Finals, Finals, Finals

You haven't heard from me yet because I've been busy with my senior year and all the craziness that it entails--an Honors Thesis, a Capstone paper, my work study, applying to grad school... and the list goes on--but I thought I'd let any avid followers know that most our faithful bloggers are taking a hiatus in order to survive what is for many of them their first-ever college finals.

In their absence, I thought I'd elaborate on Ryan's list with a SPECIAL FINALS EDITION™. Here's a small sampling of the things I've done to alleviate the stress of finals:

• Eat Midnight Breakfast at Cafe Mac. Faculty and staff serve us hash browns, eggs, waffles and bacon (plus a crazy assortment of fruits and pastries). From 10pm-12am! One of my favorite events of the fall semester, and it only happens once. I just got done eating, actually.
• Go to department parties. Whether you've declared a major or not, feel free to attend department parties around the College. Grab free food, talk to people in the department and revel in not being declared (yet). Today I ate ginger cookies and egg nog and talked about research faux pas at the Linguistics department party. Tip: never underestimate a linguistics major in a game of Boggle; most of us also double-major (or minor) in at least one language. We know a lot of words.
  
• Check out a cappella performances. Pretty much without fail, the four a cappella groups perform sometime during the finals insanity. Trads (all-male) and Sirens (all-female) performed tonight, Scotch Tape (co-ed) performed on Sunday and will do so again tomorrow, and the newest group, Off-Kilter (co-ed vocal jazz) also performed Sunday. Why study when you can watch singing and plaid-clad antics? That paper will pretty much write itself.
  
• Do some holiday shopping. Get out of your dorm, put on some real clothes--sweats don't count--and head any direction off campus to pick up some gifts for the loved ones you (may have ) neglected all semester. There are fancy food stores, stores full of cool knick-knacks and more restaurants than you can shake a stick at. Whether you're picking up a gift certificate for locals or bringing Minnesota flair back home, getting out of the dorms can make you feel slightly more human again.
• Watch TV. I don't know many other people who would advocate this, but I think that TV can be stress relief and a reward system. Hulu, YouTube, MegaVideo and all of those overseas hosts make it easy to catch your favorite shows any time, so what's the excuse not to? We're often too busy during the semester to watch shows on a weekly basis, but watching an episode or two after finishing that 20-page paper is both satisfying an relaxing.

Now that I've described a few of the ways I've relaxed in the past few days, it's probably time that I get back to work on my six remaining assignments.

Happy holidays, and may your winter be warmer than Minnesota's!

What to expect, come winter

It's not winter unless your nostrils freeze shut.

Yep, that's right. For anyone who's never experienced temperatures below zero, it gets cold - and I mean COLD - in Minnesota. The worst of the weather started up mostly over the course of this week, snow piling and piling while the wind buffets your face, feeling like thousands of needles prodding at your skin. For some people, it's what they've experienced all their lives. But for others, it's a completely new phenomenon, and it's NOT to be underestimated.

A coat is a must. Gloves are as well, and it'd be smart to invest in a warm hat that covers your ears. It may be a small campus, but a hike to class against the wind can feel like forever when it's -10 degrees. Minnesota sells some great winter gear, so if you don't come prepared, get prepared before the snow hits (and trust me, it can hit quickly). Everyone's different in terms of what they need, but it's better to get more and need less than vice-versa.

To help top off the chill are finals. At least it's good incentive to stay inside, although cooping yourself up in your room all day every day to study isn't the way to go, in my opinion. The Winter Ball, for instance, was a great way to blow off some steam. My girlfriend and I had a great time dancing, seeing friends, exploring the museum, and forgetting about schoolwork for a while. The last thing you want to do is burn out - especially when you're so close to the end of the semester!

Finally, the break. Oooh the glorious break. It lasts about a month, and is a time for students to see family and friends back home, maybe take a vacation somewhere, or even stay in Minnesota and do "J-term" internships. Despite the stress of exams and papers, everyone seems to stay relatively cheerful considering the season and the approaching winter break. I know I'll be having fun back in Nebraska doing some volunteer work and seeing some of my best friends from high school. Maybe next year I'll stay and do an internship in St. Paul, but for now I'm just looking forward to hot cocoa and stale Christmas specials on T.V.

Happy holidays!

Shuang @ Macalester的青春岁月——Winter Ball

这周五晚，Macalester 举办了第一届Winter Ball. 虽然室外已是零下十度左右，但学生们还是盛装出席，热情几乎要融化积雪。Winter Ball 受到很多人的欢迎，总计600张tickets， 不过几天就sold out. 当天晚上，校车把我们送到位于 Minneapolis 的一座博物馆，在大厅里，音乐声欢笑声与博物馆周边静悄悄的陈设品对比鲜明。

来到美国留学，我觉得一定要感受一下美国学生的疯狂。他们疯狂地学习，不写完Paper就是不睡，我的一个朋友曾经为了复习考试，到凌晨5点才入睡，第二天清晨6点又爬起来去上课。他们也疯狂地玩乐，在party上你几乎可以看到一个人的不同一面。平时那些在课堂上捧着书本正襟危坐的学子，穿上礼服，在灯光下几乎让人觉得他们要释放身体内所有的活力，似乎要去证明年轻时多么美好。

这是我第一次参加这样正式的舞会。舞蹈确实有它的魅力。 Laugh is universal. When we laugh together, we get closer. 特别是对于中国学生，我觉得有太多东西都被深埋在了心里，而在那样的环境下，是最容易激活的。周边的人，他们的动作欢笑会将你感染。你会不由自主地想要融入身处的环境中去。这和学习气氛，生活习惯都是一样的。人总是希望尽快最好地融入自己所处的状态下，找到一种sense of belonging, 当整个礼堂的人都唱着一首歌疯狂地跳着叫着，当在图书馆与其他学生一起奋战到凌晨，当在课堂里教授与学生激烈地辩着，当清晨大雪纷飞一群人一起走在校园里，你会觉得Macalester 真地开始成为你的第二故乡。

当然，对于我们而言，还是有很多东西没有接触过而被触动。Party中总有些人做出一些中国不曾件事过的事来。有同学问我怎么看待这个问题，其实我的想法觉得很简单。他们和我们在不同的环境下成长起来，观念不一样是非常正常的。我觉得我们应该要尊重的文化，这和我们自己保持自己的世界观是完全不矛盾的。我们觉得他们的有些不能接受，他们看我们其实也是这样。同时我并不觉得试图去改变彼此是个好主意。为什么要改变呢？没有任何意义可言。来到这里的一个追求，不就是希望exposed to different cultures吗？

The Winter Ball @ the Mill City Museum: Educational and Fun!

This weekend, my roommate was my date to Macalester's Winter Ball at the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis. The ball cost $5 but it was well worth it considering we got free champagne flukes as souvenirs and they had museum tours running all night and a live funk band.

This was the first really big dance event in my own Macalester history that was off campus and it doesn't surprise me that it sold out.

Some of my friends aren't the "ball" type, I guess but my roommate, Kaija made an excellent date. We had a great time dressing up and dancing the night away in quite a trendy renovated factory space that was once the Gold City Mill for flour. We got to go on a tour of the mill and hear about it's history. It felt kind of weird to take a tour at night, in fancy dress clothes but we enjoyed it anyway, after getting over the initial strangeness of the whole thing. Night at the museum indeed!

Above, here's a picture of Kaija (left) and me (right) very excited about using these blocks to put together a cool scale model of the mill. Good thing we had smocks because the model river at water running in it and we definitely didn't want to get our pretty party dresses all messy!

On the left is me assembling a bridge...Not wearing my smock tsk tsk. Good thing I didn't get anything on this dress because I borrowed it from a friend back home. :)

This last picture on the right is Kaija and me dancing our hearts out before the ball ended at 1am. I made this my facebook profile picture to remind myself all the way through finals what a fun night we had together
before hitting the books the next morning.

¡MacJazz!

Hello! My name is Jack and I'm here today to tell you about MacJazz because it's something I do that is fun and interesting (to some people). Below: the view from the captain's chair.
MacJazz is Macalester's jazz big band, and there are, I don't know, maybe twenty of us? We rehearse twice a week and have played a few times this semester, both on-campus and off. Considering the small size of the student body it has to pull from, MacJazz is really awesome--seriously. We can burn rubber and turn on a dime. We play old swing tunes, latin jazz, blues and funk and probably some genres that haven't yet been invented. Our director, Joan Griffith, is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who also teaches at St. Thomas and St. Kate's, a couple of local universities. If you play a brass/wind/rhythm section instrument and have any interest in jazz or improvisation, it goes without saying that you should check in with MacJazz if you come to Macalester. It's a talented group but by no means high-pressured, and you don't need to take solos--plenty of people do as it is.

A couple of weeks ago we played at a gathering of local jazz bands from Hamline University, UST and Concordia U, and a got a chance to travel outside of the Janet Wallace Fine Arts complex we call home and observe our comrades at nearby schools as they ran through some of their repertoires. There was a "guest of honor" of sorts, a local sax man/wizard named Steve Clarke. He apparently commented on our performances into a microphone on the table at which he was sitting, which was located in the middle of the audience about where a soundboard would be placed at a concert. It was kind of like performing for the King of Hamline as he enjoyed the entertainment of some local minstrels. He seemed to like our performance, because he exclaimed "yeah!" at the end of each of our three songs, the kind of "yeah!" that would ordinarily be accompanied by a fist pump or a high-five. Maybe it was, I didn't see.All in all it was good way to hear how we compare to other student bands in the area, and we got a chance to sit in the audience and watch some sublime performances, especially by the UST band #1 and the combined honor band with Steve Clarke on sax. He can finger a sax like a man possessed, and also looks good in a hat.

If adventures such as this one suit your fancy, or you have questions about jazz at Macalester, feel free to send me an e-mail.

Scheduling

Macalester has a good habit of causing "overload."

"Overload" is a bitter-sweet phenomenon, in my opinion. As the name implies, it's an occurrence where there's just too much. And it seems like there's always too much at Mac. Too much work, too much to do, too much to enjoy... The cycle can get pretty dangerous when the "too much to enjoy" causes a build up, leading to "too much work." It's happened to me once or twice, where there'll be a day with so many different events on campus that I'll attend, put off my homework, and end up stressed out and overloaded.

Hip-Hop for Hope and the Winter Ball are two events happening today (Friday), one after the other. Because I'm going to both, that essentially means from 7:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. I won't be doing any school work. That's not necessarily a problem...as long as you've done some work beforehand and have that time to afford. In order to help with not missing some good events (though you will most definitely have to miss a good number in your time at Mac), here's some advice:

• Don't schedule anything between the hours of 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. This is when good speakers come to campus and when events like "Soup and Substance" will occur. At these happenings, lunch is usually provided, so you get a free meal and get to hear some interesting stuff!
• Use the mornings. I usually get up at 8:00 a.m., get breakfast, and get some reading done before my 10:50 a.m. class. No, I'm not very sharp in the morning, which is why I usually don't try to crank out an essay then; I'll save some reading to finish up, which doesn't take nearly as much of my brainpower.
• Try to get things done early. If you have some time in-between classes, before the late afternoon, then settle yourself in and get some work done. After about 5:00 p.m. everyone is done with classes, meaning there'll be a lot more distractions than earlier in the day.
• Use a desk calendar. I prefer this to google calendars because then I don't always need my computer on to know what I need to do. A calendar of any sort, though, is a crucial investment; write everything down, from club activities and events to homework assignments, so you can keep track and plan ahead.

Hopefully these help, but when things start to get hot - usually during midterms and finals - then avoiding "overload" gets even trickier. I'm looking forward to winter break, which is just two weeks away, and that keeps me chugging along. Just don't let yourself get overwhelmed; sometimes it'll take saying "no" to something fun, but time becomes your most important commodity in college. Don't spend it lightly.

What I Wish I Had Known, continued

In my last post I started a list of things that lots of prospective students never find out about until they actually arrive on campus. After getting some reader feedback, I've decided to continue that list for two, maybe three more posts. So, here we go.

5. There are free condoms EVERYWHERE.

And I mean all varieties of condoms you can think of (use your imagination). Personally, I think it's terrific. Not only is it a representation of how open Mac is as a community and how supportive everybody (including admins) is about making realistic healthy life choices, but it also makes for some pretty fun condom/balloon debauchery. In all seriousness, Mac administrators, professors, staff, and everyone else are extremely committed to keeping students healthy and happy, and this is one way they show it.

6. Navigating Cafe Mac

Nowhere in our ridiculously long and detailed orientation did they cover how to make ones way around possibly the most crowded place at Macalester: Cafe Mac. While we did spend 1.5 hours debriefing our icebreaker games, somehow no one managed to inform me that Harold the card-swiper would yell at me for trying to bring my backpack to a table! Here are some Cafe Mac basics:

• You have to store your backpack in a cubby thing, or lie and tell Harold there's a laptop in it. Otherwise he thinks you're stealing food.
• The food is good, and there's plenty of it, but when you get tired of the same old same old, there are plenty of options for creativity. Fro yo and Lucky Charms is one of my faves, but grilled cheese bagels (from the toaster), fro yo and Belgian waffles on brunch days, and the "currito" (curry and stuff in a tortilla) are all popular options.
• BRANDI! Brandi, who serves pasta and veggies everyday at lunch, is the coolest person ever. She calls everyone either sir, buddy, or homie, and always knows what you wanna eat. She never fails to make me happier.

7. Study Areas

Now that you've satisfied some of that tummy grumbling, it's time to get down to business (no, not Facebook creeping). There are a bunch of study areas around Campus, and each have their perks. I'll give you a few of my favorites:

• The Dewitt Wallace Library: free printing, open til midnight on school nights, 3 during finals week. All the resources and help you could need in a productive environment.
• The Humanities Lab: located on the first floor of the Humanities building, this is the only place to print in color for free. On top of that, it has a great collection of language dictionaries.
• The Campus Center: honestly, I get incredibly distracted here. But it is open the latest, and there are some great group study areas.
• Kagin has some great study space, including the MAX Center, which is ever so helpful (its basically peer tutoring on steroids). It also has a computer lab.
• The Kirk Computer lab: OK, its in a basement and has awful fluorescent lighting, but this is the only 24 hour computer lab on campus, which makes it a godsend. Also, not many first years know about it or use it, so this is cutting edge stuff.

There's a couple more things for you guys to think about. Again, if you have any further questions or feedback PLEASE COMMENT!

Until next time,

Ryan