First Year Diary 11

When I sat down in Dante’s Classical Sources on Thursday, Fr. Howard placed a box of cornflakes, a container of raspberries, and some napkins on my desk. Everyone in the class was extremely confused by the mini-breakfast adorning my desk, so Fr. Howard asked if any of us knew what type of berries he had given me. We all exchanged blank stares, and Eric poignantly replied, “Dante berries.” Fr. Howard then informed us that raspberries are also called Garden of Eden berries, and he thought that raspberries were an appropriate meal for me because I’m deciphering the last four cantos (including Dante’s entrance into the Garden of Eden) of the Purgatorio. And this is just one reason as to why I love the Jesuit experience! Come to think of it, raspberries actually are somewhat formed in the same way as Dante’s Mount Purgatorio…

Anyway course enrollment booklets were distributed to all students on Friday. I can’t believe that we’re already at the halfway point of the semester. Next semester’s courses were actually posted on-line at the beginning of the week, so Carrie and I got a head start. I thought that I had planned next semester perfectly, and then I found out on Friday that I was accepted into the College Honors Program. While I’m excited about that, my acceptance threw a monkey wrench into my plans for next semester. One of the requirements of the Honors Program is that I have to take two honors program seminars, and one of them must be taken in my sophomore second semester. So, at the moment, I’ve whittled my courses to six or so. One of the honors seminars offered next semester is the Ideological Destruction of Art, and Professor Ellen Perry will teach it. I am going to wake up at 6:30 a.m. on enrollment day just to make sure that I will be in that seminar! By the end of next semester, I will hopefully be finished with my common area requirements and my readings courses for my English major. Bah! Why does Holy Cross offer so many amazing courses?! 

This weekend was Family Weekend. While my parents were unable to attend (don’t worry; they’ll be visiting in about a week or so!), I wasn’t an orphan. My friends’ families graciously adopted me for dinner on Saturday night. I spent most of my weekend working in Kimball. Why, you ask? As an incentive to work this weekend, we were paid time and a half. While the dollar is now stronger against the pound, I really do have to start saving now for a year abroad! So, even though my family couldn’t make it, this weekend certainly did turn out all right! Oh, yes, except for the fact that I haven’t really finished any of my readings or applications. Hmmm…about that…

Until next time!

Wow. Has it really been thirteen days since my last post? My apologies to you all! I can only imagine that you all have been compulsively checking my blog day after day to see if I’ve updated. Have I mentioned that I’m very sarcastic?

Anyway, life on Mt. St. James has been, as you can probably guess, extremely busy. Luckily, Columbus Day break was from October 11th until October 14th. I was extremely grateful for the break; I most certainly needed four days off to relax and prepare for the month ahead. I went to visit my grandmother who lives in New Bedford. Peter Pan has a bus line from Worcester to New Bedford, so that was fairly convenient! We watched the Patriots and Red Sox games (which, by the way, I will take full responsibility for their losses that weekend. I rarely watch the games on TV, and the times that I do, they end up losing.), did some shopping, and just relaxed. I was so grateful that I went to visit her instead of staying on campus. During breaks, the campus is so dead that it reminds me of “28 Days Later.” I did have a lot of work that I probably should have finished, but I think I really just needed to be off campus for a while. Of course, it took a while to readjust to Kimball food after three days of home-cooked meals.

Anyway, this past school week was a blur. My classes are still going well, and they’re all really beginning to dovetail even more now. We’ve just begun to read the Inferno in my medieval literature class, and we’ve just finished the Inferno in my Dante’s Classical Sources class. Of course, the one drawback is that we’re beginning the Purgatorio in my Dante class, so I sometimes get confused as to where I am in Dante in which class. We’re also at the zenith of the Confessions in medieval philosophy, and I have noticed a lot of subtle Augustinian thought in the Divine Comedy. Perhaps I smell a term paper topic? And, lastly, Jesus and His Contemporaries is just really beneficial for all of my classes because I now have a firmer grasp upon the context of the New Testament. And, understanding the New Testament is always beneficial for medieval studies!

On Saturday, we competed in the 11th Annual UConn ballroom competition. I’ve been organizing meal swipes, transportation, and registration for the past month or so. Now that I’ve organized our team for one competition, I know that organizing the next ones will not be as stressful as this one. We had twenty-eight competitors (now you see why I was so stressed out!), and it went really well. We had some newcomer couples receive call backs, and Ashley and I did well for our new level. We recently moved up into a new category, so we’re competing against more experienced dancers. We were happy with how we danced and our callbacks. Our more experienced dancers also did really well. It was really just a great day for Holy Cross ballroom dance.

Speaking of ballroom, five of us from the team performed at a senior citizen center on Sunday. Even though we performed for only half an hour, the residents really enjoyed our dancing, especially the foxtrot! Some of the residents requested to take pictures with us, and all of them requested that we make a return performance. One of them even asked us if any of us knew Irish step dance, and was adamant that I return for St. Patrick’s Day. Some of the residents danced with us, and others of them danced with each other. It was a moment that the meaning evades the words; you really had to be there to see how much it meant to these residents that a group of college kids came to spend some time with them. Some of the residents were even Holy Cross graduates!

Well, I’ve written much more than my 500 word allotment, and I also have a medieval philosophy exam tomorrow. So, you all are spared from my writing because of St. Augustine. In the meantime, please enjoy some of the pictures from my ballroom escapades this weekend!

This weekend was busy, but it was most certainly fun. On Friday, the Ballroom Dance Team held our inaugural Intercollegiate Social. We had a much higher turn out (oh, the ballroom puns never end!) rate than we expected, and at least seven different colleges were represented. It was a fun night of dancing with other schools, learning some new moves, and just having a blast with other ballroom dancers in general. The rule for the entire night was that you had to dance with someone from another school and you had to change partners for each dance. We played a couple of ballroom games, such as Waltz War and Red Light, Green Light swing. Waltz War is kind of like “Capture the Flag.” We all had paper flags that we stuck into our jeans, and we waltzed around the ballroom trying to grab other couples’ flags. My partner and I actually did really well; we ended up in fourth place before we were almost tackled by another couple. Unfair, I say. The night was really successful, and a lot of teams have requested that we host another social soon.

On Saturday, I gave a tour in the morning. I was by myself with about forty prospective students and their parents. It was just a little intimidating. After that, Margaret and I took the free SGA bus to Providence for an afternoon of shopping. My theory was that if the economy crashed abysmally on Monday, I would at least have some nice new clothes with which I could barter. This is why I am not an Economics major…

On Sunday, I had to give a couple of more tours because it was Open House. As much as I love giving tours, if I had to explain Montserrat one more time this weekend, I might’ve imploded. After Open House, my dad dropped by. He was around Worcester for some business, so he stopped by. It was only for an hour, but it was still great to see him.

While our hair dying adventures might have not gone so well last year, Ashley, Katie, and I decided to make chicken noodle soup for dinner last night. No, we didn’t just open cans and heat them up; we made the soup from scratch. Earlier in the week, we went to Shaw’s, and Ashley decided then that she was going to make the soup. At first, Katie and I thought that she was kidding. And, no, she was actually serious. So, Ashley bought a chicken, some noodles, some bouillon, celery, and carrots. For future reference, making chicken noodle soup takes a long time. None of us had any idea. I will now be more grateful every time that I open up a can of Campell’s. Anyway, we invited all of our friends over for dinner, and none of us contracted salmonella, which is always a good thing. Actually, the soup was delicious. Now Ashley wants to make Sunday our official “slow meals.” We’ll see how long this one lasts!

In other news, I received my official absentee ballot! Huzzah!

When I tell people about my proposed concentration, usually blank stares greet me back. Inevitably, someone will ask, “What are you going to do with that?” Well, Fr. Howard made an excellent point today as to why Classical and Medieval Literature is still important to know in the modern world. We’re just arriving at the Malebolge in the Inferno, which is where the fraudulent, both simple and treacherous, are punished. Fr. Howard pulled out a copy of the New York Times from September 29th and read an article that discussed the fraud and greed that have wreaked havoc on Wall Street. He then said, “Doesn’t this sound like Capernus?” It most certainly did. The very events that riled Dante are still occurring in our modern world. Literature is just a different expression of the same human experience, and that’s why I love it so much.

In other news, I submitted my College Honors Program application today. Now that that’s out of the way, I really don’t have any major projects (other than a couple of scholarships) for the next week. My class schedule is extremely different from a majority of the students on campus. Typically, the week before Columbus Day weekend is laden with tests and papers. However, that was last week for me, and now I just have to read. I guess that I’ll be taking over a lot of shifts for my Kimball Captain friends who need some extra studying time.

Speaking of Kimball, “Guess The Juice” didn’t go so well. Sean forgot who picked what mixture, so we really had no way of proclaiming a winner. I think that the next game is going to be ABBA karaoke. When “Dancing Queen” started playing on the radio, nearly all of my workers (including me) began to dance and sing along. Just another proof that old cultures have an odd way of permeating the subsequent cultures!

Today, I had a marvelous food escapade. As first-year students, we weren’t allowed to use our dining dollars at Crossroads until 6:00 p.m. during the week. Because of that rule, I didn’t really explore all of the options that Crossroads has. Tonight, I needed to get something quick to eat, but I didn’t want my staple from Crossroads (a chicken parmesan sub, if you were wondering. Yes, I do know that it’s probably terrible for me, but it is oh so delicious!). There’s another part of Crossroads with which I had never experimented before tonight. Oh, my eyes were opened to the divine jewel that the Deli and Salad station is! You can design your own sandwich or salad, and you have your choice of artisan breads, amazing fillings, and luxury salads. For instance, I had a baby spinach salad with mandarin oranges, chicken, walnuts, almonds, and poppy seed dressing. Words cannot express the dances my taste buds were performing. I am going to have to mention this jewel on my tours now! Good-bye, dining dollars…

Speaking of Epicurean food adventures, I have a funny story about work at Kimball. Every morning, the captains assign jobs to their workers. Well, simply assigning or asking for personal preferences becomes extremely boring very quickly. So, I decided to have a contest for job selection. The challenge? Kimball Pick-Up Lines. Every worker had to create a pick-up line related to a Kimball job. The example I gave them was, “I have to use my hot gloves to ‘catch’ you.” (‘Catching’ means taking the dishes out of the dishwasher, so we have to use thermal gloves because of the hot temperatures.) Well, that game didn’t go over so well. One of my workers (and a freshman year blogger!), Melissa, looked at me, and asked, “You do realize that it’s 7:00 in the morning…right?” Oh well. I thought it was fun. Tomorrow, I’m planning to do “Guess the Juice.” Ah, the power that a Kimball captain wields is fantastic! Muwahaha!

Memo to self: Do not drink coffee. It makes my blog entries simply ridiculous.