch of physics Christmas carols, such as “The First Nobel” and “We Three Quarks,” among several other nerdy classics. It was actually the best physics Christmas party that any of us had ever been to. Several of us didn’t leave until 2:30am, when we noticed that the northern lights were out in full force. It was an absolutely spectacular show, with the green aurora taking up almost the entire dome of the night sky, and showing vibrant motion. Part of what made it cool is that Christian had never seen northern lights before, so he was in total awe of them, and a couple other people had only seen them once or twice before. Admittedly, I have seen cooler multi-coloured northern lights in the past, but this was the coolest display of plain green northern lights I’ve ever seen. At any rate, the northern lights totally made my weekend. 🙂 Oh, and for those of you on campus that wanted my Christmas in May party pictures before I got around to putting them up in an actual album, I’ve just put them in the Upload folder on Borg, so go ahead and grab them from there if you want them.
Sunday afternoon Zach had his honors recital for viola. It was quite good, and one of the pieces he played was the one that he researched for the paper he wrote and presented at NCUR last month out in Virginia. Sunday evening we all went up on the roof of Olin in an effort to do some observing so that we could maybe get some data for our projects that we were supposed to do, but the clear skies were just a tease, almost as soon as we got the telescopes set up and everything, some clouds rolled in. It’s been a frustrating spring as far as observing goes, since it’s been cloudy for just about the entire last month-plus. So once the clouds rolled in on Sunday evening, Chuck essentially cancelled the projects, so that now all we have to do is write up a theory section, and explain what we would do if we actually had data to work with. But even if it hadn’t gotten cloudy, our telescopes were acting stupid. For example, either thinking it was permanently midnight on 1/1/2000, or being adamant that the moon was below the horizon (which it most certainly was not). Since we couldn’t figure out those issues, we wouldn’t have been able to take any data anyway, sigh. But even though John and I would’ve had a little fun going hunting for asteroids, we’re not exactly disappointed we don’t have to do the work. 🙂
Monday was my last day of Conditioning, woohoo! I’m so glad to be done with that class. It was also my last day of Beginning Tennis class, which I’m actually gonna miss, that was my favourite class of the semester. Monday evening was also the wine & cheese tasting seminar put on by the physics and chemistry clubs. Prof. Saulnier (physics) talked about the wine, and Prof. O’Brien (chem) talked about the cheese. There were some good wines, and my favourite was a white wine, a sauvignon blanc by Monkey Bay, from the Marlborough region in the northern part of New Zealand’s South Island. And no, it wasn’t my favourite just because it was from NZ, though that didn’t hurt it. 🙂 Some of the cheeses were pretty good, but there were also several awful ones. For the most part, those were the ones that O’Brien said had an “aggressive” or “startling” flavour. Uh, yeah. Monday night was also the last Men’s Christian Fellowship of the year. It’s been fun getting to know those guys this semester.
Tuesday morning at chapel was a farewell/blessing service for the seniors and other students/staff that are leaving GAC after this year. That was one time in particular that it really struck me that I’ll be leaving Gustavus for good in just a week and a half. Tuesday was the last day for Golf, and because the weather outside was rainy AGAIN, Brownie set up a few crazy mini-golf holes inside Lund Arena. I didn’t have nearly as much luck with it this time as I did the one other time he set up a 9-hole course in there. Tuesday was also the last day for Jazz Dance, and I think I’m actually gonna miss that class. Michele even taught us something new on the last day, adding a little jump to one of the sequences she’d been teaching us. If nothing else, that class was good for getting my back and everything else stretched out twice a week. I might even go into a bit of withdrawal from not doing 24’s, hehe. It was also the last day for Curriculum II Senior Seminar, but after hearing the last couple presentations by people, we had a little party with all sorts of cookies, cake, and even ice cream. 🙂 I’m gonna miss Senior Sem too, that was one of my favourite classes during my entire Gustavus career. Tuesday evening a bunch of us physics majors went down to Chuck’s house for an awesome taco picnic. Last year I totally forgot about the picnic at Chuck’s, and I almost did the same thing this year, but fortunately people reminded me about it. I had also planning on going to the Proclaim BBQ after that, but I was so full and had a really crappy astrophysics assignment left to do that I just worked on that the rest of the night (till 3am), only interrupting it for my last Proclaim ever. Despite the issues I’ve had with Proclaim at times, I’ve still really enjoyed going there, and I’m gonna miss not having that on Tuesday evenings.
Wednesday was the official last day of classes. The only one I had was Astrophysics, and true to form I had a little trouble staying completely alert in there yet again, hehe. I also worked my final shift ever for Admissions, I’m gonna miss the people there. Perhaps it was the cloudy, dreary weather (like it has been for the last month), but it didn’t seem like the last day of classes for some reason.
Wednesday evening was packed with stuff though. First up was the Curriculum II picnic (I love spring, there are always so many picnics and BBQ’s happening with free food that my caf account can be strung out just a little bit longer). I was playing frisbee afterwards with Nolan, Andy and another freshman when President Peterson walked by, caught the frisbee with the tip of his umbrella, flipped it down into his hand, and then flipped a strike over to Andy, it was awesome! I never knew the President was so talented. 🙂 Then at 8 in Linner Lounge was a follow-up discussion to last week’s “Christianity, the Bible and Homosexuality” discussion, moderated by Vicar Brian Beckstrom. It was a whole lot more civil and respectful than the question & answer session at last week’s talk, that’s for sure. And far more people got to say something too, which was good. I had to leave at 9:45 before it ended (I dunno how long it lasted), but I think it was a pretty productive discussion overall, at least insofar as it got a lot of the bad taste out of people’s mouths that they had from the way last Wednesday night’s q&a session went. Then at 10 a big group of us drove up to Shakopee to see “Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” at its midnight premiere. And yes, it is as good as almost all the critics have been saying, I’d give it four out of five stars. For how much plot this movie had to cover, I thought it did a good job of fitting everything together. And it was a very dark film, as promised. Even the dialogue scenes weren’t quite as horrible as I was anticipating, they were at least passable, at least as brief interludes between intense action sequences. In short, it’s definitely the best of the prequel trilogy, but I’m gonna hold off for awhile on comparing it with “A New Hope” or “Empire Strikes Back” for where it ranks amongst all six films. We got back to campus around 3:45am, ’twas a long night.
I didn’t wake up till noon today, and so far I’ve just been bumming around, though once I finish this post I’ll be starting at least some work on my final paper for Senior Sem. Then tonight will be my last Prepare ever. But anyways, this semester’s final exam period isn’t exactly stressing me out. Tomorrow afternoon we have our Jazz Dance final, where Cory, Kelly, Johnny, Laura & I will do our two-minute self-choreographed dance as a group, and then Monday afternoon is the Astrophysics final, and it’s also when the final Astrophysics lab report is due, and the final paper for Senior Sem. Not lookin too bad, as long as I can force myself to do some work now that it’s finally nice out. Time to get some work done I guess.