It’s finally here!! Yes, indeed, glorious Spring Break begins this weekend! I’m sure I will have much to tell you about my adventures in Washington DC with my mom next time, but for now, I’m gonna go back in time a couple of weeks and let you know what I’ve been up to!
Let me begin with a somewhat funny story. I had the pleasure of finding an old video online that I wrote and co-starred in. Before my sophomore (I think…) year of high school I had the privilege of attending a summer camp for young women put on by Microsoft. With a wonderfully nerdy name like DigiGirlz, it was an unforgettable and very informative experience. One of the projects was making a promotion video. To this day, I absolutely love being goofy, dressing up, and making home videos, so I signed right up. They added closed caption later since the sound quality isn’t the best and also for deaf people to enjoy as well. Hopefully, you can get a good laugh out of it, too! Here’s the link:
http://www.microsoft.com/about/diversity/Digi_Day.wvx
Well, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ll move on to classes. As I read through my blog last time, I realized how little I talk about school versus all of the fun things I get to do. I hope I haven’t misrepresented what I do down here!! 🙂 Honestly, a HUGE majority of my time is spent in classrooms and studying. I didn’t even work in SPRL the last few weeks so I could be focused. But, seeing as you all probably don’t want to hear too much about every math problem I’m working on or my study method for a random Honors seminar quiz, I usually just share an overview. Nice disclaimer, huh? But, seriously, I have been extremely busy trying to do well in my three tough classes (Calculus 2, Physics, and Programming). It’s a big step up from last semester when I only had Chemistry to “worry” about.
Last week I did hardly anything but study (and attend an ab workout class with a CFC friend :)). In math, I did practice problems over and over and made sure I had memorized all of the difficult formulas. For physics, I typed up every problem we had done in class and on the homework to work through and also memorized formulas. And finally, for programming, I made a paper for each type of syntax (loops, arrays, files, random, etc…) and the proper way to use them in a program. As soon as all three tests in “Round 2” were over, I was ready to relax!
A buddy of mine on the floor had a birthday on Thursday, so several of us went out to Carrabba’s for dinner. I had a delicious ravioli! 🙂 The next day, we were able to experience a huge storm! We even had a couple of tornado warnings. Despite the heavy rain, a few of us ventured out to the hockey game to enjoy and see our other drummer friend in the pep band (who is also on the CFC worship team with me and takes others and me to church).
Saturday, I slept in and worked on a few scholarships my mom had prepared for me to do. I also finished up the very last Physics Lab formal report (we only do three of these a semester). I left my room fairly early so I could go practice for CFC worship team. The guys had gotten a tambourine, but I just wasn’t comfortable enough with it to play. I’ll work on it and learn new rhythms from the others so I hopefully can do it for the next meeting. I’m fine with keeping beat, but just don’t know how to do anything fancy or not too insanely repetitive. Instead, I focused on truly singing with all my heart. It was a true night of worship and I loved it!
After singing, we had the privilege of having the original founder of the club, Dr. Wheeler, come and speak. We learned that CFC was the very first club on campus and the first meeting was only six people, two of which were the dean and his secretary. He was very encouraging and inspiring and led us in Communion after sharing. His words reminded me that I couldn’t give up on what the Lord has called me to do. So even when I’m feeling discouraged about grades and wondering if Engineering Physics is too hard for me or not, I need to pray and trust.
Sunday was also a great time of praise and fellowship! After the wonderful sermon, the whole church had a picnic outside. We, of course, didn’t remember to bring food, so we just had a blast playing volleyball with some little kids. They were so much fun! By the end of the hour, the group had grown and we were all laughing and playing away. Somehow, I managed to get burnt which is a very rare thing for me unless I’m at the beach.
Hmm… I suppose you might be wondering what life in Doolittle is like for me now that I’m very settled in. Well, I don’t know what to say other than it’s nice and quiet in my room. Almost every night, I go to Einstein’s with my two friends and then we play guitar hero (I’m SLOWLY improving…ha.), watch a TV show from someone’s vast DVD collection, or just sit around and make jokes. We all go to CFC and usually campus outreach stuff too. One of the stupider things we do is IM each other whether we’re just down the hall or sitting in the same room. One guy (one who just had the birthday) and I also do our best to think of creative ways to annoy the third member of our trio (drummer-worship-team guy). Really, it’s a vicious circle of teasing between all of us… 🙂
Anyway, that’s enough about our bizarre adventures for now. Other than packing, doing little homework assignments, and enjoying a daily 1 hr bike in the gym, this week has been pretty uneventful. The shuttle launch occurred, but I unfortunately had to go to bed early so I would be coherent at my physics lab. We also received the housing lottery results. I got an OK number for being a freshman. It’s kind of in the middle I guess. I’m hoping my other buddies get an even better one so we have a good chance at getting into Apollo for next year. We will find out what dorm we get in on March 25 or 26th.
Well, I’m going to finish packing for my Washington DC adventure! Only four more classes and I get a much-needed break (although I’ll probably have to study at least a little during the trip).
My name is Natalie Spencer and I approve this entry.
(Sorry, as you probably know, the presidential race is all over the news…)
