The beginning of a crazy week..

My day was crazy. Let me back up a minute and tell you I was really motivated when I made my fall schedule. I have an 8 am chem class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Tuesday morning physics lab and Thursday morning chem lab, both at 8:30 am. This morning, Tuesday, my physics lab was canceled. This was a huge deal... I don't even think you understand. For the first time since I've been at Hiram, I got to sleep in past my room mate!!! I am always the one trying to be quite and get ready in the dark, and I finally had my turn to sleep in. I set my alarm for 11, sure that I would be up much before that. Lo and behold my alarm went off and I was still fast asleep. At noon, I attended a convocation by Eric Coble and Laurie Frey. They co-wrote a musical called Unbeatable. Let me say it is phenomenal. From noon to one, we were able to listen to a shortened version, as well as talk to Laurie. The musical is based on her bout with breast cancer and it is hilarious! Although it is sad and depressing at times, it came right back up rather quickly. She is an amazing woman, with a great sense of humor and a large dose of courage. She hopes that it may make it Off-Broadway and even Broadway. If it makes it big, and you ever get the chance, *go see it*. I promise you it will be worth your time. It worked out good for me. I am taking two one credit hour classes. One is Cancer and the Arts. This class was thrown together as an after thought. It turns out that there will be two plays a couple speakers at Hiram this fall, all dealing with Cancer. The powers that be (haha) decided it would be a wonderful opportunity to make a class incorporating all of the events. Therefore I was required to go to this presentation for my Cancer and the Arts class. My other one credit hour class is Writing about Illness. We are reading short stories about illness as well as writing short stories ourselves. I love how the class is set up. Each week, a different student writes an essay. On Sunday the student emails the essay to all of the class members (all 10 or so of us) who then make corrections/suggestions and send it back by Monday. (Our class meets on Tuesday). This class also required that I go to the Unbeatable convocation. In case you missed it, I was killing two birds with one stone.

I caught up on homework and started studying for my upcoming Chem test after lunch. Then from four to five, I went to my Writing About Illness class. 5:30 pm was the science mixer where all the science students and professors got together to talk about research and career opportunities. At 6:30, my Chem teacher (thankfully) held a study session for next week's test. Let me tell you about Professor John Andrews. He is British and has the sweetest accent ever! I know you've all heard stories from other college kids who have had professors with such thick accents they couldn't even understand them. Not him. His accent is so proper and his choice of words is so interesting that it actually helps to keep me interested in an 8 am class. Then at seven I went to the student senate meeting. I am filling in for another bio-med student, Emmy Lou. She was elected representative of our major then found out the meetings conflicted with her psych class. I love going to the senate. Granted, this was only my second meeting, but I really enjoy them. They meet every week and seem to actually represent the students very well. This week we met with Jack, the man in charge of our food. Let's be honest here, Hiram food service isn't exactly in the top ten in the nation (it would actually be easier to describe our position from the bottom, not the top) but they are working on it. I realize you can't make "home cooked meals" when you serve 1,000 students three meals a day, but it was still a bit of an adjustment. I guess that Hiram switched food companies a few years ago. Before then, they ran their own food service and now they are owned by a national company. Jack talked to the senate about improvements and concerns. The students in the senate had many comments for him, and he answered each and every one. I can say that he honestly is looking to make the food better and takes our suggestions seriously. He was in the cafe during my first week here, and had no problem coming right up to me to ask my opinion. He pushes students to write comments, and we have seen the comments put into action. We thought it was really cool when we walked into the cafeteria last week and saw all the comments students leave with a typed response from him beneath. Students typically ask for more variety, and for the food to appear more appealing. We have asked for things like different salad dressing and they showed up on the salad bar the next week.

Ok this blog got really long and I have other things to do so I guess I'll just tell you more later.