No More Finals as a Gustie!

As the title indicates, yes, I am officially DONE with all academic requirements at Gustavus. Apart from being handed my diploma on Sunday afternoon, of course. It feels good to be done, but at the same time it doesn’t really feel like I’m done.
Last Thursday night was the final Prepare of the year. Gary was down and gave a short little talk before using the rest of the time as a prayer and blessing service for the outgoing seniors, transferring students, and Karen, the Prepare staff member who is leaving for a mission trip to Rwanda at least for this summer, but she’s hoping she’s there for the next 2-5 years. We had a cake for Karen, which was augmented by heaps of good food that we all grabbed down at Midnight Express. Then to wrap up for the year we all played something called “the paper bag game.” It’s maybe not the most exciting game in the world, but it’s pretty entertaining to watch. 🙂
Friday was fun, as Fridays typically are. I talked to Heidi H. for a bit in the caf, she’d just gotten back to the States after spending two consecutive semesters and a summer studying/interning over in Europe, it was good to see her again. In the afternoon we had our jazz dance final, which went quite well. Michele really liked the piece that Cory, Kelly, Laura, Johnny & I did, she liked the humour and how we used the space in a variety of different ways. Score. 🙂 I also finished doing the outline for my senior sem paper, and I got the intro written, woot. I had been hoping to get a bit further along, but Gaming Society served as a quality interruption.
Saturday afternoon I finally sat down and got a start on my paper, about 5 pages or so. At least it was something. In the evening I reserved one of the comfy classrooms in Confer for a movie night to watch “Ben-Hur” on the projector screen. Micah, Jenna, Hilary, Clint, Tim, Seth & Cara came, though I was kinda hoping for a better turnout. Oh well, it was the middle of finals after all. At the intermission of the movie we all went over to SSC to look at Jenna’s rats that she’s been using for a psych experiment. Hmm, white rats with beady red eyes, not exactly my favourite animals in the world… But anyway, everyone liked the movie, which is good. “Ben-Hur” is such an awesome movie, it’s one of my all-time favourites. Afterwards I was gonna join my sectionmates and some other people in their game of capture the flag out in the arb under the silver moonlight, but shortly after I got out there some people got really annoyed at the game and just up and walked off. Some people take a GAME way too seriously…
I spent pretty much all day Sunday writing my paper, by the end of the night it wound up being 16 pages (1 1/2 spaced), woot. It was actually quite an enjoyable paper to write, it really allowed me to reflect on my entire life so far. (The paper was for Curriculum II Senior Seminar, and was supposed to be sort of an autobiographical look at how you became the person you are today, including your ethics and values.) I really only took a break to go down to the Physics picnic at Swede Park. Most everyone went to DC’s house for awhile first to take a look at his extensive model train collection and old pinball machine, so the actual picnic got started a bit late. I think basically all the juniors and seniors were there, and then there was even an okay turnout for sophomores and freshmen too. We shot off the potato gun a couple times and played some football (although we couldn’t beat Paul, one of our profs, one last time because he didn’t show up, so we just had to beat up on each other). After the food there was the awards ceremony and the Sigma Pi Sigma induction ceremony. Sigma Pi Sigma is a nationwide physics honors society, and eight of us seniors, including myself, made it in! I’m not totally sure what benefits it has, other than some nice little thing to be able to put on your resume, but I think we’ll also get to wear special cords during commencement.
Monday was my finals day. I turned in my senior sem paper in the morning, John & I quick wrote our astrophysics lab report that was due in the afternoon, and then I did about an hour of studying (if that much) for the Astrophysics final. It was an interesting final, in that Chuck made us all pizza pockets and brought trays of them in periodically during the test. He also put up a joke on the overhead halfway through to lighten the mood a bit, hehe. And it needed lightening, because it wasn’t the most fun final I’ve ever taken. Even though it was open-book (which is why none of us studied), there was still all sorts of info that none of us could find in the book, it was rather frustrating. That and the test was super-long too, it took basically everyone two and a half hours to finish (finals at Gustavus are only supposed to go a maximum of two hours). Despite the crappiness of the test, I’m pretty sure I did well enough to get a B at least.
The astro test made me a bit late for the Curriculum II Senior Banquet. Mmmm, such good food, and free! After the meal those of us who were on the freshman-senior retreat this February at Koinonia did a reprise of our “Guide to CII” skit. We designed it like a 60 Minutes special, and called it “Cults in America: CII Sequence 17,” and Sara & I were the two co-anchors of the show, hehe. I must admit, it was quite a good skit, about 10-15 minutes long, and Florence said it’s the best senior skit she’s seen in her six years as director of the CII program. Carl managed to get it videotaped too, so hopefully he’ll be able to convert that into a digital format that he can either burn onto CD’s for us, or just put it on Borg before the end of the year.
I had nothing going on Monday night or Tuesday morning, so that night I played “Rail Baron” with Zach, Ben, John & Josh. The dice were very kind to me from the outset, enabling me to win, woohoo! That’s one of my favourite board games, “Rail Baron,” so I was happy to hear that GGS bought it last fall.
I slept till noon Tuesday, and then in the afternoon I got a call from my brother Aaron, saying that he might have found me a job for the summer! It’d be with Enterprise Car Rental in the Cities, so I applied online right away, using the name of one of Aaron’s friends who works at Enterprise as an employee referral. 🙂 That’d be sweet if I could get that job, because it’d be 40 hours a week, and it wouldn’t be weather dependent like painting houses would. That and it’d just be a better job overall. So now I’m just waiting to hear back from Enterprise to see if they want to set up an interview with me.
Tuesday, being the last day of finals for the semester, was the beginning of Senior Week festivities. In the evening there was a Senior Luau in the Johns Family Courtyard, with fabulous free food. I mean, the chicken sandwiches in the caf are usually pretty decent, but these Hawaiian chicken sandwiches were awesome! And then the other food and punch was wonderful too. It was made all the better by it being an absolutely gorgeous day, about 75 and mostly sunny, it was awesome. After that about 15 of us went up to Dick’s Bar in Osseo, which is owned by Cory’s dad. Even Nate L., Andy M. & Kate came up from their apartments in Minneapolis for it, it was good to see them again. Most of us (including myself) had never been there before, and it was cool getting to see where Cory grew up, and to see Dick’s Bar finally, after seeing Cory wear all those shirts from it the past four years, hehe.
Today the weather has turned cool and rainy, and I’ve come down with a sore throat. 🙁 This likely means that I’ll be suffering from a cold during graduation, which would suck hardcore. It’ll probably also limit somewhat how much stuff I go out to do during Senior Week, though tonight I’ll probably still go to the Western dinner and Last Chance Square Dance. After that who knows. Then tomorrow evening is the President’s Dinner, Friday I didn’t sign up for any of the activities, and then Saturday is commencement rehearsal and a couple of BBQ’s, in addition to PACKING. Then Sunday morning is the Baccalaureate Service, followed by Commencement in the afternoon.
And just to let everyone know, the webserver (and hence my website) will be down from Saturday afternoon onwards for at least a week, possibly two. A couple days after we move out of Gustavus, Josh’s family will be moving from Sioux Falls to Milwaukee, so it’ll take a little time to get all their stuff transported and then set up again. Just a heads up.
And I haven’t had links to weird news stories in awhile, so I thought I’d throw in a few today. Like the West Virginia woman who was sat on by a camel. Or the calf in New Mexico that was born with 5 legs and 6 hooves. And you gotta love stupid criminals, even in Hong Kong. Or the story from California of a pair of chimps that mauled a husband and wife, with the husband still in a coma in critical condition two months after the attack, having lost most of his face and both his testicles. And the wife still wishes she could bring her chimp home. Is she insane??!? And in other news, some research is now out detailing just how the Great Sumatra Quake on Boxing Day shook the entire surface of the earth. And the “Nitwit Seven” Republicans betrayed their party and the majority of American voters by caving and “compromising” on the issue of judicial nominees. This is an outrage, because it gives the Democrats everything they want, and allows them to continue their unconstitutional practice of filibustering judicial nominees. Finally, my beloved Geelong Cats of the Australian Football League are having a tremendous season this year, and last weekend they won their sixth in a row, slaughtering the Kangaroos of North Melbourne by 85 points, 146-61! Now the Cats are in second place, behind the West Coast Eagles by a game, and showing no signs of letting up. This weekend they host the Fremantle Dockers.