Having no classes on Tuesday is a little bit of a drag. Yeah, I'll be really glad about that a little later on in the semester when I have to seriously start working on my senior thesis, but now it's a little boring.

Last night I went to a Green Student United meeting, and managed to be appointed chair of the waste reduction committee. As chair, I get to help get the school adopt some sort of recycling program, and figure out how much trash the school as a whole gets rid of. That will probably involve, though I try not to think about it, getting up close and personal with the trash. Nah, I can handle it.

Having survived my first few days back at school, I can honestly say that I feel pretty good about being back up here. Despite everything. Everything being that I have to write a senior thesis, take the GRE, get my grad school applications in, get the fat naked guy to stop lurking by my window, and find a way to get Sallie Mae to quit screwing with me. "Dear Ms. B---, Congratulations on graduating early. Screw you. Now pay us a bunch of stupid fees that normal students don't have to pay."

Last Days of Summer

So yeah, school is right around the corner. I have mixed feelings about this. I'm thrilled that pretty soon I won't have to worry about the whole secret double life thing, but I am less than thrilled to be going back to isolated College Town. Also the girls in the dorm last year wouldn't ever shut the fuck up. Maybe it'll be different this year. Either that or I'll have to introduce them to the wonder that is Tylenol PM.

Despite having the last week and a half off work (gotta love being a contingent), all I've managed to do is pack up two boxes for back to school, totally messing up my room in the process. Oh yeah, thanks to my mother's Swiss-made food chopper, one of my fingers is a little bit shorter than it used to be. My accomplishments are few, but massive. Because hey, lets face it, only the massively clumsy can manage to slice off 1/8 of a pinky finger. And only the massively lazy can boast about having packed up two boxes. After I found my IPod ("missing" since early May), I lost interest in the packing.

Three months

Poor neglected little blog. Poor overworked little blogger. Place of Employment is crushing my soul. Asheville weekends rock though. Where else can one run around a hotel built on a mountain (and come really close to crashing a wedding-- whoops), fall off a chair at the JCC pool, read really funny parts of Cosmopolitan out loud at Barnes and Noble, and bake vegan cookies for an extremely lactose intolerant Israeli camp counselor?

Ok, maybe you can do those things anywhere.

On no longer being SLAMmed

Yesterday was my school's first ever undergrad research symposium, oddly named SLAM. I'm not the world's best public speaker, and yet I did a presentation. I can practice for hours, and I did, but then I step out on stage and my mind goes completely blank. Somehow I managed to survive the presentation without a) running out of the theatre, b) having another mini-breakdown in which I questioned my sanity, or c) making people fall asleep in their chairs. My good feelings about my presentation kinda evaporated after the college sweetheart gave her presentation, but hey, that's life. I'm kinda glad that we were presenting in the same session. There would have been a lot less people there without her.

Our keynote speaker was, pretty much, the world's foremost scholar on hip hop. Visit her website, she's awesome! Hip hop and rap aren't my favorite genres, but after hearing Dr. Rose's lecture, I was struck by the urge to start listening to more rap and hip hop. Funny how easily something/someone can come along and change your entire opinion.

It's also funny how an entire college campus can piss and moan about having to go to all the presentations, but then have no problem showing up for an iPod drawing. Ahh, people.

Looking back over the last 48 hours, it's really amazing how college students from around the country have joined together in solidarity for the students of Virginia Tech. Right after I heard about the shootings, I joined a Facebook tribute group of 17,000. A day later, the group had grown by 100,000 people and is now 250,000+ strong, and has branched off into a number of websites. And while it would be awesome for people to simply remember the victims without getting into political pissing matches, it's never that easy. Right now, as more and more details are coming out about the perpetrator's nature, one has to wonder why no one saw that there might have been a problem in the making and done something about it? Okay, maybe the guy did obtain those guns legally according to VA laws, but come on? If gun control laws can't be made stricter, then maybe make people with clean records looking to buy a gun undergo a psychiatric exam. It's a start, you know?

Everything that happened is so pointless and sad, and people are right, it really could happen anywhere. Will this finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back and forces our government to look at our gun control laws and realize that this kind of thing cannot keep happening!